Two upcoming exhibitions at the Okotoks Art Gallery look deep into our past.
On display until April 22 are Communication by Alberta textile artist collective SPECTRA, and Prehistoria by Saskatchewan artist Faith Logan.
Communication is a collection evoking the early cave paintings of humankind, created in the medium of quilts and textiles.
“Each of the pieces represents how we communicate,” said Beverly Patkau, a member of SPECTRA.
“From one of the pieces which has inscribed into it some early language script that is hundreds and hundreds of years old, all the way to modern telephones.”
The group of artists, sometimes numbering as many as 12, had eight contribute their works to the show.
“We are a group of women who have been working in textiles for many years, a number of us from the quilting side, but not all of us,” Patkau said.
“Fabric is what we do, fabric and thread, and creating something and telling a story using textiles just makes us happy.”
For each show, the group decides collectively on a theme, in the past opting for road trips, abstractions and Shakespeare.
“When we set this new communication theme, it’s about how we talk to others, whether it’s verbally or non-verbally,” Patkau said. “And with fabric and these pieces, it’s non-verbal, but they also give that emotional tug.”
Going deeper into our planet's history is Prehistoria, which was born from Faith Logan’s fascination with the deep oceans that once covered her prairie home.
“I’m a Prairie girl born and raised here in Regina and we have the Royal Saskatchewan Museum here,” Logan said. “My dad used to take us all the time and they had all these exhibits about the prehistoric prairies, like the inland sea that stretches all the way from Alberta to Manitoba.
“Something about that just imprinted itself in my mind, because you’re a kid growing up on the Prairies. No ocean, you’ve got some rivers, you’ve got some deep lakes, but you don’t have the ebb and tide of the ocean, of those creatures, so it’s just something that kind of haunted me as a kid thinking about how this used to be an ocean.
“Traces exist all over, you find the fossils, you go to Lake Diefenbaker where they found a mosasaur skeleton.”
The juxtaposition was glaring for the artist.
“There’s something about growing up landlocked, but knowing we have a sort of ancient maritime past,” Logan said.
“And that has stuck with me in my work, so I’ve explored the ocean and how the deep sea terrifies me.”
She transferred that awe to her work, composed of paper cutouts dyed with pigments painstakingly created from her Prairie world.
“Every single colour in the exhibition, every sheet of paper and every colour has been distilled or boiled down or extracted from plants or pennies or flower petals that I’ve gathered and foraged around my house,” Logan said.
“I specialize in cutting paper, so I’ve cut little seahorses, squid, octopi, fish, all the things people recognize from the ocean.”
Part of her journey to the body of work was seeded when she was mentored by artist Barbara McNeely.
“We were trying to tie my fascination with the ocean a little more concretely to the prairies and the land, and that’s how we stumbled on using pigments and colours that I create in the environment,” Logan said.
“It’s combining my fear of the ocean and this desire to connect it literally to the land and where I’m from.
“Something about the primordial sea still draws me back, untouched by humans. I hope people feel transported.”
Both exhibitions are on display until April 22.
