this is how we can visit
Artist Statement
At the Icelandic Textile Centre, I wove an accompanying textile to my great-great grandmothers hand woven curtain panel. I found her textile in her now abandoned home along with a hand built loom. A curtain is usually one to a pair, but I couldn’t find the other in the home, now running down into the earth. Her handwoven cloth has rust stains, unidentifiable other marks, holes and tears. Not one threading error, and only a change in beat once. This cloth is folded and hemmed to hang and cover a window, to keep the light. I consider my weaving here a collaboration with Mary Jane Hall, and I speak her name while I make.
There exists in my family, and others I know, an unfortunate reality of disconnection, of unacceptability. While I wove, I thought about intergenerational knowledge, care, transmission, and unconditional love; I always do. Weaving brings these to the day-to-day, I have a deep respect for these. I notice the sharing and transfer of story in Iceland — it’s always present, at all times by word, place-names, by stitch, and by pick. Story carried from person to person directly in place is an act of love for those future ancestors and relations unknown — this action reaches through or around time to say "I love you". I think about weaving like a time-stamp and a place-map. By making a response based partner curtain to her woven work, I’m working and weaving to make our circle complete again. To make care and unconditional love material.
Collaborating intergenerationally in this work helps bring an (un)world into view, to make something that seems out of reach tangible and to create a real touch reminder of how to get there. Making with my hands shows me how to make potentialities real; process shows me how to share and be it in a revived world during troubled time. Weaving us toward us, us toward and for each other, to imagine intergenerational and unconditional love for us as we are, in both our most beautiful and, at times, horrifying ways through the gesture of weaving.
The now-pair of curtains were installed in the ruins of my great-great grandmothers home, my great grandmothers, what remains of my grandmothers home, my lived in parents home, and finally, my own home where I live with my partner.
Please read accompanying essay here.
All images by Kristin Pope.
Technical Specs
In 2009 or so I found my great-great grandmothers weaving, made by hand with cotton in an Ms & Os structure. I held her weaving and carried it with me for years, often thinking about it and her. In 2023 I wove an accompanying textile to hers in a self-drafted structure in hemp. I wove on a countermarche loom at the Icelandic Textile Centre.
As I wove and wrote I imagined the pieces in each family home, I imagined them being passed down until they met in time in the present. The works tell a story of continuance, family connection and disconnection, skill loss and skill gain, of place and making with our hands. Kristin Pope and I walked to each site together, installed the textiles together. Kristin photographed the pair in (our) places.
Each image is printed at Newfoundland Canvas in St Johns, Ktaqmkuk on hemp-cotton Hahnemühle paper. They are approximately 60” long by 40” wide, close to the same size as each curtain. They are all mounted on light pine backings made by Chris Buckle at Picture it in a Frame in Elmastukwek (Corner Brook), Ktaqmkuk.