The Show Girls
Milner Gallery July 10, 2007 - August 31, 2007
Dawna Dey Harrish
Dawna's work progresses using a "what if" plan and an intuitive approach. She explores texture, shape, movement, and value in her work by using an unusal variety of fabrics including silk, denim, ultra suede, cotton, linen, and painted canvas. Mixed media such as re-purposed baubles, vintage jewelry, buttons, beads, and sequins are often featured in her work. Dawna also incorporates machine quilting and surface design techniques to further add to her pieces, using a variety of fibres both traditional and contemporary such as embroidery floss, yarns, metallic and flat threads. Dawna employs a minimalist to avant-garde approach in her work; she uses strong geometric designs and likes to insert humourous touches to engage and reward the careful viewer.
Margo Fiddes
Margo began making quilts more than a decade ago, although her journey into the quilt art world really began in 2002 when she designed her first original work. Margo loves creating art through her quilting and she is fascinated by the challenges working in a fabric medium. The straight-line piecing technique that Margo uses in her quilts in an integral part of her work. The seam lines act as elements of the design as well as suggestions of the images portrayed. Margo is drawn to realistic images - nature, figures - often very pictorial images. With her quilts, she seeks to creat contrast: contrast in colour and value, contrast in shape and size, contrast in pattern; it is this contrast that creates movement within her pieces, it is this movement she tries to capture in her art.
Cathy Tomm
Cathy discovered quilting in 1995. She began by making tradition pieced quilts, but soon found herself creating her own art quilt designs, as well as creating her own fabric. Fabric is the main ingredient in her artwork, and she loves to mix rich colours that flow and illuminate across the surface. Experimenting with simple shapes and colour help her work through her days, whether it be waiting for spring gardening or teaching her children the names of colours and shapes. A strong graphic repeating element is evident in many of Cathy's pieces, and she also loves to mix organic fabrics with complex organic quilting lines. As a master of machine quilting techniques, Cathy chooses the important added texture with care. Free roaming quilting lines add to the richness and individuality of each piece.
Sharon Willas Rubuliak
Sharon's work celebrates everyday experiences of female midlife and family, as well as significant events and places, such as the prairie landscape, that move her to respond. She creates tactile collages startint with painted canvas on which she uses line and shape to evoke a mood or setting. She layers and embellishes with fabric, decorative thread, stamping, beading, and found objects to add texture and interest.
By way of contrast, Sharon also likes to use the actual quilting lines to create a textured surface, recently having explored the subtleties of white-on-while quilt work. These pieces are often structured, geometric works requiring planning and precision. The contrast between the two processes and two outcomes satisfies both sides of her - the free spirit and the formal stitcher.
