Articles

SHIFT

Contemporary Hand-Hooked Rugs an exhibition by Michelle Sirois-Silver

July 20 -September1, 2011

Crafts Council of BC Gallery, 1386 Cartwright St, Vancouver

If a rug is not on the floor is it still a rug? If it has been altered materially, so it will not stand up to wear, what shall we call it? If a perfectly serviceable hooked rug is framed behind glass, how does it function? Michelle Sirois-Silver has used her skill in the traditional folk art practice of rug hooking to make these handsome works; she has used strategies from contemporary art theory to force these questions.

The rugs on the wall might still be rugs, they have simply been presented differently for us to admire their textured and graphic power. Historically,they haven’t always settled on the floor. Rugs –layered and stitched woolen fabrics– were first used as bedcovers (hence the expression “snug as a bug in a rug”). In the early 1800s textiles in North America were still woven by hand or imported at considerable expense and were therefore too expensive to cut up and tread upon.1 Only later, once domestic textiles were more affordable, were yardages and clothes cut up. The variety of imagery is very broad –ranging from rugs imitating quilts and “home-sweet-home” embroideries to obsessively detailed scenes. A rug from 1910 shows hyperactive children on Christmas morning and another has lascivious firemen snatching women from a burning building.2 Sirois-Silver enters this broad history with her own strong drawing style and designs. For this exhibit she reuses old patterns: “Hit and Miss” is a stream-of-consciousness way to use up short bits of fabric. Bright and subtle line up in short clips, like words in text, to create run-on sentences. The viewer is aware that the rug on the wall may well migrate back to the floor – beside a bed, say, or a favorite chair.

Sirois-Silver still uses the basic technique of pushing loops of cut woolen fabric through a coarsely woven linen backing. For some pieces, she has engaged in genetic engineering, inserting other elements between the hooked sections: needle felting, embroidery, and metal grommets. We intuitively know these rugs standing up will no longer have the option of lying down. The DNA has been changed. She offers us a new creature.

As Sirois-Silver presents us with various ways to approach her work, she continues to explore the formal patterning and textures that the medium offers. Some pieces feature a grid theme that evokes floors regardless of where they are eventually installed. Marble, marquetry, or tile lie in predictable checkers, but here squares feature a wide range of colours. The strips of wool are cut from pure, bright colours or ones that Sirois-Silver has over-dyed to give depth and variation in shading. Self-described as “not a precision dyer”3, her process is one ofadventure and surprise. She also incorporates strips of patterned cloth such as tweed, herringbone and twill. The results give a texture that is both tactile and visual.

She keeps bulging sketchbooks filled with drawings, cut out photos, inkjet prints, and samples part of her process. Altering images in Photoshop turns up colour combinations or moods she might not otherwise discover. The outline is printed full-size on paper, auditioned on the wall for scale, and then hand-drawn on the linen backing. She begins hooking from the centre out with a palette of fabric strips she has cut –generally about one centimetre wide but sometimes narrower to get details. Often she rips out sections, the self-critical editor overriding all the preliminary work. Sirois-Silver describes the same conundrum faced by many textile workers: the process itself is labour intensive, so one necessarily needs to plan while still leaving room for intuition and spontaneity.

Finally, she has mounted a large, vibrant ‘hit and miss’ rug on a white card backing, and framed it in a shallow shadowbox behind glass. One might argue that its colourful phrases become more precious, the stuff of reverent museums –visible, but safe from grubby hands. Perhaps it loses its identity: an object built for touch (with hands or feet) is suddenly separate, like a baby in an incubator. Since it will never grow or change (show signs of wear or mending) it becomes an artifact, fossilized. It is taken out of the general haptic context of textiles. The rug’s DNA has not been altered, yet it has become something else.

The work we look at rather than use is at the hub of the art/craft conversation. Sirois-Silver illustrates Howard Risatti’s position that craft is the “confluence” of both physical and metaphoric use.4 In Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use, the university educated Wangero wants to hang her grandmother’s old quilts on her wall. In her mind, she is rescuing them from her sister: "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" she said. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use."5 Walker’s sympathies lie with Maggie who will use them, the central point being that she has the know-how to repair them and even make her own, in the ancient continuity of craft. Sirois-Silver has her own prodgious know-how, and part of that includes challenging our perceptions around how these rugs might be used and presented.

Bettina Matzkuhn, Curator

Endnotes:

1. p8 Kopp, Joel and Kate American Hooked and Sewn Rugs: Folk Art Underfoot 1991 Dutton Studio Bks.

2. Ibid pp 91 and 112-113

3. Interview with the artist, June 6, 2011

4. Risatti, Howard Anthony A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression 2007 University of North Carolina Press.

5. Walker, Alice Everyday Use http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/quilt/ walker.html

ROOM MAGAZINE, Volume 33.3, Past and Present, Editor Janet Nicol