REDress: Art, Action, and the Power of Presence

 

REDress / Jaime Black-Morsette, ed.
Winnipeg, MB: Portage & Main Press, c2025.
160 p.

Today's book is a feature for National Indigenous People's Day, June 21. I read this from my library, and it was a powerful read. It looks at art and how artistic projects have been used to draw attention to issues in the Indigenous community in Canada, particularly the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women campaign. (MMIW)

The title refers both to actual redress of wrongs, and to the Red Dress project, the best known project to draw attention to MMIW. This project uses red dresses, hung from trees, clotheslines, and in public spaces, to represent lives lost in this ongoing tragedy. It's a project that was begun by artist Jaime Black-Morsette, the editor of this collection. It's been installed in a variety of museums as well, and it is haunting. This book gives a bit of the history and purpose of this activist art installation.

There are also essays on other activist art projects, like beaded moccasin vamps also meant to draw attention to missing women. There are a number of ways that clothing has been used symbolically in the works included in this anthology, alongside other essays and statements from Indigenous women, Elders, grassroots community activists, artists, academics, and family members affected by the scourge of MMIW. 

There are many clear photos and imagery to support the essays, and the book is very well produced. While the theme makes it a hard read at times, it's so important, and I felt it was a great look at this topic as well as 15 years of the Red Dress Project. Definitely worth searching out. 

Stitching Science

  

Stitching Science / Lauren Wright Vartanian & Keltie Thomas
Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, c2024.
64 p.

I have something very special for you today! This is a book that is a wonderful blend of science and art. It's an alphabet book of scientific topics, all illustrated with hand-stitched images by Lauren Wright Vartanian, an artist who is fairly local to me. 

I watched this book's development on IG, as Vartanian began her stitching during lockdown. These are two of my favourite topics so I was thrilled when it was picked up as a book. The detailed embroideries are photographed very well, with large pages and clear, crisp photos that let you see the elements of each one. There is even a section at the end of closeups of some of the smaller details so you can really appreciate the handwork. 

Topics range from A to Z (haha, it is an alphabet book after all!). Vartanian got creative to find something for each letter, and while X is X-Ray as it often is in alphabet books, in this one it really makes sense to include this scientific discovery. Also, the image for this one is one of my favourites in the book, with the layered organza to represent the see through hand - and it's used on the cover because it is so striking. There are many others that are also stunning and creative and help you see things a little differently. If you want to see many, many of the interior images, check out Vartanian's website with her announcement about the book - so good! 

This is marketed as a children's book but I would say it's a middle grade read at least. Each topic has a one page essay about the scientific principle under discussion. Text was written by Keltie Thomas, and it complements the images well. It's thorough but not overwhelming for a younger reader.

Adults will enjoy this as much as younger readers, and might appreciate the skill in the illustrations a little more as well! I hope that reading this will spur interest among readers in both science and in embroidery. I think it's a gorgeous read that shows how well science and art work together to educate and inspire. 

If you're also in Ontario, you can see the original artwork exhibited at the Idea Exchange in Cambridge, on until March 30,. 2025. 

(this review first appeared at Following the Thread)

All Done By Kindness

 

All Done By Kindness / Doris Langley Moore
London: Dean Street Press, 2020, c1951.
246 p.

This is the first novel by Doris Langley Moore I've read, and I really enjoyed it, for many reasons. She was one of the first female fashion historians in England, and started the first costume museum there, with the support of luminaries such as Dior and the Queen Mother. She wrote novels, society guides, and plays and had a wide artistic circle. All this appealed to me! 

But on to this book itself. I didn't know much about it when I began reading, which is a great way to go into it. It follows the Sandilands family, a country doctor with two adult daughters, after he is given a trunk of old paintings by an elderly patient. She is grateful for his care for her despite her increasing lack of funds - all she has left is a big old house that's now mostly shut up. These paintings turn out not to be the junk they'd all first assumed. 

Dr. Sandilands' two daughters are quite different from one another. Beatrix, the eldest, is orderly, bossy and controls the household. Linda, the younger, is laissez-faire, with a part time job in the local library, and not much concern about housekeeping. She knows that her boss, librarian Stephanie du Plessis, is an amateur art specialist as well as a fiend when it comes to research, so asks her to take a look at the paintings. Stephanie comes up with a solid provenance and theory, and believes they are worth a whole lot. 

So Beatrix and Dr. Sandilands head up to a real art expert in London, Sir Harry Maximer. But his opinion on them depends greatly on what he wants to do with them. The scheming is underway! 

