Category:

Letting go and getting on it

3/22/2025

Our job as artists is to imagine different futures

(Originally published Feb. 23, 2025 on Substack)

I made a bit of a scene when Friedrich Irrgang confirmed that he was retiring after 62 short years in the timepiece-repair business. And just what will become of my wristwatch that he’s been bringing back from the dead on an irregular basis?, I asked him. The inner workings are falling apart, he said in the kind manner of a veterinarian examining someone’s geriatric bag-of-bones cat. True, the watch was a gift for my 30th birthday which was not yesterday or even this century but to let go of the watch and this neighbourhood shop at the same time? That, Herr Irrgang, is a brücke too far!

I know; this reaction was unbecoming for the full-grown woman that I am but the little personal losses are piling onto the big public losses like, say, faith in the future of democracy. It’s harder to counter the latest attack on societal norms with “At least” replies but I know I must stay positive, even when it comes to the small stuff! For example, instead of getting alarmed at my thinning hair, I can just go outside and brush out all my falling-out hairs for the birds to use for their nests! Or like when I spiral-fractured my arm but then turned the plaster cast into a model for sleeves I fashioned from dyed doilies. Lemons to lemonade!

Above: “Coverup No. 2”, 2019: Found doily, plaster cast (Carlyn Yandle)

I’ve also found some buoyancy in reading over-privileged tourists’ one-star reviews of exotic travel excursions. (“The glow worms were disappointing” is a standout.) And I’m always making something with my hands to stop myself from wringing them, so there’s that.

Above: Recontextualized disintegrating polypropylene rope found on a West Coast shoreline plays with ideas of ‘pretty’ and ‘pretty disturbing.’ (Carlyn Yandle)

Even my own painting disasters can bring me joy when I allow myself to fuck aroundexperiment with materials and ideas.

Above: “Regrowth”, 2019: A 24” x 24” acrylic-on-canvas painting from 2013 re-emerges as wall sculpture attached by sewing pins. (Carlyn Yandle)

In summary: Less teeth-gnashing over what is lost or becoming lost; more creative engaging with materials and people; more investigating ways to transform the truly terrible; more joyful making in these perilous times.

A material love-hate relationship

10/12/2024

Masks keep our germs to ourselves but I don't have to like them

People! Am I going to have to bring out my Social Distancing Hat again? Everyone I know is either in the grips of one plague or another or sharing stories about a friend with Long Covid or flu or RSV. And that friend is possibly me (cough cough).

Social Distancing Hat, March 2020

I’m just kidding about the hat; we Westcoast Canadians have umbrellas for that, at least for a solid seven months out of the year (and we wonder why we’re considered a reserved lot). I trashed the hat shortly after parading around in it for a little levity during Lockdown 2020. In retrospect, ridding myself of the wide-brimmed artwork was overly aspirational. I was obviously oblivious to the power of airborne illnesses to return like that damn leak in my studio every time it rains.

The joke’s on me these days. Embracing more social-distancing practices could have saved me from the cold/flu thing that hit Labour Day weekend and settled into my bottom right lung as pneumonia by month’s end. I did take general precautions: stayed home or sequestered in my leaky studio when I was feeling poorly; bowed out from gatherings and even coffee-shop meetings; took four of the reliable at-home COVID-19 tests over the course of this cough, even doing the whole thorough gaggy throat-scrape method. When they came out negative, I went back out into the world. I was sick of the social isolation.

I was so ready to re-gather with friends that I willed myself to not notice that all the women pushing the dim-sum carts were in masks, even as I barrelled past them to go outside for a coughing fit. I did take advantage of courtesy hand-sanitizer pump bottles at the entrance of shops and public buildings but I did not, would not see the masked-up cashiers, receptionists, servers, tellers and baristas as a sign that I should be following suit.

For the record, I was an early mask-adopter even before the spring of 2020. I saw more foreign-exchange students at art school masking up as early as January, and by the end of February, many weren’t coming into class at all. Seeing people in masks was normal to me since my 20s when I lived in Japan, where several commuters in any given train car were masked up, even little kids. When I moved back to Vancouver I lived near Chinatown where masks on faces are commonplace. So by the time the mask mandatehit I was already on it.

