The Cotton Factory Storehouse gathering space
This work was the result of my HAC/ Cotton Factory three month artist residency that began in December 2018 and ended on February 28. I’d stepped into Hamilton from a very different world of small-town familiarity, community music and a completely natural space at my cabin. Naturally, I became fascinated with urban pathways and the demarkation of ‘owned space’ via the use of gates and locks, doors, passages and crossings.
Residency Artist Talk and Show, February 28, 2019
The first of five pieces on paper I presented at the artists' talk for the 2018-19 Cotton Factory Residency. Pavement 1: door and chain. A response to my month-long stay in a student apartment at Barton and Emerald Streets in Hamilton. Pretty disempowered neighbourhood - I found myself walking there with eyes down, was warned not to go out at night.
acrylic wash, vine charcoal and oil pastel on paper
Pavement II: Gate. oil pastel, acrylic and vine charcoal on paper. Machine sewn bottom edge. Improvisation meets structure, and a narrative emerges.
Pavement III: Stairs 2019, conte, oil pastel, acrylic and vine charcoal on paper. Machine sewn edge.
improvisation meets structure, creates narrative. 100 years of factory workers have used these stairs to get to and leave their work. I was fascinated by the living energy of this.
Pavement IV: Fence 2019 acrylic, oil pastel and vine charcoal on paper. Machine sewn lower edge.
improvised gestural drawing meets structural drawing; a narrative emerges.
Pavement V: Three Crosses, 2019 conte, acrylic and vine charcoal on paper, machine sewn lowest edge.
gesture drawing under structural drawing. This piece is actually about Hamilton's Churches, each of which is named for a country other than Canada.
Thoughts from the morning couch, while I watch them climb and trim one of my morning trees. It’s pretty drastic, what they’re doing. I do hope they’re not cutting it down entirely. Twenty years ago after my third solo show (Sea Hear) I meet the man who would become my husband, on the phone. He […]
I am not been feeling generous with humans of late. Maybe because I’ve read and signed and shared more petitions than I can count over the last week. Myanmar’s big-oil supported military shooting at citizens, Trans Canada Pipelines & TC Energy’s horribly distorted value systems, the fact that we only protect TEN PERCENT of our […]
I cannot imagine my life without the experience of the Cotton Factory artist residency. On all levels – personal, professional, academic, philosophical and physical (since I have now moved my work and my life here) – it continues to enrich, expand and amplify my world. Residencies are transformative things, I’ve learned. In some ways, contradictory, […]
When I told dad I would present my final masters research (with some bad-assery) in ten days, all the terrible anxiety and fear vanished from his face. He smiled. He is in the final, non-verbal stage of dementia, frustrated beyond imagining that he has no words and only emotion, no time, only an endless Now […]
Lightning: it is wise not to make a target of yourself. I’m informed here by the following list of encounters, ideas and experiences, as far as I can name them in the moment: J.F. Martel, Guy Laramee, Brian Eno, Kate Raworth, Rebecca Solnit, Greta Thurnburg, Werner Herzog, my Masters study of Community Music, Rutger Bregman, […]
Manifesto woman does not know what to do next. Baffling. Maddening. Humbling. Ego-flattening. Intensely educational. I’ve made at least twenty clear plans for these pieces in the past three months of this residency, and the only one that has lasted the duration is Surrender. I’m thinking this is at the root of what’s happening here. The […]
The overwhelm subsides into a kind of rhythm as I begin to understand what my new job is; what feels unfamiliar but is actually okay. As the illusion clears – of pitfalls and boobytraps at every misstep – I can see that the floor I walk on every day is sturdy, reliable… and beautiful. The […]