The book starts a bit slowly, but gets going once the paintings are in play. So many characters with their eye on them, so much shadiness, so many ploys and counterploys! It's great fun. I was all in once Stephanie de Plessis appeared; how many times does a clever librarian get to be the driving force in a novel? I loved it. 

It's fun, with a dash of serious art history, some romance, and a really satisfying ending with only one minor thread not tied up. The villain gets an unusual comeuppance and it made me laugh. For a clever and amusing romp, with art and librarians and museums involved, this one is a great choice. I'd definitely read more of Moore's work on the strength of this one. 

Threads: the Delicate Life of John Craske

Threads: the Delicate Life of John Craske / Julia Blackburn
London: Jonathan Cape, c2015.
352 p.

I heard about this book in the bibliography of a craft book I was studying, and thought it sounded intriguing enough to track down via Interlibrary Loan. It delivered, though not in the way I was first expecting.

It is a delicate biography, mostly because it isn't one at all. The author decides to write about this intriguing character, John Craske (b1887, d1943) but finds that there isn't all that much to discover. The book is about more than Craske himself; it's also about her search for him -- the places she goes to do her research, the people she encounters along the way, related to Craske or not, and her own life story is inextricably linked to the narrative, as her husband dies during the course of her writing this book.

It is fascinating and absorbing reading. 

John Craske himself, the backbone of the book, was an English fisherman from Norfolk who suffered from an undiagnosed disease (they think now it may have been some kind of diabetes). He would fall into long periods of invalidism, in which he seemed not to be in the world at all. His wife encouraged him to paint in order to engage with the world, and feel as if he was on the open seas again, which he missed. Visitors noted that all the surfaces of their house were covered with paintings propped up, and even painted right onto the doors and windowsills. When John became too ill to be able to paint, his wife set him onto embroidery, which he could do from his bed. 

His embroideries were fresh and unique; he used his painting techniques to make embroidered images of the seascapes he loved. As a stitcher myself  I could see how these were unusual for the time, being freeform and individual. He uses his wools and threads to indicate wind, waves, grasses, and more; the movement in his stitching is extraordinary. He was working on a huge panel depicting Dunkirk when he died, leaving only a square of the sky undone. 

Blackburn examines not only his life history and the ways in which he turned to painting and then embroidery, but also what happened to his works after he'd died, and the ways in which his reputation was both made and forgotten. Integral to his brief popularity were the writers Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, who discovered him in his small village, and championed his art after that -- partly out of admiration and partly out of a feeling that he and his wife really needed some financial support. 

Blackburn also visits a couple of small regional museums and institutions that hold a few of Craske's remaining works, finding them poorly stored, not exhibited, or shown a lot of care. They seem to treat them as the output of a local artisan, not worth too much attention. I hope that this book can at least inspire those places to preserve Craske's work for the future, as they are original. 

The book as a whole feels wild and windy, with a lot of open spaces to think and ponder. One of the things John Craske said about being out on the ocean in a small boat was that it made you feel like a small bit of the world; this book's wide-ranging interest and narrative structure also makes you, the reader, feel like one small point in a huge tapestry of life. This was a wonderful, rambling discovery.

Book Artisan Gerard Brender a Brandis

Photo via WEN blog
 (the Wood Engraver's Blog)

Local artist, printmaker and bookmaker Gerard Brender a Brandis is a legend. He makes his own paper from plants he grows himself; he does glorious he has a press upon which he makes his prints and produces books of his own and those he creates alongside his sister, also a prolific author; he has an artist's studio which is open to the public for part of the year, and where you can see his artistic process and talk to him directly. 

There's a beautifully in-depth visit and interview with him posted by a visitor to his studio recently - lots of images of his stunning work and his charming self. Check it out!

He also has many books that have been published by various Canadian small presses, highlighting his art in different ways. Porcupine's Quill Press, which is located quite close by, has put out a few titles by Gerard Brender a Brandis, and I'll highlight two that I own and that I've just gone through again. 


A Wood Engraver's Alphabet is a perfect introduction. He's an expert on botany and many of the prints you can buy at his studio are studies of flora in its many guises. (The only print I own is a small lily of the valley which is so delicate and superbly beautiful). This book takes the structure of an abecedarium and illustrates it with multiple floral images - a multitude of options here. 

A brief introduction explains his choices and why he made them, as well as giving a lovely nod to his writer sister, Marianne Brandis. It's a  pretty book which really highlights his skill at this art and rewards close observation. There's not any text besides the intro, so this small book (61 p.) is really just for visual delight.

A Gathering of Flowers From Shakespeare (with quotations selected and interpreted by F. David Hoeniger) (143 p.) is exactly what it sounds like. 

