Erin Suliak is a Yellowknife-based fibre artist who often quilts with found, vintage, or thrifted fabrics. Her modern quilts have shown internationally - most recently at QuiltCon in Nashville, USA. Marcus Jackson is also based in Yellowknife, and he often makes collages and assemblages with bone, fur, and other found fibres that explore themes of wildness and mortality.

 

Collage work has much in common with quilting. Both art forms piece together fragments and parts to form a whole. Jackson and Suliak both approach their art forms instinctually and experimentally, arranging and rearranging until a satisfying composition is found. Marcus’ collage display becomes a paper quilt - loose and de-centred – made with memories, saved scraps from other projects, ephemera. Suliak pieces together vintage fabrics, with long histories of their own, and incorporates them into her own personal story. In this show, for example, Shattered (below) describes the physical pain of a long illness, whereas Matin is about hope.

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This SOCIAL FABRIC exhibition was a satellite of the larger group show in Yellowknife, September 2019. It traveled to the YK farmer's market, and to NJ Macpherson school.

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-Sarah Swan