December 2023
Theatre pieces, 12 x 12 inches stretched over canvas.
Quilts Ahoy – 2023
These were made in response to a 2023 Quilt Canada challenge.
Wonders of the Deep: The images on this quilt represent: a cliché (boots), a warning (a plastic bottle), a mystery (a Lego brick), a fact (an Atlantic Cod) and a yearning (a wooden boat with oars). The two figures are deep in thought about this precious resource, the ocean, and our destruction of it.
Catch as Catch Can: This piece goes with “Wonders of the Deep” to emphasize our dysfunctional relationship with the ocean. The images on this quilt represent: a cliché (boots), a warning (a plastic bottle), a mystery (a Lego brick), a fact (an Atlantic Cod) and a yearning (a wooden boat with oars).
Tossed By The Wind, 2022
This small quilt was made in the Kawandi quilting technique whereby you add the patchwork pieces by quilting them onto the batting and back fabric. This piece, shown at the Harcourt House members exhibition in June, sold.
Kawandi Doll Quilts, 2022
I made four doll quilts using the Kawandi quilting style which involves hand stitching patchwork pieces onto a batting and back fabric. You appliqué the fabric by quilting it as you go from the outside edge to the centre. These small doll quilts were given to three young grandnieces and a neighbour’s daughter.
Rewire Quilts, 2022
I made two small pieces to submit to Quilt Canada, a national quilt conference held every year, this time, in Vancouver.. The theme is Rewire, which I have interpreted as coming out of a time of revelation and change. These quilts were chosen to tour around the Atlantic provinces until June of 2023 as promotion for the next Quilt Canada Conference in Halifax next year.
“Nature Prevails” is a response to the past two years when the world has suffered from a pandemic that has killed 6 million people globally so far. This has brought home climate change, globalization, and the fact that the planet could likely survive better without us. Everything is interconnected, forcing us to see our actions as having global consequences, an idea we have not really had to grapple with as a species before. No matter how much optimism we have, we must recognize nature as the ultimate force we can either work with sustainably or thwart to our detriment. I have tried to show this by printing viruses on the bottom section under the strings, and romantic (and optimistic?) branches of leaves above them.
“The Eye of the Beholder” is an acknowledgement that there are different perspectives on the current state of the world with regards to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and our experience of climate change. The images of the eye and the swirl of feathers are printed from lino blocks I made for former print projects. Reusing what I have on hand is part of the refocusing of my attention on the use of material and how it affects and is affected by the crises mentioned above. This quilt and my other submission, the Nature Prevails quilt, are intended as a diptych, together summing up the issues and anxieties of the moment.
S L Norquay 