Postcards: Yoonhee Choi @ Blackfish Gallery, PDX

Yoonhee Choi 2013 exhibition postcard; Image credit: Karen Thiessen, 2015

Yoonhee Choi's exhibition, Trawling (June 2015), at Blackfish Gallery in Portland, Oregon was over by the time I visited, but I was able to see three framed artworks that were hanging in the gallery office. The above postcard is from an exhibition in 2013. 

Yoonhee Choi is a Korean-born artist who trained as a city planner and architect before turning her attention to fine art. She uses found objects and obsolete planning and architect supplies in her artworks. I am smitten with her two inch collages (framed size is 11'' square) and installations. Yoonhee Choi is a faculty member in the School of Architecture at Portland State University. 

Postcards: Martha Rich @ Wieden + Kennedy Gallery, PDX

Martha Rich exhibition Postcard; Image credit:Karen Thiessen, 2015

I had the good fortune to meet Martha Rich while she was finishing installing her show at Wieden + Kennedy Gallery (an advertising agency) in Portland, Oregon. A few days later, I attended the opening. The work was selling fast. I'll share photos at some other point.

Postcards: Powell's Bookstore, PDX

Powell's Bookstore Postcard; Image credit:Karen Thiessen, 2015

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were in Portland, Oregon (PDX) for the first time. We explored many neighbourhoods, took in the First Thursday Art Crawl in the Pearl district, and visited Powell's flagship bookstore almost every day, sometimes twice a day. When I read that Powell's was a mix of new and used books, I was a bit sceptical. I quickly saw the benefits when I would go to a section and find new and out-of-print books side-by-side. The store takes up an entire city block and is stocked to the gills. Powell's buys 10,000 used books each week. Their postcards, bookmarks, and store maps are beautifully designed.

Last chance: Unrolled @ Dundas Museum & Archives

If you need some inspiration and haven't seen this exhibition of historic textiles in scenic Dundas, here's your last chance! Unrolled closes on June 2. Be there or be square. Please note, the Dundas Museum & Archives is tucked away in a residential neighbourhood and not necessarily easy to find, but it's well worth the effort.

Poster: Kenojuak Ashevak

I found this poster from The Owls of Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013). Sadly, the exhibition is over and I did not see it. The poster is pretty sweet though.

Christopher Moore: Conceptual Illustration poster

Conceptual Illustration poster by Christopher Moore

Since January, I've been reviewing old sketchbooks. In one from 2004 I found this poster from the Conceptual Illustration exhibition in 1998 at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. My classmate Christopher Moore taught the Conceptual Illustration class and in a previous post, I wrote that I regretted not taking the class. I still do. Christopher is an Associate Professor of Design and Computational Arts at Concordia University.

Postcards: Unrolled @ Dundas Museum & Archives

Unrolled postcard

Postcards have gone the way of the dodo bird, so when I see one, especially one that is well-designed, I get excited. Last weekend my beloved and I trekked out to the Dundas Museum & Archives to see their Unrolled exhibition. I hadn't been to the museum in several years and boy had it changed! Since my last visit, it has undergone a renovation and expansion. It's no longer a tired stuffy museum. The promotional materials are as gorgeous as the exhibition.

Unrolled postcard

If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, do check out the exhibition and the museum. Unrolled is on display until June 2, 2015.

Valerie Knapp @ Hard Twist 2014

Valerie Knapp Post, 2013-2014; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2014

A few weeks ago I ambled down to the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto to see Hard Twist 8: This is Personal. My mission was to view the exquisite post cards of Valerie Knapp, a former professor of mine, and to see what Lois Schklar is making these days. In the process, I discovered other inventive textiles not on my radar. I'll share these discoveries in future posts.

Valerie's Post was the piece that stayed with me the most. It has inspired me to play with the spiral in my own way. Her spiral has the feel of a delicate nest. I dream about this piece.

Valerie Knapp Pressing Matters, 2013-2014; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2014

Above is an overall view of her installation. It was difficult to photograph since it's in a narrow hallway, the glass protecting it is highly reflective, and a cleaning cart was parked in front of the end of the piece, thus limiting my options for an optimal photograph. Pressing Matters consists of 14 Japanese kozo postcards (hagaki), each 4" X 6" in size. She incorporates embroidery, relief print, drawing, assemblage, paper, pressed plants and thread into her mixed media artworks.

