Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Bri Vermeer

and a hard place | Grange Park; Toronto, ON

Working through a new medium and process of image-making dictates that I acquire a completely new "alphabet" with which to create new words and assemble new prose. Like a grandmother teaching her grandchild to knit, my hands stumbled through stringing together coherent knots, stitches, and proofs as gentle hands of print know-how guided me to create these works. In addition to the inital creation of this print, I again stumbled through a new skill: 3D modelling this work in order to present in a virtual 3D space.

“This attention to textiles in my work extends beyond simply the comfort of this hand knitted wool blanket crafted by my Oma. For myself, its presence and its image represents comfort, warmth, and safety. My final work recreates this blanket as a non-functional textile— relief prints of a bias knit on delicate squares of Japanese paper, quilted together almost haphazardly. Presented on a wall, the paper quilt becomes even less functional. It cannot provide warmth or comfort to the weary. It is limited by its material composition to exist as a purely decorative object. However, this work does not exist as a mere two-dimensional form— the mismatched edges of each printed square and rumpled stitching create volume and a sculptural form. This topographic map of memory casts shadows and reflects light off and through the coloured paper like stained glass windows. ”