carlyn yandle
  • about
  • the creative process
  • crafted objects
  • public art
  • painting
  • exhibitions
  • contact

The future is fungal

1/18/2025

 
Mushrooms and more for troubled times
When you spend a good portion of your winter cowering from the cold and the rain, it’s hard to fathom the fiery desert winds that are obliterating entire neighbourhoods just a three-hour flight south. In the near-real-time images and video only chimneys, mangled metal and concrete driveways hint at what used to be.

But then you notice the vestiges of palm trees, bougainvillea vines, laurel hedges, tufts of sisal and succulents. Before the last tendrils of smoke dissipate and the insurance battles begin, these plants hold the promise that buds and leaves will sprout and new colonizer species will emerge, boosted by an ashy soil. They are a reminder that whether it’s our perilous planet or our own contorting guts, flora heals.
​
This front line in ground recovery is below the surface, a mycelium network of fungal lace that can erupt in reproductive spores, most noticeably after wildfire as a bright orange carpet of tiny caplets.
Picture
Mapping entanglements: Crocheted cotton, acrylic on panel, 12”x12” (Carlyn Yandle)
Mycelium is all the rage these days, embraced for its regenerative properties. I may be a little disturbed by the tiny fungal ecosystem flourishing in a dark corner of my damp art studio, and mushrooms on my tongue may feel like phlegm balls, but I get excited at the news that mycelium is being explored to fight cancer cells and alleviate physical and psychological trauma.

​The earth-sustaining potential of mycelium is unlimited: just one bus-ride away from my studio, at UBC’s Biogenic Architecture Lab, bricks and other building 
materials are being made from edible fungi like oyster-mushroom mycelium; the late actor Luke Perry’s final wish was to be wrapped up in mycelium embedded in a Mushroom Death Suit for his green burial. (And he was.)
Picture
Mapping entanglements II: acrylic on panel, 12”x12” (Carlyn Yandle)
Mycelium spores, unlike seeds, are resilient to toxic compounds, high temperatures, drought and radiation — food for thought as footage of those Los Angeles homes, typically composed of and containing a wide array of synthetic polymers, go up in poisonous, cancer-causing smoke.
Picture
Spore: Acrylic and mercerized cotton thread on found linen, 12”x 9” (Carlyn Yandle)
I see mycelium as a pattern for social regeneration after natural and unnatural disaster and scorched-earth policies. Its spreading network of tendrils mirrors our innate need to connect with one another, finding and nurturing our common ground despite divisive forces. Those thickening entanglements bring comfort and joy because we are pack animals. It is in our human nature to come together; we can see it right there in the aftermath of LA fires.
​

We may be on shaky ground but I can feel the rumblings as we emerge/erupt/bloom, mycelium-like, when the conditions call for fresh energy. Bloop! Bloop!

An iron will is needed now

11/4/2024

 
Working out those wrinkles is so satisfyingIf you’re uselessly wringing your hands right about now, pump some iron.
Hear me out: Ironing is useful, which, in the few days left before the US election, is the opposite position of those of us watching who can’t vote or compel Americans to vote. With democracy itself teetering on the brink it’s best to stop flitting about, pants on fire, and instead grab onto something stable and practical. Just maybe don’t do it in front of the latest broadcast of any of the mega-rich misogynists’ rallying cries; the TV screen is no match to an overhand launch of an iron.
If you’re rolling your eyes at this suggestion you may still be triggered by the iron as symbol of just more unpaid women’s housework, promoted through those post-war images of an ecstatic housewife standing before the only board she has access to. If you view her hubby’s freshly starched white shirt as his day pass out of one of those little boxes made of ticky-tacky, you are still afflicted.
I get it; letting go of the iron-as-shackles connection doesn’t come easy when you are born into that milieu. My cousin recently shared a photo of the two of us, as young as six, standing knock-kneed in skirts and knee-socks at a kid-sized ironing board, playing ironing yet there was little evidence of ironing activity in my own childhood home. This shit was insidious. 
Inflation was hitting hard those days, and the petrochemical industry found an opportunity: pushing polyester as the time-saver for women who by choice or necessity entered the workforce. When my grandmother found herself single in her 40s she traded her home-sewn floral cotton dresses for Sears Fortrel mix ’n’ match coordinates, got her teacher’s certificate and moved to a remote town for work. My McDonald’s uniform was an itchy kelly-green combo of stretch pants and striped zip-up collared top.
Skip forward a few decades and we’re barely treading water in the synthetic polymersea of fast-fashion clothing that fuels microplastic pollution.

