For the uninitiated, quilts are the stuff of grandmas and keeping warm.
But for those in the know, quilting is so much more than that; it is a wildly diverse art form with a range that can even interpret the wonderfully bizarre creatures of the 540-million-year-old Burgess Shale deposit, found in Yoho National Park at a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Burgess Shale is famous for its remarkably well-preserved soft-bodied creatures that have taught us so much about evolution and early life on this planet.
And a travelling exhibition of art quilts – The Burgess Shale: SAQA Textile Art– will feature the vision of 33 textile artists, including MD of Bighorn resident Hanne Seidel and Canmore resident Barbara West, as they share their interpretation of the creatures of the Burgess Shale.
The Burgess Shale: SAQA Textile Art, which opens at Exshaw’s Bighorn Library on Wednesday (Dec. 18), features work by western Canadian members of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). It is a touring exhibition organized by the Alberta Society of Artists for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX).
SAQA is an international non-profit organization with 3,000 members worldwide. According to a release from the Alberta Society of Artists: “SAQA defines an art quilt as a contemporary artwork exploring and expressing esthetic concerns common to the whole range of visual arts: painting, printmaking, photography, graphic design, assemblage and sculpture, which retains, through materials or technique, a clear relationship to the folk art quilt from which it descends.”
Bighorn Librarian Rose Reid said Monday (Dec. 9), each of the two-by-two-foot art quilts features one of the creatures of the Burgess Shale.
“I just love (the Burgess Shale). It is so fascinating. It’s a world heritage resource right in our own backyard, which is very exciting. And also I’m a quilter. I haven’t quilted in a long time, but quilting is something I’m pretty crazy about, so that seemed good. We figured there’d be a lot of local interest,” Reid said.
“The detail in some of these pictures is amazing and the colour too. We don’t know, maybe swimming around under the water they might be as colourful as life on a coral reef today.”
Seidel said her piece called Leanchoilia – a four-eyed arthropod with whip-like feelers – features five layers of recycled fabric with hand-dyed colours, hand painting and thread painting (embroidery or using thread to sew a “painting”).
“I knew it was an undersea creature, but how do you put life into something that is down that deep and give it colour and a presence? I used recycled materials for everything,” Seidel said. “The process of thread painting is superimposed on top, which is the plant life, so there’s five layers in that. I did hand paint and hand dye all of the fabrics. Everything started out as white. No purchased fabrics in this one.”
Art quilts, Seidel said, follow in the tradition of quilting, in that each piece is layered and made of fabric, like a bed quilt. The final product, however, has more in common with a mixed-media painting.
“A bed quilt often has a pattern. It’s started in the pattern and is very geometric. An original art quilt never has a pattern. It’s an original piece of art. It’s a painting. It just happens that your medium is fabric,” she said. “It’s called a quilt because of the layers. A quilt is essentially a thread layered fabric or blanket. It was a challenge and I used fabric dyes of which I only had my primary colours. I had to mix them to get them to the colours I wanted to use. We’ve all used very different fabrics and colours.”
The Burgess Shale is the third TREX travelling exhibition Bighorn Library has hosted since turning its back hallway into a gallery. The Alberta Flood Rose Project followed the Forest, which was the first exhibition to be held at the library.
Both exhibitions were well attended and Reid expects The Burgess Shale will draw a good crowd, as well.
The gallery, she said, is a unique feature for a small, rural library and already it is proving to be a hit with Exshaw and Bow Valley residents.
“It’s part of the community,” she said. “It’s nice. We always want people to feel that the library is an extension of their living space and to be able to come down here and enjoy all of this variety of art is just wonderful. We have a permanent collection of our own. One of my ambitions for next year is to reach out to local artists and ask them if they care to donate a piece.”
Already, Bighorn Library owns work by Canmore artist Shirley Chinneck, who grew up in Exshaw, and Janet Rodgers, an Exshaw artist who died in 2003.
The library’s collection also includes a framed photograph by former Lac Des Arcs resident Paul Smith.
“It’s exciting to have these pieces we can share with people. People take pride in knowing there’s a lot of artists who come from this community. It certainly represents history. One of Shirley Chinneck’s pieces is a beautiful collage of things she collected way back in the day in Canmore and Exshaw,” Reid said.
The gallery space also serves to expand the library by offering patrons a quiet place to read or work.
“We do a lot of programming here and when you’ve got 18 six year olds charging around it ceases to be a restful space, so you can come out here and read a book and enjoy the artwork,” Reid said.
The Burgess Shale Project will be on display at Bighorn Library until Jan. 22.
Some of the artists whose work is featured in exhibition are also taking their art into schools to help Alberta students achieve a greater understanding and appreciation for fabric art and the Burgess Shale.