Pandemic-era Instagram posts (clockwise from top left): Early mask prototype; Photoshop’d Captain Vancouver statue; the best use of the MFA Class of 2020 graduation regalia; tiny crocheted masks for store-bought bunnies, Easter 2020 gifts.

In those first few eerie weeks of lockdown, when many people were wondering if it was safe to venture out of doors at all, I was part of a growing army of makers sewing up three-layer cotton masks, refining my design as I went and sharing the method online and materials in a system of drop-offs and pick-ups. I’ve made dozens on dozens of masks when the scant supply was reserved for frontline workers. I only quit when stockpiles showed up in Dollarama.

Instagram posts of some of many masks made for the masses in 2020

I don’t like thinking about those dark times, nor the long-term effects of that era of social isolation on ourselves, our kids, our community, our economy, our society. (Even as I write, my father, in long-term care, is being isolated for COVID-19 and he doesn’t understand why.) And I don’t want to consider the import of this:

Or this:

My knee-jerk reaction is to just move on from the whole masking-up rigmarole even as we’re all getting ready to hunker down indoors for the winter. Is that my privilege talking? Or is it growing up at a time and place when runny-nosed kids were just a fact of life? What’s it going to take for folks like me to adapt to masks as the norm in elevators, on buses, in Costco, at the dentist waiting room or the coffee shop lineup, even when feeling well?

Masking up is practical and courteous but I loathe the loss of any more social connectivity, including our unique ability to absorb facial micro-expressions that convey deeper communication — that one advantage humans have over AI and our future robot overlords (for now).

From mind-numbing to mindful

9/30/2024

Dropping out is easy. This art practice is about tuning in

Flat on my back in the chair last week, the dentist had just plunged the second needle into my eroded molar area and her assistant was now affixing the rubber dam. This is when my go-to flight response kicked in: I'm not really here! I'm not really here! I'm not really here!

Full disassociation is appropriate when two dental professionals are bearing down on you with drill and suction tube and you are required to relax your gag reflex. But checking out of reality to avoid the pain of the Divided States of America’s Presidential election campaign is not the answer.

In this Disinformation Industrial Complex age it’s tempting to drop out and go on a bed-date with the vape pen to binge Love Is Blind. But we need to stay engaged — yes, even Canadians. We need to tune in to reliable sources of news,* turn on our own brains and hearts so we can discern the rational from the irrational and the hopeful from the hateful. And when the time comes (in any public election), we need to turn to voting our own conscience and not what others expect from us.

The trick is to do it all without risking mental instability, starting with the premise that we are not all going to Hell in a handcart. We need to believe in ourselves as part of the greater good. Adding to ‘believing’ is the need for time away from the too-many screens. True, a growing number of US adults (58 per cent) say they prefer to get their news on their digital devices but we can choose which news sources and the conditions for absorbing it.
This is how I approach any artwork: through belief and time. I believe that a large-scale or complex project can and will emerge through small, individual actions. I give myself the gift of time to focus on one stitch, one paint layer, one quilt-block, one knot, one row. Or, for the purpose of this weekly writing, one sentence at a time.
The following meandering, improvisational stitching-painting hybrid (linen on wood stretcher) was started this past spring, growing in complexity over the summer:

Cotton floss, monoprint on paper, 10” x 14”I’m not sure if what I’m making these days reflects what I’m listening to, or if I’ve devised this improvisational way of working to allow my brain to fully concentrate on the information. I do know that this voyage of discovery is a symbiotic relationship, a positive-feedback loop that drives me to continue developing this emerging work in the studio while reaching a deeper understanding of the world beyond.
In another example, this recent exploration into redwork embroidery could have been influenced by tuning into news features on Vancouver’s global investment-induced construction boom, housing shortage, “renovictions” and homelessness.