Valerie Knapp Headspace, 2013-2014; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2014

Headspace incorporates plant matter, collage, stitching, and drawing. A long look at this postcard invites the viewer to conjure up a handful of stories. What is the woman thinking? Could the woman be a romantic poet who speaks in flowery language? Do you see what I mean?

Valerie Knapp Red Shoes, 2013-2014; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2014

As much as I am a sucker for shoes, it's the woman's hat that grabs me in Red Shoes. At first I thought that the woman was a young Queen Elizabeth, or her sister Princess Margaret garbed in fanciful clothing.

I would love to see Knapp's intimate, thoughtful work paired with poems or short stories written in response to each of the 14 postcards. The work is imaginative and holds narrative qualities. Pressing Matters is one of the strongest works in the Hard Twist 2014 show. The show is on until April 27, 2014.

Postcards: Ying-Yueh Chuang & Yi Chen

Ying-Yueh Chuang and I were at NSCAD and Harbourfront together, she in ceramics and I in textiles. Like me, Ying-Yueh is a night owl and she kept the strangest hours in the Harbourfront ceramics studio. Obviously the fairies and elves worked overtime with her, because she produced an impressive body of work. One thing that continues to fascinate me is that she creates a lot of her exquisite work in modules that she either joins or exhibits together. This postcard is from a two-person show, The Hybrid, (with Chinese/Canadian artist Yi Chen) at Plum Blossoms Gallery in New York City in 2004.

Postcards: Fausta Facciponte

Fausta Facciponte Emma for $1.15, 2007

Have you seen Fausta Facciponte's show of doll portraits yet? I saw this at Hamilton's McMaster Museum of Art in 2009 and I was blown away. The digital photographs mounted on plexiglass are 40 x 48 inches, much larger than doll size. The dolls are in various stages of "lovedness" and many of the photos are creepy-cute. A few of the dolls appear to be possessed by demons as they stare the viewer down – the stuff of nightmares. Other dolls evoke pity or sympathy. In a previous life, they were loved by their young owners, only to be discarded later to the thrift store or garage sale. I still have two of my well-loved childhood dolls garbed in dresses that my great-grandmother made for them. 

Postcards: Cypress Gardens

Grandma was known as "boss" and Grandpa always got the last word by saying "yes boss." Had Grandma been born in another time, she could easily have been the President of a multinational corporation, or, at the minimum, the Prime Minister of Canada. Yes, really. In their retirement years, Grandpa and Grandma wintered in Florida and had season passes to Cypress Gardens where they took their visiting children, grandchildren, and friends. For Grandma, the Gardens were a perfect combination of botanical gardens (she loved flowers) and attractions that would entertain adults and children alike. Grandma had the timing all worked out: if you left the parrot show four minutes early, you could make it to the water show on time. If you didn't set some healthy boundaries, she would plan your entire vacation for you, down to 15 minute intervals. In October 2011 Cypress Gardens reopened as LEGOLAND. Had she lived to see this, Grandma, a future-oriented person, would have taken her great-grandchildren and their parents to it, after all, the Lego Southern belles were still surrounded by real flowers.

Postcards: Barbara Klunder

Nine years. That's how long this postcard has been paired with a Tom Thomson postcard on my studio wall. The duo are like a sister and brother – similar in tonal range but very different: a chair next to a phone juxtaposed next to a wilderness scene in Northern Ontario. The painting is called Waiting and is from Barbara Klunder: 12 Recent Oil Paintings, October 2-25, 2003 at Prime Gallery. Prime Gallery closed and David Kaye Gallery opened in its wake. Barbara Klunder now shows at David's gallery and her genius has turned to paper cuts. Do you feel the tension of the empty chair next to the phone? I sure do.

Postcards: Artists and Fleas

Five years have passed since my first and only trip to New York City and Brooklyn. I picked up this postcard during that visit. The font made me do it. Doesn't this font remind you of quilt squares or geometric patterns nestled together? Five years is enough. It's time to return to the Big Apple.