Ironing has no role in this wrinkle-free, race-to-the-bottom system. It’s part of the repairing-is-caring continuum toward a circular economy of natural-fibre clothing and toward our own well-being. It relaxes both rumpled, creased woven cottons and linens and our fine selves. You can’t doom-scroll when you’re gliding across a soft surface, settling wrinkles with puffs of steam. Ahhhhhh. 
Quilters know all about the rewards of ironing following hours of wrestling bits of fabric into new arrangements with a temperamental sewing machine. Even the wonkiest quilt blocks in that stack “will all press out.” Ohhhmmm.
The time spent ironing favourite linens and natural-fibre clothing is an investment in those pieces, a time for personal reflection on their making and their makers. Grandma Flo may have embraced her wash-and-wear polyester pieces but she never abandoned ironing her quality dressy things or her fine cutwork table linens hand-stitched by her sisters. When it was my turn to have her over for tea she would tsk-tsk at my creased tablecloth. That it was thrifted was no excuse; all linens deserved pressing. 
A decade after her death I created a part-figurative alterpiece anchored by a Teflon iron plate. The assemblage of found objects reflects her strength in the face of tumultuous change and the little pleasures of her everyday like teatimes, decoration and costume jewelry.
Picture
Two views of “Teflon Flo”: Found lamp base, iron plate, jelly mould, tea strainer, chandelier crystals (Carlyn Yandle)
At this writing, it is Dia de los Muertos and Teflon Flo is front and centre and shining its light. A few feet away from this ofrenda is a deep scorch mark in the circa-1898 wood floor that, judging by its diminutive footprint, dates back decades. I take it as a warning from a past homemaker — I’ve conflated her with my grandmother — to unplug the iron or it will all burn down. Which I am not thinking will happen if Trump is elected. Not thinking about that at all.
Picture
A warning from decades past: Don’t let it all burn down (Carlyn Yandle)

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).
Picture
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.
Picture
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.
Picture
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:

Picture

Or this:
Picture

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).

Homemade masks are not all about you

4/3/2020

 
We who turn to rote hand-making activity to quell our anxiety have been knitting, sewing, embroidering, crocheting and needleworking up a storm. My go-to, like countless others stuck at home, is making masks. As the death tolls roll in, I am on auto-pilot.​
Picture
The thing about busying the hands with tiny repetitive motions is that it opens up time to think, to reflect on the incoming: the unfathomable graphs, reports, studies and scandals. What I’ve been reflecting on as I rotary-cut those squares of cloth, feed them into the machine and steam-press in the pleats is the great homemade-mask debate: to wear or not to wear. To that question I have no doubt: it’s a hard ‘wear’ if you are in the vicinity of others.

Sure, there is a tsunami of science that proves that the three-layered, tight-weave cotton reusable mask that I’ve been making won’t protect you — the wearer — from catching the virus but this is not about you and you alone. This is about us, about keeping our own damn germs to ourselves, a civic duty seen in east Asian nations that have been-there-done-that with SARS. As pointed out in today’s (at this writing) article in The Atlantic, a store full of shoppers in masks may be seen by those on this side of the Pacific Rim as a sign of the coming apocalypse but one of assurance on the other side: I’ll protect you if you protect me (Check out #masks4all and #youprotectmeIprotectyou).

At Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where I’ve spent the last two years, masks suddenly appeared on some student faces as Covid-19 hit the news, far before any social-distancing policies were set. My personal observation is that those taking these early precautions were likely international students from Asian countries where mask-wearing is a norm for anyone contending with even a cold or seasonal allergies. The sudden sight of all these masks in class and corridors may have unsettled the rest of the student body but it inspired me to design something I’d like to wear: reusable, washable, of natural felted fibre, sculpted so it didn’t touch my mouth, infused with my favourite “Panic Button” essential oil blend. 

Picture
I wasn’t always cool with milling around with the masked ones. When I landed in Japan for what would be an 18-month stay in the late-’80s my first snapshots were of all kinds of people in masks in Kyoto, from little kids in black uniforms on their way to school, to teens picnicking under the blooming cherry trees to old ladies in the narrow streets of Gion. I came to appreciate all the masks worn while cheek to jowl in the infamous Midosuji subway in Osaka, starting with the official charged with gently pushing the commuters into the cars. Reflecting on this (now, while I sew), I wonder what those socially-responsible commuters must have thought about being stuck up against these gaping, mouth-breathing, sniffling foreigners.