Cotton floss, monoprint on paper, 10” x 14”

At the time of this publishing there are 42 days of increasingly outrageous tactics before a new US president is elected. However we get there, a resting heart rate is required to see fear-mongering for what it is: just a desperate power grab.
***
*For those looking online in Canada for news that means looking elsewhere besides Facebook and Instagram, since parent company Meta chose to block their users from quality and local news instead of paying those news sources. (Google is exempt from the Online News Act after it agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million a year.)

I'd rather be at craft camp

8/9/2024

Vacationing with extended family or acquaintances at the campground can be awkward for those makers who devote a good portion of our waking hours to making artwork.
Unless you’re cranking out objects for your Etsy shop you will be faced with that one question that could throw you into an existential crisis. You (and by you I mean I) have no problem answering questions like What it’s made of, How did you make it, Where did you get the idea or When did you make it. I am happy to open up my studio to perfect strangers of any age to answer these and any other questions, as there are no stupid ones. But in the context of slightly inebriated or jack-assy folks, it’s best to avoid the Why. Trying to answer that around the old campfire is a trap.

Above: an actual text message from a fellow artist last month.

A weirdo? Or a material-explorer?

At the campground or on the deck or at the picnic, do not take the bait when you’re asked in the nicest, qualifying way why you do what you do. The desire to “engage in the art discourse” is fine for the gallery or classroom or lecture hall but as soon as that phrase leaves your lips, eyes will roll. Phrases like “embodied experience”, “finding flow” and “material exploration” will lead to some head-shaking while peering into their Hey Y’alls. And do not mention art school. On the other hand, if you’re spoiling for a fight or looking for a laugh at any cost, mention your Masters in Fine Arts. That always gets them going.
At the moment when the group has clearly decided you’re a freeloading waste of space I think about Mister Rogers and look for the helpers. It might just be that one other person who isn’t engaged in a general critique of mainstream media, that one head not bobbing along when the talk turns to vaccine-pushers. If I can’t find that safe harbour in these turbulent seas, I make a French exit and go find a kid.

Hanging out with a kid is a chance to transport the self into an exploration of the actual here-and-now world. Little kids at these kinds of events are constantly testing the boundaries of water, earth, air, fire, plants, bugs, and their own physical abilities. If they’re quite young, they’ll happily engage with me and the parents are happy for the break. Tweens may tolerate me but teens, forget it; I don’t need any parents suspicious of an adult artist hanging with teens.

I once had this idea of running a kids-type sleep-away camp for adults: bare-bones bunkies, communal mess hall, forest trails, a couple of acres on a lake or oceanfront. The only difference would be a lack of programming. It would be the opposite of corporate team-building or any kind of self-improvement or indoctrination. The whole objective would be fun without — get ready for it — alcohol or any recreational drugs and that includes non-essential electronic devices. But there would be musical instruments, costumes and basic tools for creating stuff. It would be a self-organizing singular or group-directed experience of the immediate environment, with some basic facilitation as required — kind of like art school. There would be no agenda beyond meal-time preparation and dining and a basic structure for communally keeping the place ship-shape. It would be a space to explore, to gather or to enjoy solitude, to sing and dance, go quietly read or walk or nap, or to try on different personas for performance or personal discovery.

I abandoned that plan because I couldn’t bear any questioning of the value-for-money of the camp fees, or the lack of goal-setting or networking opportunities or skill-building programs, while I’m questioning whether wetland mud can create sculpture or if it’s possible to harvest sea salt in an outcrop of sandstone.
So instead over the years I have enjoyed hosting a sort of loose Craft Camp on one of the Gulf Islands, just for the kids in my life and fellow adult artists. We have hammered, power-drilled, sawed, glued, wrapped, woven, drawn, gathered, knotted, painted, whittled, categorized, braided and built a cob oven.

Vancouver-area artists building a cob oven (Connie Sabo photo)

Completed or ongoing projects include beach-glass mosaics, free-store costumes, rusty-metal assemblages, comic zines, braided rugs, seagrass weavings, driftwood sculptures, leaf collages, fabric pillows, cyanotype paintings, papier-mache vessels and pressed seaweed and flower pictures — all without a master plan, or mandatory outcomes.

