Barren Ground Caribou, ArtworxTO, TTC Subway-Spadina to Runnymede Stations, Spadina Station, Toronto, ON
Excerpt from webapp.driftscape.com/map/62fd1ffe-db0e-11eb-8000-bc1c5a8...:
Barren Ground Caribou
Spadina Station
In 1977 artist Joyce Wieland travelled to Kinngait (Cape Dorset) for the first time, to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op, by then a well-known print-making studio. She had already, in 1971, established a firm reputation as an artist, being the first living woman to have a solo exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. So when she was invited to create a piece for the new Spadina subway line, she declared that she wanted to bring the Arctic tundra to the city, but in a surprising and feminine way. She says, “I think of Canada as female.”
This large 8' by 30' quilt features a herd of seventeen barren ground caribou on a low rise. Barren-ground caribou are a species of reindeer that comprise about half the caribou in Canada and since 1937 have appeared on Canadian quarters. Both males and females have antlers. The colours and textures of the Arctic tundra are reproduced in swaths of bright fabric which complement the pale blue Arctic sky above and the muted tones of the caribou which, coincidentally, mirror the brown tiles of the station floor. Perspective is created through horizontal bands in the blue quilted sky which become progressively narrower as the sky approaches the horizon. The animals face us, observing us, as if we are interlopers in their land, not the other way around.
This quilt was sewn over a period of eight months by Joyce and a team of six quilters. It was created ten years after Joyce Weiland's famous 1968 quilt “Reason over Passion” where she subverted a statement by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau by passionately illustrating his quote with quilted hearts.
Barren Ground Caribou, ArtworxTO, TTC Subway-Spadina to Runnymede Stations, Spadina Station, Toronto, ON
Excerpt from webapp.driftscape.com/map/62fd1ffe-db0e-11eb-8000-bc1c5a8...:
Barren Ground Caribou
Spadina Station
In 1977 artist Joyce Wieland travelled to Kinngait (Cape Dorset) for the first time, to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op, by then a well-known print-making studio. She had already, in 1971, established a firm reputation as an artist, being the first living woman to have a solo exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. So when she was invited to create a piece for the new Spadina subway line, she declared that she wanted to bring the Arctic tundra to the city, but in a surprising and feminine way. She says, “I think of Canada as female.”
This large 8' by 30' quilt features a herd of seventeen barren ground caribou on a low rise. Barren-ground caribou are a species of reindeer that comprise about half the caribou in Canada and since 1937 have appeared on Canadian quarters. Both males and females have antlers. The colours and textures of the Arctic tundra are reproduced in swaths of bright fabric which complement the pale blue Arctic sky above and the muted tones of the caribou which, coincidentally, mirror the brown tiles of the station floor. Perspective is created through horizontal bands in the blue quilted sky which become progressively narrower as the sky approaches the horizon. The animals face us, observing us, as if we are interlopers in their land, not the other way around.
This quilt was sewn over a period of eight months by Joyce and a team of six quilters. It was created ten years after Joyce Weiland's famous 1968 quilt “Reason over Passion” where she subverted a statement by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau by passionately illustrating his quote with quilted hearts.