artist | designer | maker | costumer
Sweetness of the Work
SALT ENCRUSTED TOOLS OF THE TRADE
sweat | labour | tears
Sweetness of the Work is a collection of pieces which include Tools of the Trade, The Machine, and Spinning Jenny. Intended to be installed together, Sweetness of the Work was created in homage to hand work – usually completed by women.
The pieces in the collection have been exposed to a saline solution and nurtured to encourage the formation of salt crystals. These crystals are reminiscent the sweat labour and the salt tears of a seamstress – a gentle meditation on the loss of traditional hand skills.
This collection of works has been shown four times in the past ten years as an evoling collection speaking to social injustice and environmental degredation.
Spinning Jenny 400 Salted Bobbins filled with Hand Spun Paper Thread, Salt Encrusting
Spinning Jenny 400 Salted Bobbins filled with Hand Spun Paper Thread, Salt Encrusting
Spinning Jenny 400 Salted Bobbins filled with Hand Spun Paper Thread, Salt Encrusting
Sleeping Beauty spinning wheel, 400 spinning bobbins filled with hand spun paper thread, hand made wooden crates made from pine and hemlock, hand stained.
Spinning Jenny
Originally created as a site-specific installation in a late 19th Century textile mill as part of the Biennale International du Lin de Portneuf, Spinning Jenny remembers the workers of the mill, and the craft behind the creation of thread and yarn.
The Machine
The Machine
The Machine
ON THE MACHINE WORK TABLE
A cloth sits draped on the machine, full of holes, and made of nothing but stitches. Using lace as a metaphor and employing contemporary embroidery techniques, I sought to embody the accumulated stitches, labour and hours invested in traditional women’s hand work.
The intensity of the embroidery and the strength of the resulting lace spoke to me about the repetitive nature of hand work, the political importance of cloth and the social role of women.
The Machine was created for a solo show
at the Art Gallery of Mississauga.
Subsequent exhibitions: In Situ Festival 2014 and
The Lost Museum 2024
1901 Treadle Singer sewing machine, Gampi tissue paper, hand spun linen paper thread, salt and salt crystals.
Tools of the Trade
The Tools of the Trade were created by wrapping Japanese gampi tissue paper over tools of the trade – scissors, buttons, irons, thimbles. The collection also features spools of hand spun thread and sewing kits of pins and needles. The hope is to remember hands that long ago used these ‘tools’. The hands were mostly female and were rarely granted the identity of artist, as the use of these tools used are rarely considered artistic tools.
Three women in particular stand out – Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Collectively, they are known as the Three Fates, or the Moirai in Greek mythology. Clotho, the spinner of the thread of life, is represented by salted spools and the bobbins of hand spun paper. Lachesis is responsible for the creation and measurement of the cloth is represented by thimbles, needles, thread, and a paper cast iron. Finally, Atropos, the cutter of the thread and cloth, is represented by paper cast and embroidered scissors.