I’m reflecting on the real, insatiable need for masks in my own vicinity, right now, for those who are jammed into shelters and squalid hotel rooms with shared bathrooms. While I await reports on how this pandemic is hitting the sick and homeless, I’ll assume masks are a basic need. And until I am tested, I’ll assume that I am an asymptomatic carrier.

I mask up for your protection when I go out for my essential business and when I return I disinfect it, put it back in its baggie, then get back to the task at hand. See my simple three-ply pleated pattern below, or, for you non-sewcialists, check out the T-shirt version at bottom.

Picture
No sewing machine? This can be hand-stitched too (46" total stitching). No elastic? Cut 1-inch-wide strips from an old T-shirt, stretch to curl, then replace the elastic directions with two 7" strips, to be tied by user.

Hoping for heat in this log cabin 

11/5/2019

Comments

 
I have this idea for building healthy community in this pretty/cold city through hand-making. It’s a process of making peace with ourselves and connecting with others, transforming individualized desires (thanks, capitalism) into shared desires for a sustainable life and world.
PictureVancouver artist Jenn Skillen — collaborator No. 1 — beta-tests a freeform, no-measure hand-stitched log cabin block method. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
That's the idea. 'How' is the big question.
​
I start with a few rules of thumb. (I love that phrase for its controversial origin that is a deep-dive into human history and etymology, but also for the visual of the hand-as-tool.)  First, the activity must be low-barrier enough to open it up to as much collaboration as possible — no need for special skills or equipment or fees or even shared verbal language. Second, the project must use only found material: freely available, with no better use (because there's already too much stuff in the world). Third, the project must spark interest, otherwise, why would people bother?

A decade ago, these rules of thumb resulted in The Network, an ever-growing public fibre-art piece engaging a wide variety of folks around Vancouver, co-created by Debbie Westergaard Tuepah. That knotty piece continues to weave through my work, mummifying a perfectly good painting practice, winding around ideas of alternative space-making, shelter, and safety nets. Now it's needling into my current project: the Safe Supply collaborative quilt. 

'Safe supply' were the two words on the lips of the crowd at a  CBC Town Hall gathering two months ago. Providing a safe supply of opioids would go a long way to addressing all the problems and fears raised by everyone from student activists to local businesses, from concerned politicians and developers to Indigenous elders: the toxic-drug death epidemic, violence, homelessness, sexual exploitation, theft, vandalism, mental illness. A safe supply is inherent in the view of addiction as a public health issue, not an individual, moral failing.

Picture'Kettling' homeless people into Oppenheimer Park has resulted in a colourful display of a national humanitarian crisis. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
Ground zero of this humanitarian crisis is the colourful, chaotic tent city crowded in Oppenheimer Park straddling Chinatown and the old Japantown. The sight of all those bright, tenuous shelters layer up with this history of racism and injustice, stolen land and lives, and soon I am binding up ideas of found colourful material and that call for Safe supply!, embedding it all in a design, with designs for this as a group project destined for exhibit in more privileged spaces. It is planned as a comforting activity in this often ruthless, discomforting city: a dis-comforter.

PictureHistorical clipping from the llinois State Museum website reveals the log cabin quilt has ties to ending slavery.
I begin this overarching theme one block at a time, and that block is, fittingly, the traditional 'log cabin.'

There's a long history of the log cabin block, ingenious for its simple construction that makes use of even the smallest, thinnest available scraps as well as its history as a vehicle for social justice.

I am attracted to the name that stands as aspiration for home and all that that entails, beginning with the hearth, the centre of the block. From the hearth, the block is built in a spiral of connected scraps to form a foundation for countless quilt designs (traditional examples below).

The work has not yet begun but like all collaborations it begins with faith in people and trust in my practice. Something will emerge. We will engage. We will generate some heat in this log-cabin community.

Some useful how-tos and overall pattern examples:

Picture
Traditional quilts made from colour variations of the log cabin block (clockwise from left): Straight Set, Barn Raising, Light & Dark, Courthouse Steps, Courthouse Steps Variation, Amish Crib Quilt. (From http://www.museum.state.il.us)
Comments

'Foundlings': Kids' works of terrible beauty

7/2/2019

Comments

 
Picture
Clockwise from top left: "This Little Lump", Sylva and Shyla; "Garbage Catcher", Coco; "Little Worker", Kahlio, Basha and Ari.
Everyone is feeling that relentless creep of plastic that is threatening to consume us, the consumers. I felt myself drowning in the tsunami of stuff over this past year of grad studies at Emily Carr University. Art, as one instructor stated, is a wasteful business. 

