First/50

I'm thrilled to be part of the exhibition First/50, showing three embroidered works from an ongoing series, in which I embroider and appliqué photographs. I was also invited to select three other textile artists from a long list of outstanding graduates of the Textile Studio. This alumni show is a 50th anniversary celebration of the Sheridan Craft and Design program.  If you're in the Oakville area, not far west of Toronto, be sure to check it out! 

Embedded

Embedded #1. Valerie Knapp© Vintage cotton trim, encaustic, oil pastel, on panel.

Embedded #2. Vintage mother of pearl, encaustic, panel

Pressing Matters

While in the process of handling and pressing dozens of exquisite freesia blooms, I began planning post card size vignettes invoking ideas of memory, loss, wit, and nostalgia.

Steel Heart

Miss Conception

I combined the pressed flowers with embroidery, relief printed images, stitch, ephemera, drawing, and language.

Red Shoes

How To

Headspace

Pressing flowers, petals or leaves, has persisted for hundreds of years as a memory keeping method of preserving plant material, perhaps a blossom from a loved one, received in response to heartfelt love, or a tragic loss or simply picked up in a meadow on a special day; a fragment of an intimacy shared. 

The End

And Then It Poured

Don't Hold Your Breath

Heart Throb

Please Write

Post

Pressing was also useful as a record keeping of a more pragmatic sort, a way to preserve plants specimens for identification and cataloguing by plant explorers and botanists. The process is sometimes used for art-making.

Plant Life

One and Only

Happy New Year

Peace T. Valerie Knapp© 2015.  Embroidery, hanky and lace fragments, Japanese and water colour papers, DMC.

Memory Dress with Fancy Ticking. Valerie Knapp© 2015. Embroidery, vintage floral ticking, hanky, lace, and embroidery fragments, water colour paper, antique button, postage stamp, silk, DMC.

Tomorrow!

Come… one day only flash Pop-Up sale with special guest Vivienne Jones. We're happy to share a drink and show off our wares.

There is new fresh inventory, including the 'Honey Bee' print and I'm introducing a linen, cross-back apron, a take on the traditional Japanese design. 

Also new mixed-media such as Goddess in Green, pictured below and some new encaustic panels.

Sale! We're both offering markdowns on some of our favourite things.… LOTS of great stuff, in time for holiday gifting.

Also, you can visit shops stocking my recent product collections: The Craft Ontario Shop at 119 Cumberland St, in Yorkville, or the Craft Ontario Gallery, 990 Queen St. West near Ossington, where you'll see my work alongside numerous other wonderful things.

Faces to Vancouver

I'm exhibiting two new embroidered works in an invitational show titled Let's Face It, curated by Barbara Cohen, opening Aug 27th in Vancouver at the Circle Craft Gallery on Granville Island.

Goddess of Green, Valerie Knapp© 2015 Hand embroidery, vintage magazine photo,
DMC thread, vintage lace flower, mounted and stitched on paper.

Goddess of Green, (detail) Valerie Knapp© 2015. Hand embroidery, vintage magazine photo, DMC thread, vintage lace flower, mounted and stitched on paper. 

I liked the theme of the face and the opportunity to show in Vancouver. My work often investigates parts of the body, such as the eye, heart, and lungs so to explore the whole face was enticing. Goddess of Green grew out of this image that I had stowed away for many years. I worked directly into the image from start to finish.  Inflated started with the magnificent lips and then the right face was found; the lips were intricately stitched, then applied to this face scavenged from a 1950's magazine. These paper pieces are delicately hand-stitched with a beading needle with DMC cotton.

Inflated, Valerie Knapp© 2015 Hand embroidery, vintage magazine photo,
DMC thread, pencil, beads, antique lace, mounted on foam core. 

Also included in the show are two of my Boxed Embroideries, in particular embroidered sleeping child pieces, Dream #3 and Dream #4,  which are part of a series of tiny stitched faces, tucked under blankets and shown inside small boxes.  In this case, in a sterling silver vintage tooth box and an antique ring box.

Dream #4, Valerie Knapp© 2011 Hand embroidery, cotton sheeting,
DMC thread,  cotton padding, mounted in antique Ryrie-Birks ring box 

Dream #3, Valerie Knapp© 2009 Hand embroidery, cotton sheeting,  DMC thread,  cotton
padding, mounted in sterling silver vintage Lunt tooth box.

Invitation

Lace and Sea

Exploring a new medium! I recently spent some awesome time in a series of classes — an introduction to encaustic.

Vivian East and Julia Ramdeholl operate Freehand School of Art in Toronto, offering classes in a variety of media for adults and children. Encaustic is taught by Andrea Nesbitt and the next 5 class session starts in April.

I made a few pieces including this series of three panels …

Lace and Sea #3. (detail) Valerie Knapp© 2015.  Seaweed, scan, antique lace, paper, wax, on panel.

Lace and Sea #3 2015 Valerie Knapp© Seaweed, seaweed scan, antique lace, paper, wax, on panel.

I'm intrigued by the interaction of organic and manmade structures, so I like how fusing them together, this juxtapositioning, creates a conversation between these opposite forms of networking. 

Lace and Sea #2. Valerie Knapp© 2015.   Sea fan, antique lace, wax, on panel.

Lace and Sea #1. Valerie Knapp© 2015.   Seaweed scan, antique lace, wax, on panel.

I love how my work and materials takes me in diverse directions researching. I was reading about seaweed, searching the web for images to identify what I have collected, scavenged. I found this beautiful picture of ocean fields of seaweed cultivation off the tiny Balinese island of Nusa Lembongan, looking like a patchwork quilt! The picture took me to the Botany Photo of the Day page … to see more — UBC Botanical Garden site for the article about this cultivation. Life is full of riches.

Farming two species of seaweed, Eucheuma spinosum and more commonly Eucheuma cottonii, in the sea off a small island off the eastern coast of Bali. Photo: Ingrid Hoff