When the Studio Becomes the Spectacle: A Reluctant Itinerant Weaver Talks About the Weather in Alberta

Abstract

In 2011 Mackenzie Kelly-Frère was invited to participate in an artist residency at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon. His residency was one of five, cross-disciplinary artist residencies coinciding with the exhibition Laurie Herrick: Weaving Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Artists were asked to create works in response to Herrick’s weavings, creating the work within the exhibition space. The text is a first-person account of the weaver’s experience performing his craft for museum-goers and creating a new work in this unusual context where the private studio is made public. The spectacle of the artist at work and the fetishization of process are negotiated as the artist interacts with museum goers, navigating the deeper implications of making in contemporary culture.

Keywords:

• weaving in public
• museum-as-studio
• Laurie Herrick
• the performance of craft

Acknowledgements

Recollect 2 was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Notes

1. In kasuri, threads are carefully tied at measured intervals before dyeing to create patterns in the woven cloth. This process is also referred to as ikat.

2. The museum invited members of the public to respond to Herrick’s work in any media and post images of the resulting work online.

3. “Summer and winter” refers to a traditional woven structure applied in nineteenth century bed coverlets in North America. Summer and winter coverlets are likely so-called because patterns are typically lighter on one side (summer) and darker on the other (winter) (Burnham and Burnham 1972: 264).

4. The treadling sequence is the order that the weaver depresses the foot treadles on the loom, manipulating the pattern as weaving progresses.

5. Threading refers to the sequence in which warp threads are arranged on the loom.

6. In her text for the exhibition, Auther quotes relatives of Herrick, Ann and Jon Sinclair who note that the design and preparation for “Tree of Life” took 10 months and the actual weaving only took seven days” (Auther 2011: 5).

7. I cleaned and organized my studio before photographing anything, basically presenting a tidier version of my studio to the public.

8. A Chinook is a weather phenomenon common to central and southern Alberta. Air traveling over the mountains descends rapidly, warming as it is compressed. In the winter a Chinook can affect a 20-degree temperature change in a matter of hours.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mackenzie Kelly-Frère

Mackenzie Kelly-Frère is a textile artist and educator whose work has been exhibited in Canada, China, Japan, Korea and the United States. He teaches in the Fiber Program at the Alberta College of Art + Design, where he is also the Associate Chair of the School of Craft + Emerging Media. Mackenzie lives and weaves in Calgary, Alberta Canada with his husband Kristofer Kelly-Frère and their daughter Elizabeth. His current art work and writing can be found at www.mackenziefrere.com.