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Articles
A Place For Everyone The Quilt of Belonging tells a story of Canada in textiles Six years ago, artist Esther Bryan acted on an idea that she couldn't shake: Belonging. "No matter who we are or how we got here, we all need a sense of community, of home, of place," she says. The result of Esther's vision? A massive quilt, 37 metres long and just under three metres high, with space for everyone who calls Canada home. That includes more than 70 First Nation and Inuit groups and immigrants from every country in the world. Members of each community were invited to produce a hand-made quilt block to represent their culture and textile traditions. There are 263 blocks in all. They are made of silk, seal skin, cotton, wood, grass skirts, banana cloth and of lace. Some are embroidered, some are tie-dyed, some are knitted; some are embellished with beads, some with butterfly wings. This incredible tapestry, Invitation: Quilt of Belonging, (www.invitationproject.ca) will begin a four-year, cross-Canada tour after a 10 day exhibition at the Museum of Civilization that opened Friday. A 300-page companion book, Quilt of Belonging: The Invitation Project, published by Boston Mills, was launched at the exhibit opening. Invitation, as the quilt is known, was Bryan's dream, but volunteer needle-workers and researchers from across the country have been working since 1998 to make it a reality. Bryan, a visual artist says she wanted to contribute to Canadian art beyond the "paint, sell, paint, sell, get famous, paint, sell," formula. From the hand woven miniature carpet from Afghanistan to the intricately embroidered house on fine Italian linen, to the tie-dyed image of Senegalese working women, each block tells a story. While working on the project, Bryan's idea of what is beautiful changed, she says. That's not all that has changed for the artist who lives in tiny Williamstown, southeast of Ottawa. Born in France to an American mother and a Slovakian father, Bryan is herself and immigrant to Canada. Over the course of the quilt's creation, she became a Canadian citizen. Because of her own background, she says she was initially drawn to the intricate European embroidery on the quilt, but that has changed. "My favourite block changes all the time - as it does for everyone working closely with the project, but I'm certainly drawn to the bright tie-dyes of some of the African blocks and the delicate bead work of some of the Aboriginal blocks." Understanding the complexity of many different textile art forms has been an important learning experience for Bryan, who contributed a lot of needlework to the quilt, particularly on the Slovak block and the Canada block. She also did bits and pieces of needlework throughout the quilt, wherever help was needed and helped some communities design their blocks. But the stitches you'll see when you admire the quilt are actually just a small part of the project. The research that went into the project was also conducted on an enormous scale, mostly by volunteers. Invitation celebrates quilting's long tradition of creating beauty and warmth out of scraps and continues a more recent tradition of using quilts to honour and remember - think the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Breast Cancer Survivor Quilt. And the completed tapestry is accessible to everyone. Because, as Bryan says, textiles tell the "everyday story of what we wear, what we have in our houses, what we put in our suitcases when we have to move." Drawing on rich textile knowledge from around the world, the quilt also demonstrates how immigration has affected this country. In the middle of the Central Cree block, traditional flattened and dyed porcupine quills make up the circle of life. The floral border, eagle and deer are created using beadwork, a technique brought to the Cree by Europeans. Invitation breathes new life into that cultural mosaic cliché by refusing to be smug and self-congratulatory about how nice we Canadians are. It is a genuine record of the struggle involved in immigration. The commemorative block for the Beothuk in Newfoundland is made on black felt. Accompanying text reads, "In 1497 the Beothuk numbered about 500; by the winter of 1822-23 only 27 of them were left." Three hundred and twenty years of British immigration and Mi'kmaq migration led to the complete annihilation of one of Canada's original peoples. The First Nations and Inuit blocks form the foundation layer of the finished quilt since, as Bryan says, "they were here first." But apart from that special recognition, each block is equal. In terms of world politics, the United States is a far more powerful player than, say, Guatemala. But on the quilt their blocks are awarded equal space. "This equality was particularly for the more disenfranchised and smaller groups, for those who can't take their sense of belonging for granted," says Bryan.
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