Crafts Guild of Manitoba

Prairie Barnacles is a collaborative project which points to the strong communities associated with weaving across the prairies.

Created to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Crafts Guild of Manitoba, it was based on a workshop led by Ken Weaver (an apprentice of the noted American author and textiles promoter Jack Lenor Larsen), directed by Anne Ayre, and installed by Gordon Ayre. Participating artists included: Lee Anderson, Shirley Anderson, George Baldwin, Janet Baldwin, Wynn Buchanan, Andrea Burchard, B. Renton Goodwyn, Chris Grossman, Ruth Johnston, Catherine MacLean, Jean McMurray, Ruby Monds, Henrietta Mullin, Ivy Rollo, Carol Romanyk, and Roberta York. The barnacles were woven on the floor of the Guild in Winnipeg using a technique called warp-faced rep weave (warp rep) in which the warp threads are set closely together and alternating thick and thin weft threads are used to create a ribbed texture. Similar to Jane Kidd’s Landslice series, a strong warp thread on one side of each barnacle was pulled to form the three-dimensional shape.