In my second career as a sculptor, I have endeavoured to express my truths and my emotions, to celebrate the power of beauty in art to transform our collective experience of life into something on a higher plane. My work contemplates happiness, the universal and transcendence in an unapologetically feminine celebration of beauty of human experience.
One of the chief delights of working with textiles, which are so pliable and surprising in their reaction to manipulation, is to realize over and over again that no shape or colour is ever new, all shapes and colours are already somewhere in the universe.
During my teens, I drew and painted, and then at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, I went to a very large, international textile arts exhibition, which was truly electrifying for me. The inspiration drove me to try my hand, modestly at first with a couple of wool and hemp landscape themed wall hangings, moving on to very large scale hemp and linen wall hangings, with some bas-relief integrated into the pieces, again of landscapes and seascapes.
After a retiring from a full-time career in the Federal Government, and raising three children with my partner, I returned to artistic endeavours in a serious way. I produced sculptures, both small free-standing and large three dimensional wall pieces on themes of childbirth and erotica. I joined the Textile Study Group of New York, with whom I exhibited at a handful of group shows over the years running from 2009 to 2015.
Two large scale pieces were donated over the years, one to Planned Parenthood in Ottawa, and a second one to The Family Planning Association in London, England, and from 2009 to 2013, I also participated in three group shows at the Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, Indiana, and three of my pieces are in the Institute’s permanent collection. Again, on the erotica theme, I had a booth for the two years (2017 and 2018) of Festivulve (Festival of the Vulva) in Montreal, sponsored by an organization which promoted women’s acceptance of their genitalia.
As I have grown older, my interest have changed over the years, and I have reoriented my themes to my current experiences and feelings as a senior citizen.
