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Curatorial essay by Bettina
Matzkuhn "One thing
is sure: gardens are not static. It helps if we see our gardens
as places in flux. Every garden photograph is out of date by
the time it is developed, a record of how things were. Neither
are gardeners ever fully formed, ever fully finished." Beverley Reid
- Hanging by a Thread Beverley Reid's language of process comes from her meticulous observation of her surroundings. Professors often ask students to do a "close reading" of a text, to pay attention to language, syntax, context and progression. Reid's works are close readings of the environment outside her door: certain orchids won't grow anymore because the summers have become too hot; a creek that once dried up in summer, now runs all year; rain, when it arrives, has become more insistent. Informed by the process of gardening, she brings her sharp eyes, willingness to experiment and sheer work ethic to her art work. Reid focuses on her textile images in the winter when the garden is dormant, but itches to get outdoors when the ground warms up. Her stash of fabrics is neatly piled in shelves, the layers and folds form a backdrop to her studio the way the terraced layers of her garden form a backdrop to her life. For this exhibit, she has mined the processes of her previous textile work in more depth. For many pieces, such as Controlled Burn, she uses a double-sided interfacing that allows her to fuse the cloth -without sewing- into the image. Broad, minimal planes of green evoke the foothills. Fabrics overlap and align to give a tangible depth. As a bonus, in the right light, the thinnest edges of one fabric fused to another can make a luminous outline or, conversely, cast a faint line of shadow. In the title piece, Hanging by a Thread, Reid evokes fragility through colour, line and concept. A large, pale, diagonal tree trunk leans across a thin white fabric covered with a delicate print pattern one might see on a crazed ceramic surface. A group of ghostly flowers hang before it by white threads, the loops and straggly ends at the rod that suspending them are echoed by the fibrous roots below. The white speaks of winter, of mourning. Hand stitching can be repetitive and predictable, or, in Reid's hands, a true form of mark-making. The area around the tree is covered with a shorthand of faded stitches varying in length, colour and density. They describe a jittery, nervous tension, some foreign writing whose meaning we can only guess at. On the back of the piece, small dusty green plants have stems and no flowers: all is not well. Similarly, in Controlled Burn, a warning burst of bright red stitches leaps between the smooth layers of green. Fire in the lush grass might be a metaphor for a threatening virus, a sudden change in the landscape or perhaps a kind of audible cry. Some artists might use a range of hard and soft pencils, Reid uses a vocabulary of threads. Gardening entails unpredictability. Keeping an eye on temperature, precipitation and wind, a gardener is as much at the whim of weather as a sailor. Working in textile also has its share of risks and surprises. Reid often uses a bleaching and neutralizing process to remove colour from a fabric. What colour remains is anyone's guess. As well, she might add colour over an existing fabric and the dye can take (or not) in novel ways. For the large triptych History of a Lily, featuring three suspended panels, Reid bleached the background fabric to reveal what looks like the stubble of a winter field. Each panel describes the Madonna's robes, lapis lazuli blue in the centre, softer blue to the right and white on the left. Mary herself is not there, replaced by the lily in the centre panel, its lavish white trumpets joyous and loud. The side panels have only emptiness within the flowing robes. The back of the three panels explore gentle, but sombre imagery: the lily's bulb with its tangled roots, the lily itself worked in black and dark brown - a negative of itself, a sepia memory. Reid has borrowed the most potent icon of motherhood to raise questions about nature, and perhaps about how we seek or neglect to mother the nature around us. If themes around mortality and fragility seem often present in Reid's work, Written in Stone balances them with a sense of permanence. The large piece, as wide as open arms, is mostly filled with the image of a stone. Its grey-brown surface is speckled with paint and puckered with stitches. A vein of paler fabric runs down its side. Despite being represented by soft fabric, it carries an immediate sense of weight and bulk. It is inspired by a stone in her garden where Reid occasionally rests, and where her cat perches when it has been adequately warmed by the sun. The bright willow leaves hanging down in the image, cast curly grey shadows on the stone. More than a mere memento, it is a constant character in Reid's garden -a focal point for contemplation, for gathering energy-. In the 1960s Reid and her husband Richard designed glorious shop windows for upscale stores in London England: Harrod's, Peter Jones, Liberty and more. For Reid, it was a learning process that paid off in her sensitivity to materials. She began to make quilts in the 1970s, and they evolved from traditional patterns into expressive originals. She curated shows at the Grand Forks Gallery, seeing a constant stream of different work. She designed a garden for a seniors' complex, taking into account their needs for tranquillity and the pleasures of the senses. While every project and challenge was rewarding, Reid's prodigious energy began to run low. A significant breakthrough came when she took a meditation course in 1990. Immediately after, she began to make a series of drawings that were free, inquisitive and exuberant; some are included in this exhibit. Pencil, pastels, watercolours, and monoprint techniques explore abstract themes that obliquely refer to the land. She pulled the drawings out only recently from a box where they had been kept for the past 20 years. These drawings foreshadow her sense of line, attention to edges, and the way shapes and planes overlap -all essential elements of her current textile work. Reid's small framed pieces -intense studies in colour texture, combining and recombining forms and layers- are the closest in nature to these drawings. Metallic veins race across a dark surface, the edges of pale fabrics gleam out from under darker ones, like underpainting. Glittery fabric lies beside a mottled but matte surface. Frayed edges bend like frozen grass. Even the very weave of the fabric adds to the atmosphere. The small works allow a greater spontaneity, especially through fusing fabrics and using a sewing machine to "draw". They are gesture drawings with cloth and thread. Whether exploring the inner composition of stones, the stark contrast of field and coniferous forest, or the ephemeral flash of petals, they make a wide-ranging conversation with one another, paralleling the volumes on Reid's studio shelf: books on rocks, fossils and minerals rub shoulders with others on textiles, various artists and "how things work". With over sixty works featured, Hanging by a Thread is a retrospective as well as a celebration of recent work. It is important to see and to contemplate the continuous inquiry Reid has made, to be engaged by her visual language and to follow her paths and predicaments -in the garden or on cloth. The breadth and eloquence of Reid's exhibition is a force of nature: unpredictable, persistent and possessed of a generous power. Bettina Matzkuhn |
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