Update From The Home Front

This is me putting up my exhibition in the Station Coffee house and Gallery at the Via Train Station in Brantford Ontario. Nov 1-30 2012. The show got good coverage in the local community newspapers and a nice write up in the Brantford Expositor by Arlene Laskey

November offers feast for eyes - Brantford Expositor

7 Nov 2012 – The opening of “White Works,” Paris-born fibre-artist Joe Lewis's solo ... with the City of Brantford's arts and culture co-ordinator, Nicole Drake.

photo taken my Mike Tutt owner of the Station Coffee House and Gallery

My opening happened on November 10th and was more family reunion then opening with 4 generations in the room. There is a creative strange running through it which includes an interest in textiles. in between hanging the show and having the opening the World of Threads Festival started in Oakvill and Toronto. I was in the The Variegated Threads exhibition at Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre 

This is posing with my work in Variegate Threads. This pose i am striking is the standard competitive muscle man “front double biceps” pose and the reason I am striking is because in this piece entitled "Reflections on the Man in the Moon" there is a silhouette of a male figure striking the same pose. This silhouette is central to most of the pieces I have in my solo show  I have given the name “Mud Flap Boy”  and in a soon to be published catalogue cultural theorist and critic David Bateman says 

" All of the gaps and differences between his own queer white past, and the coming together of aboriginal and contemporary iconographies (i.e. - the button blanket) give his work the raw, textured, subtly nuanced colours and narratives that render his ‘tapestries’ both queer and gorgeous."

MUD FLAP BOY (Caution), 20 X 19, 2000, Blue felt, Red Velvet. And embroidery floss

Beetle #1, 14.5 X 20, 2002, felt appliqué and embroidery floss.

These two appliqué pieces from an earlier body of work "Yukon Stories" should clear up his reference to "aboriginal ... iconographies"  and " button blanket"

 Detail

Reflections on The Man in the Moon, © Joe Lewis 2010, Jacquard Woven Textile
Dimensions (cm.) 142. cm High x 48.26 cm wide,
Materials & technique: six colour repeated cotton, woven with a two colour weft; black and white, jacquard woven textile, Year completed: 2010

 

While I have had a solo show and have been apart of a group show this month I have also been to the 3O exhibitions in the last two months. Hear I am at the opening of Hard Twist at the Gladstone hotel posing behind one of  Keilley Stewart"s three versions of facial hair.. If you want to see other things I have seen you can check out these three facebook albums.

November 2012 Textile Sightings

November 2012 Textile Sightings part two
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