Through a lens of popular culture and dry humour, Cindy Baker’s practice engages in an ongoing conversation about the interplay between the heavy labour of craft, the labour of industrial production, and the resistance of normative/contemporary/neoliberal expectations of labour and productivity. In this fast-paced lecture, she will take the audience on a survey tour of her artistic production, outlining the connections between her works across diverse media from latchhook to performance while discussing her practice’s relationship to labour via low craft, lowbrow culture, activism, taboo bodies, and more. Weaponizing failure as a methodology against labour (to varying degrees of success, obviously), Baker’s lecture will work hard to show you how hard she’s working to resist working hard.

Cindy Baker is an interdisciplinary performance artist with a background in object-making, whose work explores human relationships to “things” – both her relationship to things as object-maker and artist interacting with the objects of her creation and the audience’s relationship to those things, emotional and physical/tactile.

Presented as part of Nickle Galleries’ series: Nickle at Noon. Free, everyone welcome.

Free and open to all!

Image: Cindy Baker, I know People are Stealing my Things Rug, 1998, Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.

There is little evidence of home weaving by Albertans prior to the middle of the 20th century. This lecture examines the social context of the mid-century institutions of weaving instruction established in the province. Guilds, the government, and even a grain company played defining roles. Attracting high quality instructors hastened the development of art weaving.

Cathy Roy was a practicing custom tailor/cutter for 14 years and a museum curator for over 15 years. Alberta weaving was part of her research while Curator of Western Canadian History at the Royal Alberta Museum. She is a fourth generation settler on Treaty Six lands in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton).

Presented as part of Nickle Galleries’ series: Nickle at Noon. Free, everyone welcome.

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.

Mackenzie Kelly-Frère is an artist, writer and educator currently living in Calgary, Canada. He has contributed texts to various Canadian and international publications including the forthcoming edited volume, Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame (Fall’23), Craft Perception & Practice Vol III and recently to Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture.

Kelly-Frère’s work has been exhibited across Canada, including the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art: The News from Here in 2013 and Lieux de memoire: International biennale du lin du Portneuf in Deschambault-Grondines, Quebec in 2009. His international exhibitions have included China, Japan, Korea and the United States where he also participated in a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon. In 2014 Mackenzie mounted a solo exhibition titled Frequency for GalleryGallery in Kyoto, Japan. Kelly-Frère is Associate Professor, Fibre, Alberta University of the Arts.

Presented as part of Nickle Galleries’ series: Nickle at Noon. Free, everyone welcome.

Free and open to all!

Image: Mackenzie Kelly-Frère, Mountain 1, 2019. Courtesy the artist.

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.

‘Ruth Scheuing will present an updated look at Arachne and other mythic stories of Sirens, Harpies and other flying women, influenced by recent books published on Greek Mythology, research and stories of balloonists and my explorations with Jacquard weaving.’

Ruth Scheuing explores how textiles communicate through patterns and stories and has been involved in digital Jacquard weaving since 1997. She is part or (TAD) The Textile Arts Department, together with May Lou Trinkwon, located at makerlabs in Vancouver and taught Textile Arts at Capilano U from 1994-2014.
Recent exhibitions + projects include: Ancient Women in Textiles 2019 and Women’s Work 2018 at the Italian Culture Center in Vancouver and Connecting Threads at the Surrey Art Gallery 2018, ‘Silkroads’, a tech-lab residency at the Surrey Art Gallery, ‘Andante’ at Richmond Art Gallery and ‘Dreamland: Textile and the Canadian Landscape’, organized as a touring exhibitions by the Textile Museum of Canada 2012-14. She has published various essays, reviews and conference proceedings and has been an active member of TSA (Textile Society of America) and received the Mayor’s Award in 2010 and the Chalmers Award in Crafts in 1996.

Presented as part of Nickle Galleries’ series: Nickle at Noon. Free, everyone welcome.

Image: Ruth Scheuing, Sophie Blanchard, Aeronaut, 2022, Jacquard weaving. Image courtesy the artist.

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.

Drawing on her research for a chapter in the forthcoming publication, Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame (anticipated Fall’23), Jennifer Salahub will discuss early textiles and weaving initiatives on the prairies.

Jennifer E. Salahub Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Art, Craft, and Design History, Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts) and sits on the Board of the Alberta Craft Council. Her interest in textiles and craft is long standing, reflecting her professional and personal life. She continues to be fascinated by the unexplored (neglected and lost) early history of craft and craft education in Alberta. In other words, she sees the world through “craft-coloured” glasses. Most recently she published “‘A Lot of Heifer-Dust’: Alberta Maverick Marion Nicoll and Abstract Art” in Bucking Conservatism: Alternative Stories of Alberta from the 1960s and 1970s (2022).

This event will be held in-person at the Gallery Hall, adjacent to Nickle Galleries (ground floor of the Taylor Family Digital Library, University of Calgary) and by Zoom.

Meeting ID: 949 2548 5218
Passcode: Nickle

Presented as part of Nickle Galleries’ series: Nickle at Noon. Free, everyone welcome.

Free and open to all!

Join co-curator, Michele Hardy for a tour of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000.

Hardy will guide you through the exhibit and share insights on the artists, their works, and their relationship to the exhibition.

Michele Hardy, PhD is a curator with Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.

Free. Everyone welcome. This is an in-person event.

Please pre-register for the tour of your choice at PRAIRIE INTERLACE TOURS

Have a group or class who would like a private tour? Please email mhardy@ucalgary.ca or call 403-210-6201

Image: Examining the installation of F. Douglas Motter, This Bright Land, 1976, City of Calgary Public Art Collection, Gift of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, 1983 990072 A-F. Photo: John Hails.