A collective consciousness is forming at a North Vancouver art exhibition, sewn with unseen memory and material texture.
Mixed media quilter Jennie Johnston has been inviting the local community to contribute to A Light in the Window: Symbols of Memory, an evolving artwork on display in MONOVA’s feature gallery.
Running her hand along a piece of rough quilt, marked with yellowed splotches and pastoral cartoons, Johnston points to a patch with an illustration of two needles knitting a purple blanket.
The patch was added by a museum volunteer who wanted to honour another woman in her family, she said.
“This idea that they had passed that down to her, and that she remembers them through that symbol,” Johnston said.
The artists’ woven works are part of a larger feature exhibit at MONOVA, called Echoes of Memory. The show explores dementia and memory loss, which affects thousands across the North Shore.
Also included in the gallery is Karen Bodarchuk’s Ergo Sum: A Crow a Day series, which was a way to honour her mother in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Bondarchuk drew a crow for 365 days, “marking the passage of time that she no longer seemed to recognize.”
With so many trying to grapple with loved ones experiencing memory loss, Johnston said it’s important to create conversations around the topic.
To that end, her interactive art piece involves holding public workshops, where people from the surrounding community can choose from an array of symbols, or create their own with fabric markers or threads.
“At the last workshop, we had a lovely mother and daughter. I think the mother was 83 and she just sat there and stitched in this very self-contained way,” Johnston said. “It was lovely to watch them bonding over that moment where they could do something with their hands and be out in community, not isolated, and doing something together.”
After two more workshops – May 10 at North Vancouver City Library and June 14 at MONOVA, 10 a.m. to noon – several panels will be stitched together into what’s called a “log cabin block” quilt.
“And when it’s a yellow inner rectangle, it’s meant to represent the light in the window,” Johnston said, explaining the inspiration behind the piece’s title.
Once complete, A Light in the Window will be added to MONOVA’s permanent collection.
Symbols better for recalling memories than words, artist says
When doing research before creating another piece hanging in the gallery, 1970s Girl, Johnston was thinking about the relationship between symbol and memory.
“I actually found that symbols are better at recalling things for us than words. So as we’re losing our memories, we might be able to pick out an image that we can keep to hold a memory a little bit longer,” she said.
“That falls into the community art quilt as well, because people are invited to choose a symbol that represents a memory to them, and then they make that symbol onto cloth,” Johnston said.
For 1970s Girl, she chose symbols that evoked the decade she was born.
“There’s the definition of my name, because Jenny and Jennifer was the most popular name, starting in 1975 until, like 1985. Everybody was named that,” Johnston said. “And there’s some references to popular culture words. I think I even put Star Wars in here … and also my kids love Star Wars.”
Stitched into the quilt too are works from her family, quilting made by her mother and great aunt, whom Johnston was very close with.
Another quilt in the gallery, Inheritance Memory, was made as a dedication to her great aunt. Johnston said she was inspired to make it when she was approached to do the show.
Through eggshell-coloured fabric riddled with stiches, four forms emerge in yellow threads: a cottage, a set of anatomical lungs, a bowl of roses and a chair.
The chair is associated with the death of her great uncle, whom she never met but her aunt was very devoted to.
“She described holding him as he was passing away. And in my mind, she was sitting on a chair like that when it happened,” Johnston said. “I read the actual story in [her] diary and I don’t think that’s actually how it happened, but it was interesting to me that my memory associated with that.”
'A Light in the Window: Symbols of Memory' community workshops
May 10 at North Vancouver City Library and June 14 at MONOVA, 10 a.m. to noon
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