New Exhibition: The People's Cathedral
Announcing my first solo show at the Workers Art and Heritage Centre!
I’m about to begin my journey to the Workers Art and Heritage Centre in Hamilton, Ontario.
When Tara Bursey, the director of WAHC, reached out to me last year, it was the first time I’d heard of this museum dedicated to labor history as it’s recorded in art and craft objects. If you’re at all familiar with the themes of my rugs, you can imagine why they thought my work would be a perfect fit. For the last several months we’ve been busy planning and organizing this exhibition, and today it finally opens.
The People’s Cathedral is my first solo show. Because my textile practice began to attract a large audience during the 2020 lockdown, it’s been a slow crawl toward getting a physical exhibition off the ground. I’ve never been in a room filled with my work, and although I know my rugs are connected by similar subjects and motifs, I have no idea what they will actually look like together on the wall.
Michelle Millar Fischer, Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has contributed an exhibition essay: Care/Work.
Hamilton is a historic industrial city, and I’m really excited to share this exhibit with its diverse worker’s rights movement. I’ll be giving tours for Amazon workers, Teamsters, and youth groups with the District Labor Council. Labor organizing is something I can talk about incessantly and forever, so I’m excited to have an audience that will match my enthusiasm, and probably teach me a few things too!
I’ll also be leading a punch needle embroidery workshop with a group from the local immigrant workers centre. We’ll use our textile circle at Centre[3] as a place to informally practice and share our respective languages while we talk about our various experiences as workers, women, and crafters. Eventually, the pieces these workers create will go on display alongside my exhibition at WAHC.
I’m incredibly grateful to the museum’s staff; especially Programs and Exhibition Specialist Sylvia Nickerson, who has worked with me closely to tackle all the detail-oriented tasks that normally make my artist brain short circuit.
Working with a unionized museum has been a really special experience. WAHC follows CARFAC recommendations for compensating artists, so I’ve felt extremely supported with the financial burdens of traveling, shipping work, and all the other labor and preparation that goes into a show.
I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve gotten mixed up in more than one open call “opportunity” recently that turned out to be very predatory toward the artists they are ostensibly helping. Sometimes it seems like the art world is one big scam, and working with art institutions you’ve never visited can feel really vulnerable.
All that is to say, I’m thankful for artists who organize collectively, and for all the cultural workers joining the labor movement in this ongoing wave of unionization. Up with the mighty, mighty workers!
If you’re local to the Hamilton or Toronto area, please join me in person for the opening reception and artist talk on Friday September 15, 7 - 9 pm EDT.
If you can’t make it to the show in person, I’m also offering a virtual workshop on Thursday, October 12, 6:30 – 8:30 pm EDT. Register here for Talking Through Textiles.
The People’s Cathedral runs September 8 - November 25, 2023.
I live in Hamilton and am thrilled that I can see your work here. I’ll be checking it out this weekend!
CONGRATS! So well deserved. I hope it is beautiful and everything you want it to be. If I had a passport, I would venture up to the land of cold to see the show. I can't wait to be at the next one. I'm so proud of you. YOU are light and I'm sending all my love your way!!