I wanted to go on a Space Walk but I had nothing to wear CityScape community artspace

Ilze Bebris

Artist Statement:

Shameless (2022) is a mash up of unruly bits and mismatched pieces: too much, too little, strangely assembled – a bad cut, stitch and baste job. A slit here, a silicone pouch there, stitched up bodies reassembled in the surgical factories of beauty.

And still these bodies remain unruly. In a world where the average white male is the standard measure, women struggle with tools, cell phones, cars, safety gear and space suits made for larger bodies. Women’s health pays the price for this blind standard with under diagnosed heart attacks, misdiagnosed endometriosis and countless other misconceptions and failures that endanger women’s health and safety.

I chose to use textiles in this work to echo the plasticity of skin. Fabric, worn, washed and softened like skin, constrained by wrapping, binding, speaks of the manner in which culture literally and metaphorically contains and restrains bodies. Stitching, knotting, sewing, crotchet and braiding reflect the traditional crafts that once were the private domain of women.

In the long struggle for recognition and accommodation of the needs of women, absurdity and a touch of humor are salves as we face the seemingly endless demands to tame, shape and remake the body in the service of desire and attractiveness.

Ilze Bebris is a West coast artist, educator and occasional curator working in installation, sculpture and collage.

She was born in Toronto and moved to Vancouver to attend university and then the Emily Carr institute of Art and Design followed by a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria.

She has worn many hats: teacher in the public schools, lawyer, education coordinator at a number of public galleries in the Vancouver area and instructor at the University of Victoria and the University of the Fraser Valley. She is interested in public art education and the intersection of art and the every day.

Much of her works are temporary installations in public spaces and pubic galleries. She is interested in the narratives that shape the culture of contemporary everyday life and how a cultural of mass consumption drives our very perceptions and understandings of the world.

Her work is process and materials driven. Working mainly through a process of bricolage and collage she creates sculptural works and installations that explore the tensions around ideas of the natural and the artificial, beauty and the abject.

She has shown both nationally and internationally and is the recipient of several awards.

DETAIL: Ilze Bebris, Shameless (2022), Detail, Driftwood, mixed textiles, yarn, foam earbuds, 79"x 57"x 17"

Marcia Pitch

The Invisible Woman (2019 - 2021): On March 29th, 2019, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch were set to make history as the first all-female crew to conduct a spacewalk at the International Space Station. However, the woman astronauts both needed to wear a size medium in the upper torso and there was only one medium available. The rest of the suits were size large, as they had been designed for the male body. As a result, the all-female walk was cancelled.

I am struck by the lack of foresight to tailor for women’s bodies in the world of science and space exploration. This is one of many examples of how women are rendered invisible in a world designed primarily for men. This barrier is one of the major inspirations for my installation “The Invisible Woman”. Another inspiration stems from looking closely at what else we cast off. When I picture outer space filled with junk from decades of space travel, I imagine all the useless and archaic relics drifting past. Space will become gold mines for future Archaeologists. What will future generations think of us?

We are living through moments of global chaos, as our planet becomes a world in ruin, both politically and environmentally. I’ve begun collecting the detritus of this ruin, focusing on discarded objects from everyday life, objects gathered from households, second-hand shops and back alleys, often objects touched and used by women. These spools of thread, colanders, lampshades, dental molds and mousetraps join the sculpture of “The Invisible Woman”, as an homage to the discarded and cast-off. There is a beauty to these castoffs: they are rich in color and texture, and they have stories to tell if we care to listen.

Marcia Pitch’s artistic practice has spanned over four decades, including installation, sculpture, assemblage, and collage. Graduating with a B.F.A. from the University of Manitoba, she pursued graduate work at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland California and a teaching degree from the University of British Columbia. Involvement in Amnesty International in the early 70’s, she produced a number of installations centred on political issues which still influence much of her work today.

While parenting, she began an engagement with recycling the materials around her, specifically toys and household objects. Continuing to draw on everyday materials, her recent work in collage and sculpture evokes body politics and imagines a drastically accelerated pace of evolution shaped by climate change driven by political upheaval.

DETAIL: Marcia Pitch, The Invisible Woman (2019-2021), Found Objects, Installation size variable

Ruth Scheuing

Artist Statement:

I have long been intrigued by the story of Sarah Henley. In 1885, she jumped off the 75-meter Clifton Bridge and survived: her hooped crinoline skirt had acted as a kind of parachute. This story seemed a good entry into space travel with a slightly twisted feminist focus. I later explored the early lighter-than-air ballooning craze and its aeronauts. One of the first women aeronauts was the French Sophie Blanchard (1778-1819), who made over 60 solo flights after the death of her husband and ballooning pioneer Jean-Pierre. During public displays hosted by Napoleon and later Louis XVIII, she would launch fireworks as she floated overhead. She designed both her dress and the small 3 foot long and 1-foot-high sliver gondola to show off her fragility and her daring.

