Shapes of Light: Four Versions of Weaving Community

Shapes of Light: Four Versions of Weaving Community
Recent works by Morag Schonken, Caitlin Erskine-Smith, Brian Cullen and Karin Cope

This project began as a series of reflections on weaving in a notebook that we mailed back and forth across the country (the loom is an image of the four corners of the world). In time, we found, as Brian put it, that what we have all been concerned with in some way is materiality, by which he seemed to mean the stuff of matter, of making. (The loom is also the human body, with the four corners representing the shoulders and the hips, and the intersection of the poles being the human heart.) Since materiality as the stuff of matter, of making is impossible to grasp as a totality in one(‘s) mind, what do we work with but scraps and fragments of tools (rotting nets) that nevertheless catch, conceal, but also unfold fragments of wholes (The earth itself, the surface of the land, is also a loom, an immense template on which the sun weaves the fabric of existence.). These fragments, these bits of light and wood and broken letters and riven habitations are our offerings, signs, at once of disappearing cultures and remotivated materials. 

(Text in parentheses is from Wade Davis, One River: Explorations and Discourses in the Amazon Rain Forest, 53.)

Morag Schonken is a lesbian installation artist, born in Zimbabwe and based in Winnipeg. 

Born in Toronto, Caitlin Erskine-Smith studied art and design in Europe, South America and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. 

Brian Cullen is a writer and visual artist who grew up in North Vancouver, British Columbia. He currently resides in Nelson, B.C.

Karin Cope is a writer, photographer and sailor currently residing in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia. She teaches writing and critical theory at NSCAD. 

Shapes of Light will run from 3-20 November 2011 in the Port Loggia Gallery.

Port Loggia Gallery, NSCAD Port Campus

1107 Marginal Road

Halifax, NS