Even as I retreated back to my green, pristine Gulf Island I was hit with it at the end of the long drive through forest to the local dump: a mountain of garbage. This, from a small off-grid community known for its environmental consciousness. 

My art practice is driven by a need to physically grapple with the unfathomable when words are not enough. In the strange way that an idea for an artwork takes hold, that sight of that mountain of petroleum-derived recycling-rejects led to my latest project: Foundlings.

For a while I’d been trying to land on a low-barrier, low-skill technique that could involve kids in the making of objects from found, non-recyclable and non-biodegradable materials. Then I landed on the work of late American sculptor Judith Scott, whose many exhibitions of her curious bound and woven fiber/found objects have led to discourse on “outsider” art, disability (she was profoundly deaf, non-verbal, and had severe Down’s Syndrome), intention, new sculpture forms and the privileged art world. 

Within a month of escaping the art institution I was driving a pickup-truckload of colourful non-recyclable, non-biodegradable bits from the home-grown garbage mountain to the island’s only elementary school.

Before we got to the making part I sat down with the students and shared some images of Scott’s work for inspiration. We talked about how this artist’s method of wrapping, binding and weaving fibre around objects adds curiosity to what is on the inside. We talked about how working with familiar objects and materials in unusual ways can lead to new ideas. And we talked about how an object can be terrible and beautiful at the same time, does not have to be a recognizable thing nor have utility.
Picture
‘Curated’ materials gleaned from the island’s dump.
We worked over time on the pieces, some kids on their own and some in groups of two or three, adding even more fibre and found plastic detritus from their year-end trip to the local provincial marine park. On the final day of school I arrived to pick up the final pieces and was astounded at the creations. They were richly textured, humorous and foreboding, and proof of why I collaborate with children: they consistently demonstrate the importance of letting hands and imaginations fly.
They each titled their pieces in their own hand and I installed them for exhibit on forest plinths (moss-covered stumps from the last big clearcut) in time for the annual Arts Fest. With no chance they’ll degrade in the weather they remain there, pretty and pretty disturbing: our inescapable stuff.
Picture
Kids assembling the armatures of their pieces in the first phase of the Foundlings project.
Picture
Part of the Foundlings project, installed in a Gulf Island forest.
Picture
Snow Pillow, by Mikiko
Comments

My needling starts with a need to build community

11/10/2018

Comments

 
Picture
The other day I did this because it really needed to happen. All that gleaming new-campus architecture, surrounded by other gleaming buildings and gleaming buildings yet-to-come was begging for a little fuzzying up.

I did my undergrad at the old Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus which was decidedly less smooth and metallic and more crafty, situated as it was in the Granville Island artisan mecca on the ocean's edge. I liked running my hand along the old wooden posts carved with decades of scrawled text, and all the wiring and ductwork that in the last few years looked like a set out of Brazil. I miss the giant murals on the cement factory silos next door and the funky houseboats and the food stalls in the public market and Opus Art Supplies 30 feet away from the front entrance.

The new serene, clean Emily Carr building is surrounded by new and planned condos that most students could never afford, high-tech companies and, soon, an elevated rapid transit rail line. As much as I wanted to return for graduate studies, I was not convinced that I would be a good fit here, so asking for permission and access to the sign was a bit of a trial balloon for me. I got quick and full support for the idea and its installation, and now see this new white space as a blank canvas, ready for the next era of student artistic expression.

This is my first solo yarn-bombing foray. A bunch of us attacked the old school back in the day for a textile-themed student show but I have yet to meet my people here. So the Emily Carr Cozy is not just a balloon, it's a flare. Is there anybody out there?

As I busied my freezing fingers with the stringy stuff (in hard hat, on the Skyjack operated by design tech services maestro Brian) I kept an ear out for reaction. And it was good. Sharing the fuzzy intervention on social media (#craftivism, #subversivestitch etc.) reminds me that I am not alone in my need for needling authority. Indeed, this public performance includes behind-the-scenes connecting with my community of makers to collect their leftover yarn and thrift-store finds even before the main act. (You know who you are.)

Textile interventions in the public sphere have a way of provoking polarizing responses. Some love the often-chaotic hand-wrapping of colourful fiber; others view the crafty messing with architecture with disdain of all things cozy and crafty and engendered female. I liked the idea of having to wear a hard hat and working for four hours in a Skyjack, in the mode of construction workers in the immediate vicinity of my rapidly changing hometown, to complete my knitting job.


