A few years back Janet Crawford, owner of Fog Forest Gallery in lovely Sackville NB got in touch with me and asked if I would like to be an artist with her gallery. Heck yah, I answered.
Happy to be a part of this group show...40 years in the art business is something to celebrate.
To preview this new exhibition, "40 Years In The Forest" click here.
The festival was a hoot as it always is.
Sold a bunch.
Had cool conversations.
A good time.
xoxox
So many folk artists I admire are here: Maud Lewis, Barry Colpitts and William Roach to name a few.
Order it!
Nice write up by Olinda Casimiro, Executive Director of AGN.
https://www.artgalleryofnorthumberland.ca/exhibition/laura-kenney-judy/
“Subversive Judy” emerges as more than just a character in Laura Kenney’s artistic repertoire; she embodies a rebellion against societal norms and expectations. For over five years, Kenney has woven the tale of Judy, a figure both fantastical and deeply relatable, into her art. Judy is not merely a whimsical creation; she serves as a conduit for Kenney’s voice and a mirror reflecting the desires and frustrations of individuals navigating the constraints of social order.
Dressed in black with vibrant red boots, Judy epitomizes freedom, eschewing traditional domestic duties for moments of carefree abandon. Kenney’s personal connection to Judy is palpable, rooted in memories of her mother’s disdain for ironing, a chore dreaded by many. Through Judy, Kenney explores themes of domesticity, gender roles, labour, and liberation, challenging conventional narratives surrounding female identity.
Kenney’s choice of medium, fiber art, adds layers of significance to her exploration. By utilizing materials traditionally associated with women’s domestic labour, such as cloth, wool, and thread, Kenney pays homage to those who have historically been relegated to the margins of art history. In doing so, she aligns herself with a lineage of artists who have transformed fiber art from a dismissed craft into a powerful tool of resistance.
Through Judy, Kenney breathes life into this subversive spirit, reclaiming the art of fiber work as a means of empowerment and expression in the contemporary landscape.
Olinda Casimiro
Executive Director
The opening was packed!
Big thanks to the Northumberland Rug Hookers. They have a lovely blog and can see more images of the show here.
https://northumberlandrughookers.blogspot.com/
The show is up till April 27th, please drop by if you can.
The Judy show is making its final stop at the Art Gallery of Northumberland in Cobourg ON.
Opening Mar 2
Show on till end of April.
Excited to meet the lovely Northumberland Rug Hookers.
https://northumberlandrughookers.blogspot.com/2024/02/save-date-laura-kenney-at-agn.html?spref=fb
Thankful to have “Maud Lewis, Always Happy” included in Matthew Ryan Smith’s article Vernacular Art, The Everyday Monumental in Border Crossings Magazine.
Elissa Barnard had some very kind words to say about "Wool and Wool" at Secord Gallery.
As well as Sara MacCulloch's show at Katzman Art Projects, the Craig Gallery with Declan O’Dowd and Carley Mullally, the Halifax Central Library with Marilyn Smulders and painter Danny Abriel
https://nsreviews.blog/2023/11/22/all-the-worlds-a-vision-for-1-artist-and-3-sets-of-2/
WOOD AND WOOL: Ian Gilson and Laura Kenney
Hooked rug artist Laura Kenney and toy maker/assemblage artist Ian Gilmore are both playful and political in their work.
Their shared exhibit at Secord Gallery is a wonder of detail and material magic and is strong on thematic connections. Both comment on the housing crisis, environmental challenges and the threat to lighthouses while Kenney spins off into a more feminist direction and Gilmore into moods and an exploration of where the world of the child meets that of the adult.
There is a delicious irony in Kenney’s use of a traditional, tactile, homespun domestic art in rugs that are warming to the foot and the heart to comment on social and political issues.
Her character Judy, party drawn from rural Maritime life and folk art, is a tall, thin woman with red hair pulled back in a bun. She is faceless, wears a long black dress and is a feminist keen on social justice and setting things right. Judy has been a saviour of lighthouses and a critic of the commercialization of Maud Lewis for the profit of others.
Maud Lewis’s three cats, framed on Judy’s wall, look on gleefully as Judy irons a white, suited man on her ironing board in Straighten Him Out.
Kenney’s sense of humour and her brilliant use of colour with gorgeous banded backgrounds make her imagery delightful and seemingly carefree. As gorgeous as the flames and purple and blue banded sky are in Putting Out The Fires, the depiction of Judy using a watering can to put out this past summer’s wildfires is disturbing.
The cheerful colours in window panes and pink flowers on window sills in Our Home on Native Land belie the socio-political comment Kenney is making about colonization and the loss of Indigenous land and culture. The door of the quintessential white, country house is red.
Gilson has a darker more fantastical edge than Kenney. His is the world of making what’s needed from what’s at hand, from digging in the tool box and roaming in the wood shed or the attics of old houses. He builds an enchanting world rooted in story and informed by clowns, carnivals, architecture and toys.
Gilson’s works are delightful in their miniature aspect and in the “how” of his construction. He builds a tiny towering lighthouse out of a jumble of miniature, handmade tables and chairs with a lit desk lamp as the lighthouse’s light. The artwork Poltergeist is an elegant vertical structure of barely connected, perfectly constructed, doll house chairs reaching up to heaven.
Note the exquisite detail in the miniature door in Ian Gilson’s idea of heaven in Heaven, of reclaimed wood, metal, wire, zinc, paper, acrylic paint, wax.
Gilson’s toys are comical and not for the faint of heart. The Funt Toys series
of sculpted then cast and hand-painted and hand-packaged objects
includes Billy Bacon – a strip of bacon with eyes and a cigarette in its
mouth. I won’t describe Meat Landscape.
The Rabbits in the Secret Toys for Lonely Children series are wonderful in a creepy way. These mutant, long-eared stuffies have perfectly crafted, cranky, adult faces, sculpted hands and little furry bodies. They look like fairytale creatures or the Japanese Monchhichi monkeys.
Big thanks to curator and director Andrea Terry. She has been so patient and kind and it has been much appreciated.
And where is "Judy" off to next?
I don't have the dates, but the Art Gallery of Northumberland in lovely Cobourg ON.
It will be a first for Judy, to be out of the Atlantic provinces...and she is very excited.
