Exhibition: Truck Gallery, Calgary, AB
Medium: Rubber bugs, wood, metal hooks, filament Dimensions: 120″ x 96″ x 60″ | 305 x 244 x 152 cm
Photography: Trevor Mahovsky
Note: Built on-site in 4 days with a crew of friends and family, the work was cut apart and materials reused for Entomology (V2) in 1995 at the Edmonton Art Gallery (now the Art Gallery of Alberta)
Exhibition: Copy, curated by Katerine Ylitalo, Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, AB
Medium: topographical map of Mt. Rundle, 7000+ empty toilet rolls, fishing line, suspended steel frame
Dimensions: 96″ x 96″ x 288″ (244 x 244 x 732 cm)
Text: Ylitalo, Katherine, Copy, Published by the Nickle Arts Museum and the Calgary Herald, Feb, 1995
Bug Bathing Suit & Cap
Collaboration with Leah VanLoon
Exhibition: Mysteries of the Flesh, curated by Jeff Spalding for University of Lethbridge Art Week Exhibition, Calgary, AB
Medium: Rubber bugs, vintage bathing suit and cap
Dimensions: size 8
Collection: The Walter Phillips Gallery
Bunny Bra & Skirt
Exhibition: Fashion Show, Calgary, AB
Medium: Toy rabbits
Dimensions: size 8
Collection: Private
Inspiration: Ouellet and VanLoon’s shared experience with Home Economics teacher, Mrs. Yamaguishi, at West Park Junior High, Red Deer, AB
Exhibition: +15 Window at the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts (now Arts Commons).
Medium: 300+ pink, yellow, orange and blue toy bunnies suspended by filament.
Dimensions: Variable.
Photography: MN Hutchinson
Note: The work was dismantled to build Bunny Bra and Skirt, 1995, private collection.
Installation view, Temporary graffiti
Borderlands, organized by artists, Janet Hardy & Katie McKelvey
In an empty office tower floor, Calgary, AB
Description: Exhibiting artists draw allotments of space in the empty office tower floor. Unsuccessful artists are encouraged to participate in other ways, passively or aggressively. Squatting in the ladies room, allowed a temporary intervention in the public/private space.
Medium: Bathroom graffiti, in washable ink, covers the interior of each cubicle for the duration of the exhibition. Text based on observation and anecdotal research in downtown Calgary nightspots, public washrooms and spaces.
Dimensions: variable, 4 large & 4 small sized aprons, oven mitts
Medium: Aprons made from altered, open-source pattern on a clothesline
Introduced by the government in 1998, Canadian Disruptive Pattern (CADPAT) camouflage was the first of its kind designed post-Gulf War. Adopted internationally, the pixelated camouflage pattern was an attempt to address new technologies in warfare by imitating the snow on a television screen receiving no signal. For twenty years, the sharp-edged, square pixels differentiated official military camouflage from patterns first appropriated ironically by anti-war and counter-culture revolutionaries in the 1970s and 80s, and then embraced by artists, designers and fashionistas in the decades to follow. Camouflage, now in a rainbow of colour palettes, is seen everywhere from yoga pants to home décor to protesting police officers. In 2018, the CADPAT patent expired and restrictions on non-military use of this camouflage pattern were lifted. Instantly and without irony, this pattern is becoming normalized.
Photography: Elana Excoffler
In 2018, I moved to Montréal and began again. Three garage sales, gifts to the willing (and unwilling), and the occupation a hidden corner of my parents’ basement and a lifetime of household and studio items were gone.
What came with me was pared down to a partial truck of books and sequins. I arrived at my furnished 3 1/2 with three suitcases and two cats.
When the truck arrived, I had a month in the city and at school under my belt. I began working with curious choices that had survived the purge and were put in a box during my blurry panic. Golden stilettos were laughable, as was the collection of used dryer sheets. The sequinned fabric was bought at a Turkish market in Berlin, the snakeskin shoes came from London. The Hunters, a gift from a friend, were too small and the vintage feathers came from a great-aunt who made hats. And so I flipped from teacher to student and tried to figure out what I had done.
Photography: Eleana Excoffler
2012 Exhibition: Faculty Exhibition, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary, AB.
Medium: One month of the artist’s swearing collected with the assistance of students, colleagues, friends and family documented in plastic craft beads and glass jar.