Postcards: 1966 Cacti & Desert Flora

In keeping with the desert theme, here's a vintage postcard from my great grandmother's postcard collection. The desert looks pretty in this picture. According to the back of the postcard, this is a "full color reproduction from a painting by Larry Toschik." Grandpa and Grandma mailed this card on February 4, 1966 from Jacumba, California and they probably drove there pulling their Airstream trailer.

Postcards: Art Park

Art Park was a textile design company based in Sydney, Australia in the 1990s and I was thrilled to visit their Paddington store in 1997. Since my husband were travelling lightly, all I bought was a funky tea cosy and some fabric patches. The tea cosy was too beautiful to use and until last year it hung on my studio wall offering up ample inspiration. One day I'll photograph it to share with you. Sadly Art Park is no longer in business, but Cath Dersema, one of the co-founders is now designing fabrics under the Prints Charming label and Louise Bickle, the other co-founder, has moved on to design and styling.

Postcards: Emily Hermant

I met Emily Hermant in 2004 and immediately knew that she was a rising star. Since I met Emily, she has completed her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Craft and Material Studies program. This postcard is from her Lies project which she exhibited in Montreal and at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.

Emily stitched the words onto silk and then dissolved the silk with bleach, leaving just the words. The shadows cast by the text is ethereal.

Postcards: Alison Bailey Smith

Alison Bailey Smith is the ultimate recycler. Her hats and other wearable art are made from wire reclaimed from television sets and electric motors. I picked up this postcard in Rozelle, Australia (a small suburb of Sydney) in 1997. She is still actively making art and has since moved to England via Guelph, Ontario and San Francisco.

Postcards: Susan Oaks

Sometimes my postcard posts are about the actual postcard, sometimes they are a story related to the postcard. This is one of the former. In 2009, my friend Esther picked up this Susan Oaks postcard from San Antonio for me. I met Esther at my first collage class in 2005. She is perceptive, self-effacing, generous, and thoughtful. Esther tries lots of different techniques and has an eye for collage. Unknowingly, she inspires the people around her. It is possible that the tag series was inspired by Esther's experiments. My beginnings with learning the principles of collage were more than ten years after I had the initial desire. School, moving house, and a busy career all contributed to me pushing off my desires to learn the technique. Watching Esther monoprint with found objects and document her father's workshop with photo-collage à la David Hockney awakened a desire in me to make more time to play and learn new things in my studio practice. Five years of once-a-week collage classes did wonders for me. I learned as much from my teachers as I did from my fellow students. Thanks Esther (and Jody, Marla, Mina, Kathy, Wayne, and Jane)!

Postcards: Think More

Did you know that postcards may soon be extinct? Apparently social media is taking over and galleries and others are skipping the postcard route. Yes, trees will be spared, but the tactile and visual reminder of a favourite show will disappear. Lucky for you, I found an old stash of postcards while I was frantically looking for something else (which I did find too). 


With my limited Adobe Illustrator skills (yes, that again!) I haven't figured out how to make this starburst pattern yet (or whatever it is called). It looks so simple and once I learn more, I'm sure that I'll stumble across the secret to making it. For now, I'm bumbling around in the dark trying to adapt a polar grid to make this with only partial success.

Postcards: de Young Gallery

I wish I knew if this bookmark was based on a painting in the collection of the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The stripes are wonderful. I picked this up at the de Young in 2008 when the Gilbert and George exhibit was on. Being an artist and on vacation is a tricky thing. If I go to a museum or gallery, I'm in work mode. If I explore a city on foot, I'm in vacation mode and I'm absorbing inspiration indirectly. Both feed me, but if I'm in a place for a short time and the weather is perfect for walking, hanging out in a gallery is a tough sell. Thankfully I had already explored San Francisco in great depth a few years earlier, so visiting the de Young wasn't a hardship. I went for the Gilbert and George show, but what wowed me was the Jane Hammond show, Ruth Asawa's ethereal sculptures on the way up to the Hamon Tower and the grounds of the de Young in Golden Gate Park. If you are in San Francisco and are blessed with rain, check out the de Young and the SFMOMA.