Textile Museum of Canada

Last week we took a four day trip to Toronto and found a real treasure when we visited the Textile Museum of Canada. There is a permanent hands on multi-media exhibit there called Fibrespace, complete with several working looms including a treadle loom that you can weave on. My daughters loved this. We also saw a fantastic exhibit called The Blues which tells the ancient and contemporary story of the colour blue (check out this video review by Peter Goddard, visual arts columnist for the Toronto Star). Also, showing as part of this exhibit is a beautiful new documentary called Indigo, A world of blue shot on an indigo farm in southern India produced by Maiwa Productions. The exhibit is on until March 2008 and well worth the visit.

Also on exhibit was Shadowbox 2007, a silent auction and fund raiser for the museum in which more than 150 original fibre art pieces were displayed for sale. Each one was approximately eight inches square. What really struck me about this show was the variety of the media used in the works as well as the uniqueness of each piece. I fell in love with a shadow box by Susan Strachan Johnson, who kindly gave me permission to post a photo of it here. She describes the process she used to create the piece this way, "The ground is a computer print on muslin of a colour sketch from a photograph. It is then appliquéd with distressed, hand-dyed fabrics, and hand embroidered." While browsing Susan's webpages I noticed that she does something interesting in her studio, located near Toronto, called Play for a Day. If you're in the area, check her out.

The Life Drawing Class

by Susan Strachan Johnson
Fibre