Picture
The reverse side of the Emily Carr Cozy, seen only from the interior of the school, is like the work behind the scenes in my making: chaotic, improvisational and maybe more interesting than the public side. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
A visual of the process, below. (All photos by Caitlin Eakins)
Comments

Materials matter, and Those of loved ones gone can live on

5/26/2018

Comments

 
Picture
Clockwise from top left: Great-Grandfather Quilt; Dad's Throw; Tie Cushion. (Carlyn Yandle photos)
Materialistic. People say it like it's a bad thing.
But there's not necessarily anything selfish or hoardy or wasteful about feeling deeply connected to materials. If we all started being a little more materialistic we might not be now contending with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or space junk. I want no part with parting so quickly from one-use-life materials when a meaningful second life is possible.

So when a couple of people dear to my heart were clearly torn about parting with some favourite clothes of their loved ones who recently passed away — one within this year, the other within 18 months — I felt it too.

These bits of cloth are interwoven with the memory of the wearer, his style, the special occasions and the everyday. Just looking at them hanging in the back closet brought the son, the wife, to tears. Some of that emotion is also about feeling at odds with what to do with it all. Yet holding onto useless things, especially in this town where we're so squeezed for space we have to go outside our living spaces just to change our mind, can even bring on some shame or panic that we can't let go, move on.

I felt the potency of the pieces too, and suggested selecting a few items to be repurposed into something that would bring comfort, and in remembrance.
The first project this spring was the Great-Grandfather Quilt, for the first of the next generation who missed meeting his great-grandfather by 9 months. The second was Dad's Blanket, which lives on one of the two matching sofas where father and son watched the baseball in his last three years. The third is a lumbar-support cushion made from silk ties that's parked on his wife's favourite reading chair.

It takes a bit of faith to allow those blazers and sweaters, ties and dress shirts to leave their dark cupboards and be subjected to my fibre-art experiments but I'm grateful they did. It was a little unnerving, plunging wool blazers into a hot-water-wash and tumble-dry, or severing several silk neckties in one swipe of the rotary cutter, but that's the deal with making and innovating: sometimes you have to take a deep breath and boldly go, risking failure.
And there is definitely failure in all of this making. Design changes happen on the fly, dictated by odd dimensions of the pieces and unpredictable fabric behaviour. (It's a thing.) Trying to wrestle slippery bias-cut silk, unstable cashmere knit and coat-heavy woven wool into submission enough to lie flat together is a test of one's patience. The trick is to embrace imperfection and keep the big picture in mind. I think about the Gees Bend quilters I saw a few years ago at Granville Island and the gospel spiritual song two of them sang at the start of their talk, and I say a little prayer myself: God I hope this works.

The other challenge is creating works that resonate with the spirit of the original wearer, so it's not just a matter of chopping up the clothing into tiny unidentifiable pieces to be re-fabricated in a generic quilt. You don't want to be too literal either, appliquéing ties into a Ties Quilt or (creepier) using every last button and pocket or (horrors) just sewing all the clothes together into a blanket or something.

Binding the one blanket with necktie fabric and appliquéing the suit labels in one corner of an army blanket backing (for the man who served in the US Army) felt like the right balance.

I post each Remembrance Pieces project on Facebook to inspire other material girls and guys, and to pay my respects to the stuff of life and to those of this life no longer.
Comments

Mammoth social sculpture going up at Draw Down event

6/5/2015

Comments

 
I'm not knocking social media. Hitting 'Like' to one posted act of injustice after another is nothing like joining a sit-in at your MP's office or marching in protest. But I also get that there is power in those tweets and online petitions. We saw it this week when Tim Hortons decided it had had enough bad press and was breaking its ad deal with Enbridge.

Still, there's a lot we lose by going through life connecting with one another mostly via screen-pecking 'like' or tweeting or 'gramming. We are, after all, a social species; our well-being is dependent on sharing space in the actual physical world. Consider this: If someone took away your ability to connect on social media you might get seriously miffed. If you were allowed unlimited social media access but had to connect in physical isolation from all other humans, you might get seriously unhinged.
PictureEarly days of the Network. Photo by Debbie Tuepah
There is something profoundly healthy about being around the energy of other people. It's the why for clubs and associations, parties and gatherings. And it's the why behind the Network sculpture/social engagement project.

Artist Debbie Tuepah and I came up with the idea just a few years after the birth of Twitter and Facebook, and within a year of the debut of Instagram and Pinterest. We felt a need to create a physical alternative to all this virtual social networking — some low-barrier, small-footprint way to bring people together. Something that would be collaborative but less skill-based than, say, a quilting bee, but offering similar tactile engagement.

