Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Bri Vermeer

between | Baldwin Village; 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 vertices as gentle hands of 3D know-how guided me to create these works.

“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. I sought to create a 3D representation of the blanket to present in a 3D virtual gallery space, rendering the actual object as a non-functional item. In this process, I learned rudimentary 3D modelling skills and created a plinth that exists in a liminal space between organic and inorganic. Working through a variety of media, I will continue to explore the ways that I may take apart and reassemble facsimiles (both literal and symbolic) of this blanket to craft new meanings and memorials. I hope to investigate further exactly what it is that this state of forlorn-ness-- this isolation and desolation--mean in an interconnected world, disconnected by lands and structures.”