It's the perfect Stratfordian mix, with many images of Shakespearean settings and botany alongside mentions of those flowers in the plays. If you want something that evokes Stratford and its best known arts, try this book! 

Hoeniger gives excerpts of a few lines of play, and then explains the import of the plants that Shakespeare chose to refer to -- why they might be important in context, what the deeper meanings were to each reference -- all in brief companion pages to the images. Most are florals, though as you can see from this cover there are also a few others; houses, sundials, bridges, interiors. It's charming and a must-read for Shakespeare aficionados. 

Stratford really is an artistic place, and I'm fortunate enough to know many artists and authors here. I'm happy to share these two books by an artist whom I admire for his kindness and his skill. 

Alphabetique, with Blushes

Here I have two recent reads by Molly Peacock, an American born poet who lives in Toronto & counts herself as half Canadian as well.

I've read her book about poetry previously (How to Read a Poem & Start a Poetry Circle); now I'm getting to some of her actual poetry.


The Second Blush / Molly Peacock
New York: Norton, c2008.
85 p.

So as I mentioned, I haven't read much of Molly Peacock's poetry before. This collection is about domesticity, about her life with her husband, and the role of love in shaping our lives. It's very readable, 'poetry' in the sense that most new readers would recognize. 

She uses a lot of end rhyme, with short poems describing moments that are easily grasped. Yet they aren't simple, exactly. I found many of them evocative of emotion, of daily living, in an understated but resonant way. "Happy Diary", a list of things that have made the poet happy, complete with rhyme, is obvious but still lovely. And she takes basic activities like doing dishes, having a picnic, or going to yoga and turns them into poetry. 

I liked this collection;  it's set out in four sections and each has a certain feel to it. She is talking to the reader, inviting them into her poems, and it gives the book a warm and welcoming feel. I found that one, "The Flaw", was a favourite, as she used textiles as a metaphor, which I can really appreciate. And one called "Warrior Pose", about yoga class, has a few lines in it that struck me in our current climate. 

...
How can we think ourselves into the full bloom
of power and vigilance? Perhaps
by imagining buds curled in our palms,
opened by the ants of persistence
and fed by new focus into peony flowers,
huge, magenta and smothering our enemy's
surprised face with lunging beauty.


You can read some of the poems from this volume at her website (and listen to her read one) -- including my favourite, The Flaw.



Alphabetique / Molly Peacock; illus. by Kara Kosaka
Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, c2014.
160 p.

The charm of this book lies heavily in its gorgeous collage illustrations done by Vancouver's Kara Kosaka - you can see them all at her website. They are simply beautiful.

In its alphabetic focus, size and art, this book recalls two other titles that might be of similar interest to readers: Diane Schoemperlen's recent By the Book, and the non-illustrated but very brief & moving The End of the Alphabet by C.S. Richardson, which to me has the same quirky, intellectual tone.

In this book, Peacock posits a life and existence for each letter of our alphabet. And in each brief tale, the letter lives a little. With a lot of alliteration. I could continue, it's curiously catching. 

It's a mannered and clever structure, depending on wordplay and archness in the storytelling. The idea shapes the content. It's amusing, but don't read them all together at once; space out the stories so you don't get overwhelmed by the conceit and can enjoy each tale separately. I found that I had to take a little break from it after a few letters, and then just kept picking it up to read one or two more in between other books. That worked well. I enjoyed some letters more than others, of course, and I also liked how previous stories worked their way into later ones. 

I thought it was interesting and intellectually satisfying, but the beautiful images are really what have stuck with me. It's a small volume, with both images and words giving a bit of a dreamy feel to the reading experience.

L.M. Montgomery's Scrapbooks

Imagining Anne: the Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery / Elizabeth Rollins Epperly
Toronto: Penguin, c2008.
170 p.

I ran across this book recently, and thought that today was the perfect day to feature it. Today is the anniversary of  Lucy Maud Montgomery's birth -- November 30, 1874.

L.M. Montgomery is one my favourite writers, and favourite Canadian women. She is so fascinating; the differential between her life and her optimistic writing can be overwhelming at times. She kept journals over most of her life, which I've read, and which can be very depressing in parts, as they were her outlet -- as journals are for many of us.

But there are other bits that are lovely, just like her novels. I personally love reading about the year she spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, when she was 16... probably because that's my hometown so I love the fact that she also lived there briefly.

Anyhow, I knew that she kept scrapbooks alongside her written journals, as more of a visual record that she might share with others, where she wouldn't share her private writing. But I hadn't had the chance to look through them all until now.