Kids instinctively know how to get in the flow. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Kids know how to be in the flow of experiencing the world. My goal is to bush-wack through the trappings of late capitalism to find it.

This is why.

Awkward family moment informs art-making aesthetic

7/14/2024

When I first started out as a suburban-newspaper reporter I had a single original artwork tacked to the wall in my basement suite. It was a life-sized acrylic-on-paper, a nude holding her maybe-pregnant belly against a landscape of spewing factories and techni-coloured streams.

I watched this gaunt, world-weary figure emerge in watery brushstrokes from the hand of the newspaper photographer's girlfriend. This is how she worked, in their basement suite, pulling yardage from a large roll of cheap paper, painting straight from her head and heart, with no plan to keep or show or sell her paintings. She saw that this one resonated with me too — what twenty-something in a committed relationship doesn’t have this weighing on her mind? So she gave it to me.

Hanging it felt like supporting an ally, even if it was only hanging in my dark, featureless space that nobody would see besides the boyfriend on weekends. Then one day some of his family made the trip for a visit. They complimented my hanging flower baskets, my thrifty decor. I didn’t hear until much later that the painting had become a topic of conversation among various relatives, a bit of a joke about that subject and, by extension in my mind, this girlfriend.

I had none of the inner fortitude to see this painting or my choices as acceptable and eventually I rolled it up and hid it in a closet. I married into that family within three years. The boxed wedding dress joined the poster tube containing the offending painting for two more moves until I finally ditched the artwork at the Sally Ann. The dress is another story.

Detail from 'Unbridled,' the artist's handmade silk wedding dress embroidered with significant events. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

'I Dissent,' aesthetic design with a political position marking the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Acrylic on panel, 2020 (Carlyn Yandle)

But I did keep something from that painting: some lessons that have informed an aesthetic that I carry to this day but might not even recognize until after each artwork is completed, or is at least on its trajectory.

The first is the power of attraction. Not to be confused with the pseudoscientific Law of Attraction, this is a drive to create aesthetically-pleasing, familiar domestic objects and fields that upon closer inspection have something else to say besides cozy or pretty. An early example of one of my pretty/pretty disturbing objects is Clutch (2007). Hundreds of sewing pins were pierced into a thrifted clutch purse in a colourful beaded pattern covering the entire surface. The clasp opens to reveal an impenetrable thicket of steely pointy ends.

Another valuable lesson is context, or time and place. Gallery-goers may prepare themselves to be confronted by artwork but I don’t wish that on houseguests. There are none of those Live-Love-Laugh type directives or IKEA Eiffel Towers and tulips on the walls at home, but what is there is selected to engage, not repel. Home is a place to feel safe. The studio is a place to not play it safe, but it’s still a covert operation, playing on that first impression of domestic objects that reveal cracks in the beauty of the everyday.

I’ve also learned that my creative energy comes from joy, not pain. I have no urge to make when I barely have enough hope for the day to put on pants. Heavy realities may be the driving force but the work develops from a position of hope for comfort and social connection, a hunger for nourishment of new ideas and new materials to explore. The joy is in learning while doing, imagining new collective futures.

What first appears as a frilly white textile barely conceals the chaotic armature of conduit casing, hazard tape, metal pipes, and other construction-site debris behind layers of discarded Tyvek building wrap. (Nate Yandle photos)

Finally, my position is not fixed. In my mind I have that 1985 photo portrait of Lily Tomlin in a black T-shirt with white lettering that screams EVOLVE OR DIE. And look at her now. My sensibilities are always shifting and I am growing more at peace with the idea that what other people say about me is none of my business. When an artist friend turned 50 on an artists’ retreat the rest of us toasted her in a welcome to the I Don’t Give a Shit Club. When you’re part of that club you stop second-guessing every decision and tending to other people’s feelings first.

This is how I recently became the owner of Fuckwit. I was attracted by the sweet rosebud fabric appliqued in tiny blanket stitches precise as Letraset on a lacy linen. I like the artist's choice of font and word. It’s an overt, uncomplicated work that hangs near the front door, visible before guests would even have their coat off. If people get offended, blame the artist, not me. I just like the beauty in that crack.