This thread of an idea soon joined other threads: the materials should be found/donated and should be the stuff that ordinarily ends up in a landfill. Synthetic, petroleum-based fabrics and sheeting would do the trick. (No one knows what to do with those lurid-coloured Fortrel bedspreads and vinyl shower curtains.)

PictureThe more people work on it, the more visually interesting it becomes.
We cleared the decks and hung several strands from a hook in the studio ceiling, like I did as a kid when making those macrame plant hangers. We added one strand to another by simple knotting. We held parties and invited friends to bring their friends to tie one on. Kids got knotty and businessmen who thought the whole thing a little weird at first were soon weaving free-style. 

We knew we were onto something. A year later it made its public debut at the Mini Maker Faire at the PNE, where it grew into the gargantuan piece it is today.

Picture
The Network is too big for any studio parties now. This mammoth collaborative sculpture demands the kind of space like the Atrium of the Mount Pleasant community centre, where it will be suspended on Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. as part of the city-wide Draw Down event. 

Come on down, tie one on, grab a thread and take part in this social medium in the actual, physical world.


Comments

When words fail to describe form, make up new ones

4/3/2015

Comments

 
There is not a coffee shop in town where two people, heads almost touching as if in shared prayer, aren’t focused on one pocket-sized screen. Sometimes one of those people is me, in answer to an artist friend’s question, What are you up to these days?
PictureThree not-doinks, from top: bull kelp, honeysuckle, barge tow rope, 20"diameter (Carlyn Yandle photos)
That ability to instantly share an image is a godsend to those of us who are more comfortable communicating visually than verbally. (The test: We are fully on board with Ikea text-free picto-instructions.) It saves us from resorting to wild hand gestures to describe abstract forms and ideas.

Some things are indescribable but according to the enquiring friend, I have been making ‘doinks’, “a ball of a single material.” Yay! A new term to help place these pieces. I asked him about the origin of ‘doink’, which he said was a word supplied by another artist friend, and could possibly be Finnish or Mennonite.

I was so hoping it was Finnish as those are my people but all translator sites came up zip for ‘doink.’ I became obsessed and pushed him to supply the contact info for this friend (all while he was en route to Paris) and before long this friend-of-a-friend and I were tangled up in possible roots of this nice, naughty-sounding word.

“I wonder if the word comes from the sound the doink makes when it hits something?” she mused. “Doinks are one of the only things I remember being allowed to throw at someone, and throw inside the house.” She knew the expression from her dad, who grew up in Winnipeg, but her husband was also familiar with ‘doink.’

“It was a generally used word from the ‘70s,” he said. “Always in the context of something crumpled that you could throw, like tape.”

Anecdotal evidence reveals it is not in common usage among kids  - in these parts, anyway - and there’s no sign of it as a descriptor for an orb in any online slang dictionaries. It may be an archaeic, onomatopoeiac classroom term referring to any orbital projection that is beaned (another great, graphic schoolyard word) at a classmate when the teacher’s back is turned, resulting in neither noise nor injury.

Based on my research and interviews, I have concluded that I am in fact not making doinks, as any one of these single-material spheres could cause significant bruising (the one made of barge tow rope weighs in at 20 pounds) or at least an uncomfortable sliming (10 pounds of kelp will do that).

So I’ve come up with a term of my own that I hope takes root for these hefty natural-fibre wound balls: Orbbits.


Comments
<<Previous
    Cross-posted at
    carlynyandle.substack.com

    browse by topic:

