Prairie Interlace Book Launch

Event Details

University of Calgary Press and Nickle Galleries invite you to the launch of Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 1960-2000 on December 2, 2023 at 1pm in Gallery Hall (Taylor Family Digital Library).

The book is derived from the travelling art exhibition of the same name, currently on view at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. It explores the rich history of textile artwork on the Canadian Prairies through curatorial insights, essays from scholars and textile experts and beautiful colour photographs of the exhibition’s textile works.

The exhibition curators/writers Michele Hardy, Timothy Long and Julia Krueger will offer remarks. Copies of Prairie Interlace will be available for purchase, and there will be some giveaways as well.

About the Exhibition:
In September 2022, UCalgary’s Nickle Galleries launched an ambitious touring exhibition of 60 woven textiles from 48 visual artists with personal or professional connections to the Canadian Prairies.

Some, like Mariette Rousseau Vermette, had exhibited world-wide and taught at the Banff Centre or Alberta College of the Arts*. Others, like American artist Ann Hamilton, had traveled to Banff to study. And many, like Pirkko Karvonen, emigrated to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to start a new life. They came from countries with extensive weaving and fibre traditions and continued those practices here.

The works in Prairie Interlace respond to themes (Soft Power, Elemental Landscapes, Body Politics and Working on and Off the Grid) indicative of the artistic, social and political era in which they were created. Prairie Interlace is a collaboration between Nickle Galleries and the MacKenzie Art Gallery of Regina and has been made possible, in part, by the Government of Canada.

Curators (Michele Hardy, Timothy Long and Julia Krueger) worked with the University of Calgary Press to create a publication that captures and records lost histories.

The book’s collection of essays from Indigenous scholars, experts in textile techniques and Prairie textile history provide unique insight into a previously overlooked artistic movement. The book features more than 180 full-colour images of the exhibition’s textile works, many of which have never been photographed for print.
*Now Alberta University of the Arts

Meet the Curators/Event Speakers:

Michele Hardy is an academic curator with Nickle Galleries and an adjunct member of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Calgary. She is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and exhibition catalogues and has curated more than three dozen exhibitions with a particular emphasis on Alberta craft and textiles.

Timothy Long has thirty years curatorial experience with the MacKenzie Art Gallery, where he is head curator. His past projects have traced developments in Saskatchewan art since the 1960s and explored interdisciplinary dialogues involving art, sound, ceramics, film, and contemporary dance.

Julia Krueger an independent curator, craft historian, and permanent collection registrar with SK Arts. She maintains an active teaching, writing, curatorial, and research practice grounded in material culture and craft theory with a focus on the Canadian Prairie.