Dimensions: 5″x4″x4″ | 12.7x10x10 cm
Photography: Joe Kelly
Introduced by the government in 1998, Canadian Disruptive Pattern (CADPAT) camouflage was the first of its kind designed post-Gulf War. Adopted internationally, the pixelated camouflage pattern was an attempt to address new technologies in warfare by imitating the snow on a television screen receiving no signal. For twenty years, the sharp-edged, square pixels differentiated official military camouflage from patterns first appropriated ironically by anti-war and counter-culture revolutionaries in the 1970s and 80s, and then embraced by artists, designers and fashionistas in the decades to follow. Old camouflage, now in a rainbow of colour palettes, is seen everywhere from yoga pants to home décor to protesting police officers. In 2018, the CADPAT patent expired and restrictions on non-military use of the pixelated pattern were lifted. Instantly and without irony, this pattern is becoming normalized.
In an era of aerial and digital warfare, multinational military forces, home-grown terrorism and unprecedented domestic surveillance, contemporary camouflage references complex notions of power and authority, visibility and invisibility for military personnel and civilians alike. Does the swift commercial integration of CADPAT is simply tame camouflage’s fraught meanings through fashion, art and everyday use or does this integration instead reflect domestic battle grounds, glorification of war and an acceptance of an increasing presence of militarization in daily life.
Pledge is an attempt to (re)claim the meaning of this pixelated camouflage pattern. In a site often used for advertising, the window vitrine is a platform for the passer-by. Incorporating the language of nationalism through a pledge of allegiance, viewers are invited to join in the process of reclamation or to at least think about what the civilian integration of CADPAT might mean.
Twenty-one pup tents in diminishing sizes that occupy floor space. Too small to provide human shelter, the tents become decoration or toys. The troop of pup tents are made with contemporary, digital-patterned camouflage and create two vistas.
From one side of the installation, a field of green rectangles is cut through by a path of beige that mimics compositions of illusory depth common in landscape painting. The digital camouflage also imitates frontal and aerial perspectives of the landscape while referencing political, economic, and environmental shifts resulting from warfare.
Repeated images, based on Canadian landscape painter Lawren Harris’ iconic 1924 work, Maligne Lake, adorn the other side of the tent flaps. This image and several others painted by members of the Group of Seven gained emblematic status due in part to a propaganda campaign launched in WWII. In collaboration, the Toronto-based Sampson Matthews Print Company and the budding National Gallery of Canada distributed prints of landscape paintings to military bases, field hospitals, and diplomatic offices across Europe and Asia. These images of vast, uninhabited wilderness served to remind soldiers of what they were fighting for and signified home with endless potential. The images were so popular that after the war, prints were sold domestically to decorate schools, hospitals, libraries, firehalls and other public buildings until the late 1960s. This dissemination, the most successful Canadian public art program to date, established a visual brand for a young nation newly inaugurated on the world stage and eager to embark on a program of post-war industrialization.
Commercially available camouflage fabric in forest green & arid beige, hand-dyed camouflage in red, blue, orange, & yellow, wood tent frames and dowels
Flat-pack pup tents with appliquéd image based on Harris’ Maligne Lake
Photography: Eric Tschaeppeler
Puptent dimensions
3 – 29x39x29”
3 – 24x36x25”
1 – 22x32x23”
3 – 20x30x21”
1 – 28x18x20”
1 – 26x17x18”
3 – 24x15x17”
1 – 22x13x15”
1 – 20x13x14”
3 – 18x12x13”
Using images gleaned from art historical archives, as well as contemporary stock photography, corporate promotional material, and government trade and tourism documents, I collage composite landscapes to be replicated with digital embroidery.
In my most recent body of work, vistas of industrial or extraction sites such as Ekshaw, Hibernia, Sarnia and Fort McMurray are embroidered on black velvet. Based on existing images, these vistas emulate classic Canadian landscapes famously produced by the Group of Seven (and subsequent artists), only with a cement plant or oil refinery nestled into the pristine environment and reflected in still waters. The digital embroideries are designed to imitate delicate hand-stitching, but the process has the capacity for mass reproduction and dissemination much like the source images that are referenced.
The embroidery process is achieved on a Tajima (a large-scale, industrial embroidery machine) and by forcing the multi-needled giant to reckon with complex, blown-up stitch patterns to produce a single image at a time. The resulting embroideries approximate the meandering brushstrokes and textures of painting, nodding back to historical artworks paradoxically used to portray a young, industrializing nation at home and abroad. The images are embroidered with colour palette of a bruise or oil spill that is simultaneously attractive and repellent. This palette can be difficult to see on black velvet and shine of the threads and multi-directional stitches require an attentive eye for viewing. Leaning into the dichotomy of luxury and kitsch associated with black velvet, I also use the light reflecting and absorbing properties of the velvet’s nap to obscure the image. Each embroidery is finished with a black satin “frame” and is slightly upholstered.
Under the guise of decorative arts, I use digital technology, appropriated images, textiles, and embellishment to critique a problematic national identity and challenge inequitable and destructive visions of progress.
Photography: Paul Litherland