Slow Stitch: The Embroidered Landscape
Solo Debut from Textile Artist Mary Jane MacDonald
By Sidney Ulakovic
“It was a good opportunity to push my art practice in a new direction,” says textile artist Mary Jane MacDonald of her upcoming debut solo exhibition Slow Stitch: The Embroidered Landscape. “I wanted to experiment with embroidery and textiles and show other ways of doing it.”
Slow Stitch showcases a collection of primarily hand-embroidered artwork developed largely over the last two years as MacDonald was completing a graduate degree in fashion studies. “It came together as a culmination of research projects that I did,” MacDonald says.“My thesis was on textile waste management and developing textile hand skills—how to sew, repair, and stuff like that,” she says. “In general, [it explores] the connection between the clothing industry and the environment, and also just how disconnected people’s understanding is of that system, and how our clothes are made, and the process, and how long it is, and also the effects on the environment.”
MacDonald’s artwork possesses an unmistakable living essence that emerges from more than just the colour palette. Some of the framed pieces push the confines of their surroundings and leap off the surface as they mimic the way moss grows. The work is no doubt inspired by time spent in nature, but upon further inspection, viewers will notice the incorporation of synthetic materials, such as pieces of mesh plastic bags, prompting further reflection on what’s at play in this body of work.
The pieces themselves are like their own little ecosystems, with the variety of each work’s textural features inviting viewers to get lost in all the nooks and crannies there are to discover. Looking at the work, viewers are inevitably confronted with the time-consuming nature of the construction of each piece—the countless hours they would have taken to hand-stitch and achieve their sculptural quality—inviting them to reflect on the beauty in slowing down, which MacDonald evokes in her parallels to slow-growing moss.
“It was also sort of an idea of a project about using textile creation as a method for reconnecting with the environment, and sort of like a metaphorical method of repair,” MacDonald says. In a literal sense, the act of stitching serves the function of mending a garment, but Slow Stitch seeks to explore what the act of stitching poses to mend on a cultural level, and what we stand to gain from a slow process of garment creation in terms of reconnecting with nature and acting as stewards of the land, as well as reevaluating the value of the skilled labour it takes to produce these garments and upholding the best interests of the people making them.
Slow Stitch: The Embroidered Landscape will open on April 11 at 6 pm at Co. Lab Gallery + Arts Centre and run until April 30.
For more information, visit maryjanelivingstonestudio.com.
Mary Jane MacDonald, Photo by Chad Kirvan