Resilience Gallery- See Sale Items

Resilience – the ability to bounce back in response to disturbance or stress. Two galleries Resilience (impressionistic landscapes) and Black and Red (abstracts) - explore ideas about how people and places become more resilient. I’m using the process of making felt as a metaphor for building resilience. Through the harsh action of wet felting, the fine wisps of wool and silk, fibres and organic materials forming the building blocks of the artwork are tightly bonded together. The resulting textile is stronger, more stable, more durable, more resilient. Stresses and disturbance leave marks and scars at times so subtle they seem not to be there at all. Sometimes we don’t bounce back, we bounce forward.

Journey to

15.5x8” Handmade wool and silk felt; silk rope

Mounted on birch panel

How long is the journey to? is from shorter?

Journey from

15”x8” mounted on birch panel

Handmade wool and silk felt with silk rope and embedded slide of sailboats in harbout

Is the journey to longer than the journey from?

Railway Towns Revisited SOLD

16” x 22” current framed size is 24” x 36” In the purple circles which resemble sites of wounds are transparencies of old railway maps with names of towns. I substituted other names e.g. Expropriate using the black name tags to acknowledge the negative impact building the railway had on racialized populations.

WORDS exhibition piece Felt::feutre Canada 2019

Railway Towns Revisited - detail

Showing the new town labels - Neglect and Expropriate. Where is Inclusion, Respect, Fairtown?

Story of the Black Train Porters- SOLD

12” x 36” framed. Inspired by the book by Cecil Foster entitled “They call me George: the untold story of black train porters…”

Handmade wool and silk felt with knitted copper inclusions and railway maps

Text says: “…the porters were entitled to only one type of work: as lowly-paid passenger helpers with no job security.”

Story of Black Train Porters (detail)

Railway Hills (SOLD)

Hills in B.C. Embedded image of a leaf on silk makes up part of the hills.

Railway Hills (detail)

Close up of the crater with a railway map.

Conductor Fired over Social Media Presence (SOLD)

Capturing the newspaper story of Steph Katz who was a conductor on the railway until her social media presence was detected. Jan 2018

Day and Night in the Forest - 2119 SOLD

“When we visited Sheila Thompson’s studio we were immediately drawn to the colours, texture and symbolism of her diptych, Day and Night in the Forest. We have enjoyed getting to know Sheila, and are proud to include her work in our collection.”

Kathryn Elton & Peter Hohenadel

Handmade felt with prefelt inlays and nuno leaf images wrapped in a blanket stitch

12” x 36” on canvas

In 100 years, will our trees still stand tall and keep us cool in the day? The red sun beats down but nestle close to the smooth bark of the trees and feel the refreshing cool.

In 100 years, will our trees still stand tall and keep us warm in the night? The night seems cold, the canopies stripped bare, but the trees seem to radiate life.

Artifacts: Memories in Fields - SOLD

24" x 24" framed

With hydrangea flowers, silk rope and African porcupine quill

One of my earlier pieces that got me thinking about how to represent the patterns of activity that persist over time and fade only to be visible from the air. In this case an ancient field we imagine as a sacred place where rituals once took place. The field holds these memories.

Ancient fields have felt the footfalls of humans and bear the scars of rituals.

Watering Holes I - $400

18"x30" framed (11" x 24" unframed)

With resist holes, embedded sweetgrass and an African porcupine quill.

A first generation felt whose images are used in subsequent felts.

Find water but leave some behind.

Prairie Hills - SALE $450 framed!

Prairie hills soft, rounded by the hooves of buffalo and winds blowing through the grasses. Sweet grass is embedded as characteristic of these vast spaces.

36" x 24" framed on vintage table cloth

Climb to the top of the hill in the late summer, inhale the clean prairie air. The sky is always blue.

Escarpment (SOLD)

24" x 48" framed

With embedded Indonesian wild silk worm cocoons, sweet grass

Lightning in the skies. The animals take shelter. From my days in Zambia

Grassy Hills (SOLD)

13" x 13"

Handmade wool and silk felt with embedded Madagascar silk worm cocoons, grasses.

After a hot summer the grasses dry golden. Night is falling and its time to trek back home.

Summit - SOLD

24" x 24" framed on vintage table cloth

With Japanese silk rope, red sky with smoky bits. An anticline.

Rocks bend under pressure. So do we.

Buffalo Landscape - SOLD

16"W x 28" L

With knitted copper wire, image, Catalpa pod, silk rope

Home from its cross Canada tour with Edge of the Forest textile show.

“Buffalo Landscape” is about complex places – transitions to other landscapes as the humans and climate interact to change the key controlling factors that help determine the look and feel of a landscape. In this case, natural prairie with its millions of buffalo transitioned into tamed farmland.

Emerge a series of four (SOLD)

A sequence of four pieces 12” x 12” each showing gradual emergence. The two casings of a Madagascar silk worm cocoon are used to this effect. Symbolizes rebirth, emergence from dark times, renewal. In situ at their new home.