Original artwork by Kathryn Lissack (@kathrynlissack)

Needling at patriotism and protest

7/7/2024

The American penchant for patriotic treats is impressive, from jelly shots to meat trays. (Instagram collage)

We all sort of forgot about celebrating Canada Day last weekend, up north, on a farm. No fireworks, no flags, no impressive array of themed party foods in the American way. That doesn't make us UnCanadian, a term that doesn't have any of the gravitas of UnAmerican. We may stand down from celebrations while remaining upstanding.

I feel a complicated gratitude about my Canadian citizenship, what with my settler-ancestors basically occupying traditional Indigenous territories. An inordinate number of maple leaf flags on a vehicle or house feels a bit aggressive and any big show of patriotism makes me itchy.

I started school in the U.S. All I remember about Kindergarten was learning to pledge allegiance to the flag while facing said flag, hand on heart, and also learning America the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner. Then going home. I'm sure there were crafts but I'm thinking they were about all that too. Our rented house had American-eagle emblem wallpaper in the dining room and a flag mount at the front door. To Canadians, that's a lot of patriotism.

Instead of wringing my hands I start needling at local and global issues.

Starting back in my East Vancouver elementary school, I was far more interested in singing “God save our gracious Queen” to that portrait of the bosomy, bejewelled young Elizabeth that hung in every classroom and in the auditorium. There was O Canada too, and the Lord’s Prayer for a while. These days it's just the anthem and mostly for sporty public events but ask anyone around here and it’s a good bet they will not know the updated lyrics. (As if we need a daily reminder of the anthem, the first four notes of O Canada are blasted from a horn heard all over the city centre every day at noon.)

But what’s going on down south of this border has got my rapt attention and I’m not the only one. "Two-thirds of Canadians think the American democracy will not be able to survive another four years of Trump at the helm,” according to a January 2024 poll by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute. Further, “a Trump victory has many predicting dire consequences for both sides of the 49th parallel” with half of Canadians polled reporting they worry that the U.S. “could be on the way to becoming an authoritarian state."

I am compelled to work out these big-picture worries in a joyful kind of making. These days the source of the most relentless anxieties is the fear-mongering that stokes disinformation, anti-immigration, genderism — all the human-rights-violating -tions and -isms. Currently I'm needling at it, layering up those worries through trending heavy hashtags in a weighted blanket, part of an ongoing series of Discomforters.

But it's not all solo projects. In 2019 I joined a needling army of joyful resistors to the Trump presidency, in the Tiny Pricks Project (@tinypricksproject), curated and created by a maker in my corner of the world, Diana Weymar. Her invitation via social media to contribute to the public-engagement project resulted in a tsunami of more than 5,000 stitched sentiments. Galleries on both sides of the border were filled with Trump's angry tweets and comments rendered impotent in stitches and embellishments.

From left: A Trump quote surrounding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the @tinypricksproject, 2019. (Carlyn Yandle); detail of a gallery installation.

Being a part of that and other public craftivist projects started, for me, while living in central Mexico in the weeks leading up to the largest one-day march in American history on Washington. A grassroots social-media campaign had people all over the world taking up needles and hooks and stitching up pink pussy-hats, in comedic reference to the rape-y comments of the President-to-be. The pink sea of 2.6 million marchers on the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 remains an iconic image. It is yet to be seen which hat will be more enduring: the for-profit, mass-manufactured MAGA hat that his son-in-law claimed raised $80,000 a day during the 2016 campaign? Or the hand-stitched pussy-hats made singularly or in groups, and worn or gifted to marchers around the world?

That depends on who writes the history, and who owns the media.

Circular thinking can be a flow state too

6/2/2024

I opened up my studio yesterday to the public to get some general feedback on a new series of paintings. Because even though I’m compelled to keep working on it and even though I’m enjoying a growing proficiency in this mash-up of stitching and painting I’m having trouble articulating why — or if — they’re not just pretty faces. Mostly I've been answering their questions with questions of my own.