This book compiles pages from two of her scrapbooks kept from 1893-1910, her years on The Island (pre-marriage & moving to Ontario). Running alongside is commentary explaining the meaning and significance of the bits taped and glued in by Montgomery, provided by Montgomery scholar Elizabeth Epperly,who explains what's on the page and why it might be there, from pieces of a squirrel's tail (really!) to poems and newspaper articles, to flowers and lovely ladies from fashion magazines of the day. They are fascinating to pore over, and I'm very glad that they are printed in scrapbook size, as some of the articles require close examination even at this size. 

It's also intriguing to see LMM's handwriting all over many pages, and to note that she took care to shape her own narrative as much in these scrapbooks as she did in the journals; there are torn bits where she removed things, or added extra things to older pages much later on. Her love of colour, flowers, fashion, and friendships comes through in these pages, but as Epperly notes, she doesn't include references to some of the most important happenings in her life during this time, ranging from a traumatic romantic life to the publication of Anne of Green Gables itself.

LMM is endlessly fascinating, and I think it is because of this combination of open-heartedness and optimistic writing and sharing, and the dark depths she experienced and kept private, and often removed from her own record. This book just adds to her mystique, and was a perfect book to read through slowly, a few pages at a time. It really evokes a life and a lifestyle that is both familiar and utterly foreign to us now.
 

One of many things I really enjoyed about this book was that LMM kept little circular swatches of fabric stuck to a page -- she loved fashion and this was so cool to me as an fellow sewist! Check it out at this online exhibit page for an example.

You can look into the PEI and the Ontario Scrapbooks further thanks to an online exhibition hosted by PEI's Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Do go take a look, there is a LOT to explore. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

LMM's literary magazine, created with friends

 

 

Miss Moon

Miss Moon: Wise Words from a Dog Governess / Janet Hill
Toronto: Tundra, c2016
48 p.

This charming art book is written and illustrated by Janet Hill, a local painter & bookish type. Miss Moon is a dog governess, who has taken on the responsibility for training 67 unruly dogs belonging to a family on a small island of the coast of France.

It shares life lessons in brief vignettes; things like "With a little creativity, the impossible can become the possible" -- or, "Respect the property of others" -- or, "A Good walk is not a race". The focus and the prime attraction of the book is most definitely the full spread illustrations. They are replete with little details tucked away which requires serious perusal of the pages to make sure you find every one of the delightful surprises and personalities that Hill includes. If you love art and think there is a thoughtful child or art-loving adult in your life who'd appreciate this, do share it.

Janet is a local, and an acquaintance, but I hope you will still take my review of this book as an objective one. I am not a dog person, but I did find this book a lot of fun. Now if only Miss Moon could take on the onerous job of herding cats...

This book was first published in French as Mademoiselle Moon, about a year before this version -- if you like quirky and elegant art, and think reading the 20 life lessons imparted in this book in French would make them even more apropos, you can still find it for sale.

Also, if you just want to explore more of Hill's artworks, check out her website, Janet Hill Studio, and her Etsy store. She has many illustrations of many different subjects, all reasonably priced as well.

I'd recommend this book to older children and adults; it might work well to read together, examining the illustrations and trying to guess what happens next. Each page is just a quick capture of one moment in what seems to be a very busy life!

Piersall's Animal Mandalas

Coloring Animal Mandalas / Wendy Piersall 
Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, c2014.

I was offered a lovely book for review recently, from the new-to-me Ulysses Press in Berkeley. Since I have both used and taught mandalas as an expressive art practice previously, I was instantly interested.

And this is a lovely book! It includes 31 intricate mandala images featuring cats, birds, sea creatures, horses, bugs and more. Some are very detailed, and would take much attention to colour in. Some are a little more free-form, with larger spaces to fill. All are very lovely.

I think my favourite ones are those featuring shells and fish. They seem to have an organic flow that really appeals to me. But there is one with swans that I'll have to work on first, considering my city's emblematic swans! I can see that these images are going to be quite enjoyable for a long while.

Have you ever used pre-made mandalas yourself? The act of concentrating and colouring them in is quite peaceful and relaxing. I usually like to focus in on the experience of colouring while letting my mind rest -- it's something we were quite skilled at as children but forget to do as grownups. Piersall's designs are unique and pretty, many of them resembling the intricate detail of a mosaic.

If you haven't tried this 'adult colouring book' experience before, I'd say that this collection offers a fun starting point. It's a nice size and printed single-sided for colouring, on paper that will play with crayons, pencils or markers equally well. Adults and older children would both enjoy these images, I think.

If you want to see some sample images, check out Piersall's animal mandala page on her larger website (which is full of activities and worksheets for kids, also great). Also, pop over to her blog to print off a free hedgehog design that didn't make it into the final book -- too cute.