Lines and Stitches exhibition opens at St. Marys Station Gallery

Local textile artist Maggie Jorna stands with her favourite piece, Fledglings, on display now as part of the Lines and Stitches exhibition at St. Marys Station Gallery.

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A new exhibition featuring the textile art of local artist Maggie Jorna opened last weekend at St. Marys Station Gallery.

Dubbed Lines and Stitches, the exhibition features a variety of pieces created by Jorna using a number of different techniques, all focused around the use of textiles. Jorna made the transition from painting landscapes and nature to using textile-based art techniques after joining a U.K. based stitch club, TextileArts.org, three years ago.

“Every two weeks, there’s a different workshop by a professional, international artist, so I’ve been doing a lot of these workshops and learning,” Jorna said. “Prior to this, I was doing a lot of textured, painted landscapes, so my goal is to get into that same kind of thing but with textiles. I’ve also been moving a lot more toward abstract pieces and things like that.”

Jorna studied fine arts at the University of Guelph in the ‘80s. There, she did a lot of printmaking and collage. After a 30-year career teaching art at St. Marys DCVI, she began painting with acrylics, but now she is back to printing and collaging, only this time with fabrics, a needle and a sewing machine.

“My mother, when I was a child, made us sit and embroider because ‘we had to do something useful with our time,’ ” Jorna said with a laugh, thinking back to when she first began working with textiles. “So, I did do that when I was a child – I didn’t much care for it – and it’s kind of interesting how I’ve kind of gone full circle and I’m back to doing the stuff she made me do when I was a kid. What I’ve really liked about what I’ve learned from this textile group is this whole idea of not having to follow a pattern and just creating and embellishing and adding and painting.”

The inspiration for her work has always come from nature and her surrounding environment. Following a recent move, Jorna has found new inspiration for her artwork from the barn swallows that were nesting in her front porch to the three pines that mark the corner she passes regularly. Her favourite art pieces use hand-printed fabrics that are combined with recycled materials, found objects and stitch. She has a huge stash of random items at home because, as she puts it, “You never know when you’ll need it for your next artwork.”

Jorna says she is always on the lookout for unique pieces of fabric that can inspire new work. While she doesn’t always know what a finished piece will look like, she uses inspiration from nature and life in and around St. Marys and Uniondale, where she now lives, to create the artistic vision she has for each piece. She then experiments with different techniques, often incorporating hand-painted or pressed fabrics and recycled items, to bring that vision to life.

This show is a combination of independently created textile art pieces as well as textile experiments inspired by the workshop leaders from TextileArts.org. For more information about Lines and Stitches and St. Marys Station Gallery, visit www.stmarysstationgallery.ca.