Co-produced by:
Aaron Glass and Andrew Kircher (Bard Graduate Center, NYC), Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien) (artist), and collaborators Hannah Turner [Univ. of British Columbia], Kate Hennessy [Simon Fraser Univ.], Doenja Oogjes (Eindhoven Univ. of Technology), and Reese Muntean [Simon Fraser Univ.].
Artist:
Meghann O’Brien [Jaad Kuujus]
Following a one-day event at Bard Graduate Center (Upper West Side, NYC), Textile Arts Center (TAC) presents a week-long installation of three weaving-based works by Vancouver, BC artist Meghann O’Brien Jaad Kuujus (Haida/Kwakwaka’wakw) from April 13–20, 2024.
A leading weaver from the Northwest Coast, O’Brien uses and extends ancestral, local Indigenous wool weaving practices through creative translation across media. Using collaborative processes, she transmediates her work between physical and digital forms as an act of kinship, connecting generations, the material and immaterial, and the past, present, and future.
The basis for the series is O’Brien’s major work Sky Blanket, a hand-woven merino, cashmere, and mountain-goat wool robe designed by the artist in collaboration with Jay Simeon (Haida) and Andy Everson (Kwakwaka’wakw). The original Sky Blanket will be on view for one day only at Bard Graduate Center; to see it in person, attend Bard Graduate Center’s presentation and panel conversation with project collaborators on
April 10, 4–7:30 PM.
At Textile Arts Center, a full-size print replica of Sky Blanket will display near Wrapped in the Cloud—a digital animation of photogrammetry and 3D-modeling of Sky Blanket—and Untitled, a new robe woven on an industrial TC2 loom. Untitled re-materializes Sky Blanket from the digital modeling process using mercerized cotton, hand-finished with rows of z-twist twining with mountain-goat wool. On the TAC installation’s closing day (April 20), O’Brien will offer a talk about her practice and process, emphasizing how she incorporates and reflects on mountain-goat wool as a kinship material on the Northwest Coast.