Emily Comeau

Hard Twist 7: Touch Me, Feel Me opens TONIGHT at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto! Don’t miss it! It is the start of The World of Threads Festival, a month long festival of local, national and international contemporary fiber art.

I am debuting Cat’s Cradle in this show! At 4′ x 4′ and made from 80 individually cast plaster fingers entwined with Alpaca yarn, this is the largest, heaviest, most expensive and most ambitious project I have ever completed to date! She is a real beauty, though.

Cat’s Cradle is a waking nightmare of twisted fingers emerging from a wall, coupled with the familiar childhood game of interlacing fingers with string, resulting in an aesthetic work of textile art with a sinister undertone. This piece echoes a childhood game put to a much larger scale. A physically impossible cat’s cradle, held together by a precarious tension, explores the relationship between play and art and the limitations the human body is restricted to contrasted with the limitless creative liberty that art is afforded. Through this piece a fleeting childhood experience is captured by the lasting power of artistic expression.

Come on out to 1214 Queen Street West, the corner of Gladstone and Queen, from 6-9pm tonight and pop your head in to see the incredible and tactile collection of fiber art in this years exhibition!