Hearts of Palm is an interactive textile installation using recycled jeans as the primary material. The jeans are a colour palette devoted to the waters of Lake Nipissing says a news release.
"Each little piece of denim symbolizes every possible human being around us in our lives and our surrounding communities. The jeans come from B.C. across Canada to the North Bay region and represent thousands of deeply loved people that exist with or without our knowledge, yet they have probably supported us in some way."
This art project aims to create something inviting, playful, raw, and cathartic, in a calming and restorative environment.
"On a personal level, the artist’s work explores the sensations of the human body and mind protecting themselves, and sometimes each other, by separating, shutting down and finding clarity in a new place. It symbolizes a re-working of connection, a new time, a new identity, by taking everything apart first into its singular roles, like learning to read and write again, or allowing our vision to blur and drift into playful abstraction, as an avenue to joy and hope once again."
The installation is entirely on the floor allowing viewers to take off their shoes, sit down, pull some threads, and move things around in a gallery with bare walls. This work is tough, foldable and durable, and each weekly trip to the cleaners during this residency will add to the physical completion of each piece.
the interactive textile installation will run at the gallery from August 10 to September 21, and there will be an opening reception in the form of an “Extreme Denim Party” to honour the exhibition on Saturday, August 17 from 7 pm on at the gallery, located at 159 Main Street East.
Party-goers are encouraged to wear their denim and interact with the artwork and each other. Throughout the run of the exhibition, artist Melanie Cookson will be working at the gallery as artist-inresidence, where visitors can experience the artwork, dialogue with the artist, and see the artist’s practice first-hand as she creates her textile works using recycled jeans as the primary material, which are a colour palette devoted to the waters of Lake Nipissing.
