Artist Interview 16: Joanne Young
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
After retiring from teaching high school mathematics Joanne Young immersed herself in fabric, threads and stitching. In 2004, through distance education, she received a Certificate in Patchwork and Quilting from the Opus School of Textile Arts in the UK and participated in an assessment exhibition at the Museum of London. She went on to achieve a City & Guilds Diploma, London, UK.
Tell us about your work?
I like to create textiles with body and texture. I construct multiple layers and then stitch them together by hand. Currently, I am working on weavings which combine strips of vintage Japanese cloth with strips of old clothes and a disintegrating Waterloo County quilt. I also like to make dolls. Each of my most recent dolls was constructed with a wire armature, wrapping, and paper pulp heads.
Previous World of Threads Exhibitions
Joanne Young exhibited in the 2009 Common Thread International Part 1. For Festival 2012 she was in the major exhibition De rerum nature (On The Nature of Things).
Where do you get your inspiration?
I live in a working class neighbourhood in Kitchener, close to a train station, old factories, and a metal recycling yard. I have done photographic studies of selected sites in this neighbourhood. The sites include this recycling yard, factory windows, and the exterior of an old deserted building.
Why did you choose to go into fibre art?
My mother was a fine seamstress. When I was a teenager, she taught me how to sew. My favourite part was basting; even then I liked to stitch by hand. I dropped this interest until a few years before my retirement, when I spent an off year making cloth dolls, and then took up quilting, only to move eventually into the more liberating world of fibre art.
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I am constantly choosing bits of fabric, putting them together, seeing if the combination works, adding and subtracting if it doesn't.
What other mediums do you work in, and how does this inform your fibre work?
Collage is an essential part of my work. I am constantly choosing bits of fabric, putting them together, seeing if the combination works, adding and subtracting if it doesn't.
Robert Rauschenbergoften dares the viewer to say, "This isn't art". I like his rebellious spirit.
What specific historic artists have influenced your work?
Robert Rauschenberg: He is a master collagist; he puts together disparate images and the viewer has to provide the spark that makes sense of the combination. He also likes to work with everyday materials; in the Seventies he did a series with cardboard which I particularly like. He often dares the viewer to say, "This isn't art". I like his rebellious spirit.
Paul Klee: I like his use of colour and the playful way he structures a painting.
Jean Dubuffet: I am attracted by his childlike figures and the rich, textured surfaces of his canvases. His treasures troves were the garbage can and the scrapyard.
What specific contemporary artists have influenced your work?
Ed Rossbach: He is one of the most influential figures in the history of contemporary fibre art. He chose to "value the valueless" by incorporating into his art humble materials such as old newspapers, plastic packing materials, styrofoam, and found objects. I, too, like to use unconventional materials such as dustcover material, which I discovered could be painted and distressed. I used it extensively in my Scrapyard work.
What role do you think fibre art plays in contemporary art?
It now seems to have a more prominent role. According to Joanne Mattera who attended this year's Art Basel Miami Beach, fabric, thread, and stitch was a noticeable theme.
What other fibre artists are you interested in?
Dorothy Caldwell, Hastings, Ontario: These features draw me to her work: her skill in mark-making with wax resist, her lively stitch, and her use of small patches which give unique coloration to her work. For my Diploma, I had to do a small sample inspired by her work and found out how unusual the colours of her scraps are. I needed to do a thorough search of my very extensive scrap stash to find similar colours.
The anonymous boro artists of Aomori Prefecture, Japan: The winters were cold and cloth was scarce, but these women had to provide bed coverings to keep their families warm. Boro: Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan shows photos of some of these wonderful layered, patched, and stitched donja.
India Flint, Australia: She has promoted the idea of eco dyeing; that is, dyeing with natural stuff like leaves and twigs, as well as found pieces of metal. This past summer I experimented with eco dyeing. In one experiment, I bundled up day lily petals, leaves, sawdust, and rusty nails on pieces of a silk-cotton blend. I then boiled the bundles in water for about an hour, cooled them in the water, then drained them, and let them dry and rest for a few weeks to a month. This method produced beautifully marked and coloured cloth.
Tell us about your studio and how you work:
My studio is make do. I do my sewing in my dining room and my wet work in the basement where I have free run. I use my laundry room for dyeing cloth and a back room for working with art materials.
What was your motivation for submitting your work to the World of Threads Festival?
I have participated for four years in the Grand National, an annual juried exhibition of quilt art, held in Kitchener. I thought that the World of Threads Festival would give me wider exposure.
