It’s so easy to stay in the studio when there’s a deadline, when a series of work is coming together or when it’s raining. Yesterday I almost didn’t go to Coquitlam’s Evergreen Cultural Centre, 10 mins drive from here, for 2 of those reasons. Bettina Matzkuhn’s solo show ‘Mappa’ opened there and will be up until June 3rd. The Opening Reception is on Sunday but I always find that time difficult, 4 – 6pm on a Sunday. So I got myself over there for an Exhibition Preview from 4 – 6pm yesterday and I’m so glad I did.
‘Adjectival Coast (detail)’, textile, 2007
The link to Evergreen Cultural Centre and this show is:
http://www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca/ART+GALLERY/default.htm
Bettina Matzkuhn: Mappa
April 1 – June 3, 2011
Exhibition Preview: Thursday, March 31, 4 – 6pm
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 3, 4 – 6pm
Vancouver textile artist Bettina Matzkuhn combines cartography and fabric art in this solo show called Mappa, a series of fourteen works that describe personal and imaginary journeys. For the artist, the fabric becomes her vocabulary and her detailed embroidery, the punctuation. She speaks to the viewer of her explorations of time, space and the human trajectory through emotional cargo and all. Her works are colourful and whimsical and while Bettina’s maps please our eyes and reference the familiar functionality of maps, they also transport us from the known to the unknown.
Bettina Matzkuhn has worked in textiles for over 30 years with an emphasis on embroidery and fabric collage. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts and an MA in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University. In the 1980s she animated and directed three award-winning films using textiles for the National Film Board of Canada. An interest in narrative continues to inform her work. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally and she gives talks and workshops in conjunction with her exhibits. Matzkuhn also writes professionally on the arts and teaches as a sessional instructor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
This is a fascinating show for anyone who is interested in maps, the great outdoors, the use of language, needlework, extended bike rides and smiling at clever ideas. The huge intimidating space of Evergreen could overwhelm an artist but Bettina has made creative use of all the walls and some of the floor, encouraging visitors to study each of the large wall pieces and follow a spool installed in the centre of the room to guide you on. She is fascinated with maps and charts so we see images that could be both but are surprised to see antiquity and fantasy have altered our expectation. We feel her pain and pleasure as she biked from Vancouver to Atlin via Vancouver Island, we empathize as we stick in a pin at our choice of ‘underground’ station – Hope, Despair or Satisfaction? and marvel at a map which looks familiar but shows us Emotional Destinations.
Apart from the intriguing ideas the work is, for a craftsperson, delightful. It is all stitched, using applique or painstakingly embroidered. It has taken several years for Bettina to accumulate the work for this show.
Do take half an hour to wander around this gallery and enjoy the thought-provoking and sometimes charming, sometimes worrying and always elegant Embroidered Maps.