“Why” has always been the trouble. Also aggravating: Why ask why?
This is the reason I’ve named this growing collection of paintings that all basically follow my own set of rules of engagement Circular Thinking. The connotation is negative but hear me out.

Asking ourselves existential questions while we create is infuriating (Shut the hell up, Inner Critic) but it’s also part of a process that can guide us to where we want to land. I would like to be settled with the obvious reason that it’s my route into flow, or actual, real fun. (The “so fun” episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast here was recommended to me by my sister.) And they do get me there: into the flow of playing with colours and opacities, of focusing on one stitch at a time, watching how each layer of paint or stitching changes perception.

But I can’t settle with just what’s in it for me. Making is my way of connecting with the world. Much of my work is collaborative, so those involved naturally have a stake in the final projects. Often that’s in the gathering of abject materials, or the actual simple hand-working methods that bring folks together. So it’s easy to see the ‘why’ in these crafted objects and fields; beyond their own resonance they stand as an archive of the social interaction, an artifact of the engagement with materials.

The Circular Thinking series has none of that. Each painting is a singular, intimate effort. It does not reveal any agency embedded in unwanted/useless materials and objects. So in the making, despite the flow part, I feel a whisper of guilt and shame that many women of a certain age might also hear when not doing for others: selfish, self-indulgent, self-absorbed.

There is definitely something in the ‘self’ there that is the driving force in these improvisational, unpredictable and unsettling paintings: self-care. I ache for solid, reliable ground in these perilous times so I start with a grid, like the criss-cross of rebar that sets the concrete footings in every new tower crowding the Vancouver skyline, or a typical nine-patch quilt block. Nine eight-inch-diameter circles in a 24" x 24" "block" anchor to that grid and then I’m off, free of all straight lines, off-setting those circles by half in paint, offsetting again with more layers of colour in paint or thread until I arrive at an attractive/distractive done-ness. It is an improvisational process of revealing and concealing (repeat!) petal-like sections of circles, creating unsettling, kaleidoscopic fields. It is the kind of all-consuming process that reduces hours to minutes, that absorbs all attention, a safe space away from the visual onslaught of social media, yet reflective of our ‘everything is awesome’ screen-field of vision.

It might be easier to eat this elephant one bite at a time by knocking down specific why-questions:

Why paint?
Colour-play. Especially important in this watery corner of the world. It can also act as a dye/stain.

Why canvas?
It’s fabric, with so much possibility for exploring its essential characteristics.

Why the wood stretcher?
Another fibre product that is a natural with fabric. It's basically a quilt frame or embroidery hoop for painters. Building stretchers and stretching the canvas is an investment in the project ahead (a trick I learned from my father @dennisyandle).

Why the stitching?
I like to needle at the hierarchy of painting over craft processes. Each stitch feels like I’m sticking it to convention. Stitching into painting offers the digestible label of “expanded painting practice.”

Why all the quilt references?
The geometry of quilt designs is fascinating, mesmerizing. I have little aptitude but a lot of respect for the beauty of mathematics. The tactility of that geometry connects to present and past makers of objects that exist as art pieces or as items of comfort, utility and gifts, an expression of love. This is a less-digestible "expanded quilting practice": improvisational, mixed-media works with none of that cushy filling.

$Picture$

The geometry of circular quilt designs remains a beautiful, captivating mystery.

Why this scale?
24" x 24” is my standard sample-block size. I dream of an exhibit of all my sample blocks blanketing white-cube gallery walls.

Why two-dimensional?
Closer inspection reveals the third dimension, in the stitching. Also, the aforementioned sample-block dream show is a three-dimensional, immersive space of pattern and colour chaos. (I want to go to there.)

Circular Thinking is both the name of this latest series of grid paintings and shorthand for how I approach every new project: play, think, write, share, think, research, share, write, repeat.

Through this writing part of that feedback loop I can see I just might stop torturing myself with the existential Why and get back into that flow.

@carlynyandle

Risky business: Self-supporting visual artists share survival skills

11/27/2021

For the second year in a row, I've been leading artists' talks as part of the Eastside Culture Crawl.

