1988. The Look At It This Way series. Each about 6 ft x 3 ft.
Toured in Canada by the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon. Catalogue essay and curator: Dr. Lynne Bell. Collections: The Canada Council, The Saskatchewan Arts Board, private collections while Numbers 2 and 5 are available for purchase, and in the collection of the artist



#2 & #5 are in the artist's collection
and available for purchase.

<<< previous next>>>
Having become aware of the way in which a medium or process affects readings of visual art, I decided to make a series that would be an intervention in the dominance of painting conventions. Each work had two titles. The first title addressed the initial response of viewers on seeing the work installed in a gallery, and the second echoed the adjusted reception that was made on realising that the images were in a woven form. Thus:

The Nomad lit a candle and waited/Look at it this Way.
The first to arrive were some unwelcome memories/ what did you expect?
Then there was Mrs. Rorschach’s Dream/You are what you see.
Followed by a projective taste/You see what you are.
But the happy unhappy medium would not go away/Think about it Other wise.
And from the southern hemisphere came a wrong sign/It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it.
Finally a lesson from tapestry/It aint what you do, its the ways that you do it.

While referencing the construction methods of kilim rugs, I envisioned each panel through paint on canvas to the scale of the proposed tapestry. The tapestries were then worked freely and without accurate translation. With #7 I painted on the tapestry using acrylic, while #6 was accurately interpreted at the Victoria Tapestry Studio in Melbourne, Australia from a drawing of mine. #6 explicitly acknowledges the influence of my undergraduate painting instructor, Otto Rogers, and, with layered code, also removes my hand from the construction in the European convention which separates the image maker (artist) from the technical producer (weaver).