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Sun Ascending, c. 1985

Tapestry; wool, linen
396.2 x 86.2 cm (each and there are 24 components)

Collection of the Mackenzie Art Gallery, gift of Cadillac Fairview Corporation Ltd., 2014-12

 

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Kaija Sanelma Harris

 
 

b. 1939, Turku, Finland

 

In 1984, Saskatoon artist and weaver Kaija Sanelma Harris was one of a select group of Canadian artists invited by Cadillac Fairview Corporation to produce textiles to warm the austere modernist interiors of the TD Centre, a complex of buildings designed by architect Mies van der Rohe.

Sun Ascending, her largest work and most important architectural commission, is a modular, geometric landscape that recalls in abstracted form the sun rising above an aspen grove, a landscape typical of both her native Finland and her adopted home. The two sets of panels create the sense of a clearing within a thicket—an ancient place of worship in Finnish culture.

 
 

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Stubble Field, 1984

double weave tapestry; wool
161 x 142 cm

Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank / Collection de la Banque d'art du Conseil des arts du Canada, 87/8-0276

 
 

For Finnish-trained artist and weaver Kaija Sanelma Harris, experimentation with weaving techniques has been linked to her desire to transmit sensory experiences of the prairies through woven structures.

Between 1981 and 1987, she created a series of double woven tapestry landscapes “with a major emphasis on color and relief.”(1) In Stubble Field the rolling countryside around Saskatoon, pricked with straw after harvest, is imaginatively captured through looped elements and a rich palette of earthen tones.

  1. Kaija Sanelma Harris, interview with George Moppett, in Kaija Sanelma Harris: Tapestries 1990–1993 (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1993), 4.

 
 
 
 
 

01.
Kaija Sanelma Harris, c. 1984. Source: Estate of Kaija Sanelma Harris. Photo: Grant Kernan.

02.
Sketches for Sun Ascending. Source: The Kaija Sanelma Harris Archives in the care of the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Source: Estate of Kaija Sanelma Harris.

03.
Yarn samples for Sun Ascending. Source: The Kaija Sanelma Harris Archives in the care of the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Source: Estate of Kaija Sanelma Harris.

04.
The material for Sun Ascending in the artist’s Saskatoon studio. Source: The Kaija Sanelma Harris Archives in the care of the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Source: Estate of Kaija Sanelma Harris.

05.
Installation of Sun Ascending in the TD Centre, Toronto, ON. Source: The Kaija Sanelma Harris Archives in the care of the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Source: Estate of Kaija Sanelma Harris.

06.
Exterior view of Sun Ascending installed in the TD Centre, Toronto, ON. Source: The Kaija Sanelma Harris Archives in the care of the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Source: Estate of Kaija Sanelma Harris.