DIANA SANDERSON
"Fragile Reflections" Parallel Art Show , Salt Spring Island Sept 23- Oct 22, 2023
Photos: Janet Dwyer
"Fragile Reflections" employs unconventional uses of materials and processes to recreate the beauty of the underwater environment in the air. Diana used gut, iron, silk and twigs and exposed them to indigo ( a living natural dye and air to get rust) to capture the translucence of seaweed beneath the surface.
The Parallel Art Show (PAS) is a juried competition of Southern Gulf Islands artists that ran concurrently with the Salt Spring National Art Prize (SSNAP). Sept 23-Oct 23, 2023.
This piece won the Matt Steffich Juror's Choice Award
The Parallel Art Show (PAS) is a juried competition of Southern Gulf Islands artists that ran concurrently with the Salt Spring National Art Prize (SSNAP). Sept 23-Oct 23, 2023.
This piece won the Matt Steffich Juror's Choice Award
Photos: Janet Dwyer
Material Considerations- Diana Sanderson and Melanie Thompson
Initial Exhibit held at the Showcase Gallery, Mahon Hall
Salt Spring Island, BC
Sept 2-19, 2021
then:
Smithers Art Gallery
Smithers BC
March 1-April 4, 2022
Video and interview for the Smithers Art Gallery Exhibit by Elijah Quinn of Soniquinn Studios
Initial Exhibit held at the Showcase Gallery, Mahon Hall
Salt Spring Island, BC
Sept 2-19, 2021
then:
Smithers Art Gallery
Smithers BC
March 1-April 4, 2022
Video and interview for the Smithers Art Gallery Exhibit by Elijah Quinn of Soniquinn Studios
Diana Sanderson has spent the last 40 years indulging her fascination with the inherent qualities of silk by dyeing and weaving it to create distinctive garments and accessories. The Silk Weaving Studio on Granville Island, Vancouver has been the centre of her exploration, providing a space that inspires her and creates an environment for exploration of the natural characteristics of the fibre for her fellow weavers and public alike.
Salt Spring Island is now Diana's home and it is here that she has continued her exploration of natural materials but now branching out into naturally dyed three dimensional work, still using silk but adding gut, wire and other structural materials like branches, twigs and vines. These new materials and forms are offering her endless fascination and challenges as she endeavours to combine them in ways that highlight their inherent characteristics.
She is delighted to be showing her work with Melanie Thompson who has been a source of inspiration and support for developing this new area of artistic expression.
Salt Spring Island is now Diana's home and it is here that she has continued her exploration of natural materials but now branching out into naturally dyed three dimensional work, still using silk but adding gut, wire and other structural materials like branches, twigs and vines. These new materials and forms are offering her endless fascination and challenges as she endeavours to combine them in ways that highlight their inherent characteristics.
She is delighted to be showing her work with Melanie Thompson who has been a source of inspiration and support for developing this new area of artistic expression.
Solo Show in Kyoto November 2019
Diana has branched out – both geographically and artistically. She is pleased to share her experience exhibiting new work in a solo show at the Konishi Gallery, Kyoto Japan November 2019.
Diana departed from her previous work by combining new materials and new forms with the continuing evolution of her exploration of silk and colour. While ondule weavings that exhibit her trademark mastery of the use of hand dyed silk yarns comprised part of the show, they were complemented by her new passion – three dimensional sculptures using gut spread over wire forms. To create these sculptures Diana called upon decades of learning how dyes, and in recent years, natural dyes in particular have been absorbed by silk yarns to create the luminous beauty so distinctive in silk textiles. She has discovered that gut similarly accepts natural dyes and the three dimensional forms she developed allowed her to fully show off its remarkable qualities in that regard.
The show was called from Form to Function and explored how the characteristics of the material dictate the shape of the functional objects created from them. The elasticity of the gut and the flexibility but strength of the wire forms allowed the creation of pods that capture and transform space into coloured, luminous forms that were themselves contained in enclosures from conventional basketry in unusual shapes to delicate wrappings using the finest of wild silk fibre from Madagascar. These three dimensional forms were contrasted with more traditional two dimensional woven cloth where the experimental is expressed by the curved lines introduced through the Ondule weaving technique that Diana has recently employed. The result was a body of work that celebrates the objects themselves, the materials from which they are made and the function they perform.
Holding this first major show of her new work in Japan reflects the strong influence her dozen trips there have had on her artistic sensibilities. The reverence for materials, the importance of form and the use of colour and shadow in Japanese art have all been formative forces. That said, she will be showing the result of her new found interest closer to home, at the Showcase Gallery on Salt Spring Island in August 2021 and is looking for other opportunities to display her new work to domestic audiences in the future.
Diana departed from her previous work by combining new materials and new forms with the continuing evolution of her exploration of silk and colour. While ondule weavings that exhibit her trademark mastery of the use of hand dyed silk yarns comprised part of the show, they were complemented by her new passion – three dimensional sculptures using gut spread over wire forms. To create these sculptures Diana called upon decades of learning how dyes, and in recent years, natural dyes in particular have been absorbed by silk yarns to create the luminous beauty so distinctive in silk textiles. She has discovered that gut similarly accepts natural dyes and the three dimensional forms she developed allowed her to fully show off its remarkable qualities in that regard.
The show was called from Form to Function and explored how the characteristics of the material dictate the shape of the functional objects created from them. The elasticity of the gut and the flexibility but strength of the wire forms allowed the creation of pods that capture and transform space into coloured, luminous forms that were themselves contained in enclosures from conventional basketry in unusual shapes to delicate wrappings using the finest of wild silk fibre from Madagascar. These three dimensional forms were contrasted with more traditional two dimensional woven cloth where the experimental is expressed by the curved lines introduced through the Ondule weaving technique that Diana has recently employed. The result was a body of work that celebrates the objects themselves, the materials from which they are made and the function they perform.
Holding this first major show of her new work in Japan reflects the strong influence her dozen trips there have had on her artistic sensibilities. The reverence for materials, the importance of form and the use of colour and shadow in Japanese art have all been formative forces. That said, she will be showing the result of her new found interest closer to home, at the Showcase Gallery on Salt Spring Island in August 2021 and is looking for other opportunities to display her new work to domestic audiences in the future.
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photos Janet Dwyer
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Developing the Silk Weaving Studio has been my professional focus for 37 years. For me the space is the outward manifestation of my own journey. That journey has seen a personal passion transform into a collective enterprise that reaches out to an ever broadening community.
At first, the studio sold only my work. Over time I watched my work evolve, in part due to the input of my assistants each of whom added their own distinct creative spark. As the value of diverse input became apparent to me, I became confident enough to invite colleagues to join me as creative equals, thus allowing the studio to become a fully collaborative environment in which all of us benefit from the artistic energy of each other. Now, we are embarking on a new stage as our collective confidence is allowing us to reach out to like minded local and international artists in an effort to make the studio a significant contributor to the textile scene.
Meanwhile, my own journey has seen a fascination with the two dimensional marriage between colour and silk progress into what is now a four dimensional exploration of how silk can display colour, structure and texture. I continue to indulge and develop my love of colour through the complex multiple dye processes I have developed over the years but increasingly supplement the effect through the use of more complex weave structures made possible by my 16 and 32 shaft looms, and texture through incorporating exciting novelty yarns.
The evolution of my work and the studio has been a source of deep satisfaction to me. I take pleasure in seeing my colleagues develop and succeed and I am thrilled with the positive energy that the Studio seems to impart to so many that visit it. I hope that you are able to experience some of that energy by visiting us at our unique Granville Island location.
visit http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/podcast/ May 1, 2016 for an interview with Sheryl McKay
