Each Piece, Each Bead, Each Story
by Elise Campbell
Nocturne
6pm to Mindnight
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Mary E. Black Gallery
1061 Marginal Rd. Suite 140
Free | All Welcome
Experience the microcosm of Craft Nova Scotia’s Centre for Craft by contributing to the creation of a collaborative artwork with local fibre artist Elise Campbell. Then visit our current exhibitions by Maria-Margaretta and Kae Sasaki, two powerful bodies of work that speak to themes of community, culture, and connection.
Visit Centre for Craft to help us build our own felted microcosm with local fibre artist Elise Campbell. Then stay and enjoy the current exhibitions at the Mary E. Black Gallery which will be open all evening with side-by-side beadwork shows by Maria-Margaretta and Kae Sasaki. Celebrating the microcosm of our local craft community, we are inviting the public to contribute to the creation of a collaborative artwork. Participants will be guided through the steps of creating their own micro-scale wet felted artwork, learning how the individual fibres come together to create an object. These individual components will then be combined into a collective community artwork that will adorn the entryway at the Centre for Craft. The Mary E. Black Gallery will be open for visitors to enjoy a memory of you, of holding, of carrying, together by Maria-Margaretta, and Gathering by Kae Sasaki. Both artists use beadwork in their practice, with Maria coming from a Red River Michif beading tradition, and Kae from a Japanese beading tradition. In the hands of these two artists, our gallery itself becomes a microcosm, with thousands of individual seed beads creating two powerful bodies of work that speak to themes of community, culture, and connection.
“Gathering repurposes beads from handmade vintage Japanese bags to create expressive modern beadwork pieces. The collected beads and their stories coalesce, creating a space where past and present, tradition and innovation, individual and collective, converge. This exhibition invites viewers to immerse themselves in a world of layered meanings, where each bead, each piece, and each story contribute to a larger, ever-evolving tapestry.”
“Utilizing my personal stories, family anecdotes, and Métis histories, a memory of you, of holding, of carrying, together serves as a transformative archive of Métis identity. Through the meticulous adornment of beadwork, I instill these objects with agency and claim them as objects of Indigenous resistance and resilience. This exhibition eases community access to objects of cultural importance while challenging the colonial systems that house cultural objects through quiet humour.”