GPS: 45.488, -73.539
Field Guide: Kathleen Vaughan
“UNTITLED (BALANCING)”
ARTIST STATEMENT
Kathleen Vaughan is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who develops personal and collaborative projects related to issues of environmental and social justice, for love of our beautiful planet. Her large, three-panel digital jacquard weaving was created from natural fibres at the renowned Textiel Lab in Tilburg, Netherlands, based on a collage image sited at the inaccessible St. Lawrence River shoreline at Pointe-St-Charles, Montreal. Blocked from easy access by highways, railways, and fencing, this terrain is not the original shoreline. Rather, it is contaminated infill from almost two centuries of urban development projects and risks leaching noxious chemicals into the water. The viewer stands at a ‘forbidden’ point, encountering the spirit of the place as figured in a translucent dancer (right panel) drawn from Suzanne Kite’s Field Guide. The viewer is reminded that what touches one point of the River can affect its full length by the turquoise ‘watermark’ of the website’s map of the full 1200-kilometre span of the St. Lawrence, including coloured circles that mark locations of artists’ Field Guides. Kathleen’s weaving reflects the challenges as well as nature’s resilience in this underloved location, with wildflowers and other plants growing well. Even so, the River and its shorelines urgently need a new model of stewardship: will we find an ecological balance that respects the St. Lawrence’s rights and needs?