    All
    Abject
    Abstract
    Abstract Embroidery
    Abstraction
    Abstract Painting
    Acrylic
    Activism
    Additive
    Aesthetics
    Agency
    AgentC Gallery
    Aging
    Alison Woodward
    Aluminum
    Anxiety
    Appropriation
    Arcade Fire
    Architecture
    Arleigh Wood
    Art
    Art Activism
    Art Blog
    Art Business
    Art Discourse
    Art History
    Artifact
    Artist
    Artist Residency
    Artist Statement
    Artist Talk
    Art Marketing
    Art Quilt
    Arts And Crafts
    Art School
    Art Show
    Art Spiegelman
    Assemblage
    Author
    Banksy
    Bauhaus
    Beauty
    Betsy Greer
    Big Data
    Billy Patko
    Binding
    Blogs
    Blog Tour
    Bob Krieger
    Body Of Work
    Books
    Boro
    Braided Rug
    Braiding
    Bruce MacKinnon
    Bruce Mau
    Building
    Bull Kelp
    Burlap
    Business
    Buttons
    Carlyn Yandle
    Caroline Eriksson
    Cartoon
    Ceca Georgieva
    Challenge
    Charley Yandle
    Children
    Christmas
    Cindy Sherman
    Circular Thinking
    Cirque Du Soleil
    City As Site
    City Planning
    Cityspace Gallery
    Clay Yandle
    Climate Change
    Cluster
    Cob
    Cob Oven
    Collaboration
    Collage
    Colonialism
    Color
    Colour
    Commission
    Community
    Community Building
    Composition
    Conceptual Art
    Conceptual Craft
    Connection
    Connie Sabo
    Construction
    Coronavirus
    Cosplay
    Costume
    Counter Culture
    Counter-culture
    Cover
    Cover-19
    Covid
    Craft
    Craft Blogs
    Craft Camp
    Craftivism
    Crafts
    Craftsmanship
    Creative Process
    Critique
    Crochet
    Cross-stitch
    Cultural Hub
    Cultural Studies
    Culture
    Culture Jamming
    Culturejammingc9d75664fd
    Current Conditions
    Cycling
    Dafen Village
    Dallas-duobaitis
    Dance
    Data-graphic
    Data-graphic
    David Weir
    Dear Human
    Decorations
    Deep Craft
    Denim
    Denyse Thomasos
    Design
    Digital Art
    Discomforter
    Display
    Dissent
    Distraction
    Distracts
    DIY
    Doilies
    Doily
    Domestic
    Domestic Interventions
    Douglas-coupland
    Draw Down
    Drawing
    Dressed
    DSquared2
    Dude-chilling-park
    Dyeing
    Dystopia
    Eastend
    Eastside Culture Crawl
    ECUAD
    ECUAD MFA
    Editorial
    Edward Burtynsky
    Eggbeater Creative
    Embellishment
    Embroidery
    Emily Blincoe
    Emily Carr Cozy
    Emily Carr University
    Entanglements
    Environment
    Environmental Art
    Exhibit
    Exhibition
    Expanded Painting
    Experimentation
    Exploration
    Expression
    Fabric
    Fabricating
    Fabrication
    Facebook
    Failure
    Fashion
    Fashion Revolution
    Fast Fashion
    Feminisim
    Feminist
    Feminist Art
    Festival
    Fiber
    Fiber Artist
    Fiber Arts
    Fibre
    Fibre Arts
    Film
    First Saturday Open Studios
    Flo
    Flow
    Forage
    Foraging
    Form
    Form And Function
    Foundlings
    Found Materials
    Found Objects
    Fractal
    Free Store
    Fuckwit
    Fuzzy Logic
    Gallery
    Gallery-row
    Garden
    Gardening
    Garment
    Gathering
    Gentrification
    Geometric Art
    Gill Benzion
    Gingerbread
    Globalization
    Glue
    Goblin Core
    Grad 2020
    Graffiti
    Grannycore
    Granny Square
    Granville-island
    Green Space
    Grid
    Grief
    Guanajuato
    Guerrilla Art
    Guerrilla Girls
    Halloween
    Handmade
    Handmaking
    Hand Stitching
    Hand-stitching
    Handwork
    Hashtags
    Haywood Bandstand
    Healing
    Health
    Hearth
    Heirloom
    Hideki-kuwajima
    Homelessness
    Homemade
    Hot Art Wet City
    Housing
    Hybrid Thinking
    Ian Reid
    Ian Wallace
    Ideas
    Identity
    Images
    Imagination
    Immersive Art
    Improvisation
    Incomplete Manifesto For Growth
    Industrial Design
    Industry
    Innovation
    Inspiration
    Instagram
    Installation
    Installation Art
    Intervention
    Intrusive Thoughts
    Invention
    Irena Werning
    Ironing
    Janet Wang
    Jeans
    Jeff Wilson
    Joel Bakan
    Joseph Beuys
    Joseph-wu
    Journalism
    Joyful Making In Perilous Times
    Joyfulmakinginperiloustimes