In both cases clothing ‘improvises’ on expectations.

My earlier pieces on Ada Lovelace started my interest in Victorian period and make the connection with the Jacquard loom, invented in 1800. As part of the industrial revolution, it influenced the development of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and was seen as an early computer in Ada Lovelace’s writing: The Analytical Engine Weaves Algebraic Patterns just as the Jacquard Loom Weaves Flowers and Leaves’. Most of my pieces were woven on a digital Jacquard loom by hand with a computer interface; in this way I combine my love of old and new technologies.

Ruth Scheuing is an artist and weaver whose works tell stories about history, mythology and women’s lives and the complexity of our connection with nature and technology. Recent work focuses on women, cyborg, nature and technology and floral patterns, as well as drawings made via GPS technology.

Her work has been exhibited internationally. Recent selected projects include a solo exhibition Ancient Women in Textiles 2019 at the Italian Culture Center in Vancouver and the group shows: Canadian Craft Biennial, in 2017 in Burlington, ‘Dreamland: Textiles and the Canadian Landscape touring 2012-15 and ‘Walking the Line’, made for a web project: ‘Digital Threads’, both organized by the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto, as well as Silkroads, an artist’s residency in 2010 at the Surrey Art Gallery

DETAIL: Ruth Scheuing, Sarah Henley II (2022), Hand-woven Jacquard textile, cotton and mixed fibers, 26" x 28"

Catherine M. Stewart

Artist’s Statement:

'Katherine Johnson Dress' (2022) is a tribute to Katherine Johnson, the brilliant mathematician whose complex calculations of orbital mechanics were crucial to the success of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s first space missions leading up to and including the Apollo 11 flight to the moon (August 1969) and the subsequent Space Shuttle program.

The symbols and diagrams embroidered on the dress and printed on the backdrop are sourced from a paper about lunar orbits that she co-authored with NASA engineer Harold Hamer, published in March 1969*. The emblem on the collar of the dress is a variation on the official NASA symbol from that era.

Historical photos of Katherine Johnson reflect her modestly elegant style of dress. She was proficient with a sewing machine and made clothing for her daughters, herself and other members of her community who might have been in need of a garment for a special occasion. The design I chose for this dress, a combination of two McCall’s patterns, is one that I thought she might have made for herself had she been invited to an imagined NASA event celebrating that first moonwalk in 1969.

Catherine M. Stewart, Katherine Johnson Dress (2022), Body form, purple taffeta, embroidery, wood stand, printed cotton backdrop Installation size variable

Catherine M. Stewart

Artist Statement continued:

The "Orbital Theory" series accompanies the Katherine Johnson dress and is the first in an ongoing series that combines the visual languages of orbital mechanics, domestic dressmaking, and images selected from my own photographic archive.

What is the connection between celestial mechanics and the domestic sphere? Just as neighbouring planets alter each other’s trajectories on a cosmic scale over millennia, people’s existential ‘orbital paths’ are, both directly and indirectly, influenced by each other’s - sometimes subtly, sometimes profoundly, certainly over a lifetime, and often over generations. I invite viewers to interpret for themselves the relationship between the indistinct figures in the photographs and the precise mathematical diagrams that are partnered with them.

All the graphs and diagrams in the prints are from the textbook Theory of Orbits (by Victor Szebehely) published in 1967 - a resource that Katherine Johnson might very well have referenced during the many years she worked at NASA.

Originally from Ontario, Catherine Mary Stewart has lived and worked most of her life as an artist in Vancouver, BC. She earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. Her early studies have been an ongoing influence in her art practice with many of her investigations relating visually and philosophically to the practices, aesthetics and history of science.

Catherine’s prints and photographs have won awards and been shown locally, nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions. Venues include the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge, Glasgow Science Centre, and UBC’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Her works are in institutional and private collections around the world.

Interdisciplinary projects that link seemingly unrelated fields of human interest have been particularly stimulating for her. In this exhibition, Catherine continues to draw on multiple sources to create what she hopes are fresh perspectives about art, science and our shared human experience.

Catherine M. Stewart, Mother and Babe Orbit (with running stitch) (2021), Archival inkjet print, 15" x 16" (framed size), Edition 1 out of 3, $500.00 (framed) $350.00 (unframed)