One of the three Talking Art panels this year took on the wooly business of trying to live as a self-supporting artist, which in the city of Vancouver can border on masochism: today's costly studios in marginal, leaky, vermin-infested buildings are tomorrow's "luxury" residential investment units. Even before the global pandemic, exhibition spaces were scarce.

Vancouver might shimmer like a global city but it doesn't have the cultural pulse of Toronto or Montreal or Chicago or even nearby Seattle. It has more of its fair share of billionaire investment but for artists looking for exposure and opportunity, it's pretty small-town.

Yet every November over the last 25 years, the Eastside Culture Crawl gives a glimpse into this pretty/pricey city's vast — even overwhelming — community of self-identified artists and makers. And it's a little dumbfounding: How do all these folks survive, let alone thrive?

That was my question to three local artists.

(As posted by Vancouver creative strategist Mark Busse)

Eastside Culture Crawl members Gill Benzion (above), Jeff Wilson and Arleigh Wood generously shared their explorations into ways to exist as self-supporting artists, with much trial and error, mixed results and plenty of humour. I brought these three together to share on this topic because I knew their honesty and practical information would be of interest to viewers, many of whom are artists and makers themselves. For extra inspiration I even referenced Canadian visionary designer Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.

Through my research into these three artists' practices and the lively online discussion I learned a thing or two myself:

• My art practice is an unviable business model (ie. there is no model).
• I have no interest in selling my creative energy for corporate profit (anymore).
• When I'm finally satisfied with an artwork I lose all interest in repeating the process.
• When people tell me what I should be doing I retreat into the artwork at hand.
• I do not plan any series of works but take things one stitch, one knot at a time.
• I do not have a signature style or lines of sellable artwork.
• Throwing open my studio doors to the public is like taking off my clothes in a crowd.

Some of this could form my own incomplete manifesto; some of it is just fear and loathing of the business end of things. It all reminds me to take Mau's No. 14 point to heart (below).
I'm looking forward to continuing these kinds of conversations during First Saturday Open Studios, the brainchild of Valerie Arntzen, also a founding director of the Eastside Culture Crawl back in 1996.

My studio joins others opening their doors Dec. 4, 12-5pm. Don't be cool; come by, say hi.

(As posted by Vancouver creative strategist Mark Busse)

VIDEO tour: 'Joyful Making in Perilous Times'

4/21/2021

Click HERE for a 10-minute journey through the methods and motivations behind this MFA thesis. (Film made by Ana Valine, Rodeo Queen Pictures, August 2020)

The power of fiber seen in the corridors of power

3/20/2015

Comments

Rania El-Alloul says she a Quebec judge told her to remove her headscarf. (cbc.ca photo)

When I see the debate raging around women wearing the hajib (head scarf) or niqab (cloth covering the face) in Canada, I think about the male gaze.

The latest controversy surrounds the woman who was reportedly told to remove her hajib in a Quebec courtroom last month -- by a female judge, for the record -- but it's another example of denying women's personal boundaries.

The court order that she remove this square of fabric so connected to her identity and religion and expose herself in the public sphere reminds me of the long history of the male gaze evident throughout the corridors of the world's most prestigious art museums. It is there in the countless images of nude women created by white heterosexual male artist-geniuses, for the perspective of an implied white, heterosexual male audience. It is the why for the Guerrilla Girls protest movement that began with women donning gorilla masks in 1985 and taking on the Museum of Modern Art's status quo.

When the male gaze is reversed -- when a woman can watch, unwatched -- it is at the very least disconcerting in this culture that values women for their appearance. Whether she is covered by a gorilla mask or a niqab, she induces a quiet horror for the status quo, sparking debate. Our society is hardly the voice of reason when it comes to female oppression; not when a woman in a niqab shopping at Whole Foods may incite more controversy than any number of women in the same aisle who've altered their bodies through toxin injections or the surgeon's scalpel.

The issue, whether we're talking priceless portraits or shifting demographic landscapes, is freedom of choice.

While our male-dominated courts and all levels of government wrestle with appropriate women's garments, three women tell it like it is from their point of view -- under the veil or in defiance of it -- on CBC Radio's The Current here.