    Judith Scott
    Kamala Harris
    Kids Art
    Kim Piper Werker
    Kimsooja
    Kintsugi
    Knitting
    Knots
    Knotting
    Kyoto
    Labor
    Labour
    LA Fires
    Landon Mackenzie
    Landscape
    Leanne Prain
    Lecture
    Lighthouse
    Linen
    Liz Magor
    Log Cabin
    Logo Sweater
    LOoW
    Lost Painting
    Lumiere Festival
    Lynda Barry
    Macrame
    Maker
    Making
    MakingIsConnecting
    Malcolm Gladwell
    Male Gaze
    Mapping
    Maquette
    Marie Kondo
    Marketing
    Mark Lewis
    Martha Rosler
    Martha Stewart
    Masks
    Material Exploration
    Mathematics
    Maya
    Media
    Meditation
    Meditative
    Mending
    Mend In Public Day
    Mental Health
    Metalworker
    MFA
    Mister Rogers
    Mixed Media
    Mobile Art Practice
    Monique Motut-Firth
    Monster
    Monte Clark
    Mosaic
    Motivation
    Mt. Pleasant Community Centre
    Mud Girls
    Mural
    Mushroom
    Mycelium
    Narrative
    Natalie Jeremijenko
    Nature
    Needlework
    Neon
    Net
    Network
    Networking
    Neuroplasticity
    New Forms Festival
    Newspapers
    Nick Cave
    Noah Goodis
    North Vancouver
    Obtrusive Thoughts
    Omer Arbel
    Online Talk
    Openings
    Organization
    Origami
    #overthinking
    Paint
    Painting
    Pandemic
    Paper
    Paper Sculpture
    Papier Mache
    Parkade Quilt
    Patchwork
    Patriarchy
    Pattern
    Pecha Kucha
    Pechakucha
    Perception
    Perfectionism
    Performance
    Performance Art
    Personalispolitical
    Photography
    Playing
    Political Art
    Political Satire
    Polly-apfelbaum
    Pompidou
    Poodle
    Port Coquitlam
    Portrait
    Practice
    Process
    Production
    Profession
    Project
    Protest
    Protest Art
    Psychedelic
    Public Art
    Pussy Hat
    Pussy-hat
    Qr Code
    Quilt
    Quilt Block
    Quilting
    Quilt Painting
    Rachael Ashe
    Rachel Lafo
    Ravages
    Raw Materials
    Rebar
    Recycle
    Recycling
    Reflection
    Reflektor
    Reimagine
    Renewal
    Repairing Is Caring
    RepairingIsCaring
    Research
    Residency
    Resistance
    Resurge
    Retreat
    Re-use
    Rhonda Weppler
    Richard-tetrault
    Richmond Art Gallery
    Right Brain
    Rondle-west
    Roses Against Violence
    Rote Activity
    Rug
    Ryan-mcelhinney
    Safe Supply
    Safety
    Sampler
    Sarah-gee-miller
    Sashiko
    Saskatchewan
    Scaffolds
    Scaffolds I
    Scale
    Scraps
    Sculpture
    Seasonal Decor
    Seattle Art Museum
    Seaweed
    Seismic Rug
    Semiotics
    Sewing
    SharingIsCaring
    Sharon Kallis
    Shawn Hunt
    Shigeru Ban
    Sketchup
    Slow Craft
    Smocking
    Social Art
    Socialart
    Social Distancing
    Social Distancing Hat
    Social Engagement
    Social-engagement
    Social History
    Social Justice
    Social Media
    Soft Sculpture
    South-granville
    Space Craft
    Spore
    Stitching
    Storage
    Street Art
    Studio
    Styrophobe
    Subversive Stitch
    Surrealism
    Surrey
    Tactical Frivolity
    Tactility
    Tagging
    Talking Art
    Tapestry
    Tattoo
    Teamlab
    Technology
    Terry Fox Theatre
    Text
    Textile
    Textile Art
    Textiles
    Thrifting
    Thrift Stores
    @tinypricksproject
    Tiny Pricks Project
    TJ Watt
    TO DO
    Tools
    Toronto Design Offsite
    Toybits
    Trash
    Trash Art
    Travel Art
    Trevor Mahovsky
    Trump
    Typography
    Tyvek
    Unbridled
    Unfixtures
    Upcycle
    Upcycling
    Urban Design
    Use Object
    Use Objects
    Utility
    Value Village
    Vancouver
    Vancouver Art Gallery
    Vancouver International Airport
    Video
    Video Tour
    Visual Field
    Visual-field
    Visual Language
    Wabi-sabi
    Wallace Stegner House
    Wall Hanging
    Waterwork
    Wearable Art
    Weaving
    William Morris
    Women's March
    Wood
    Wool
    Work Wraps
    Wrap I
    Wrap II
    Writing
    Xenobia Bailey
    Yarn Bombing
    YVR
    Zaha Hadid
    Zendoodle
    Zero Waste Art
    Zero-waste Art

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    November 2021
    April 2021
    September 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Picture