Barbara Todd Stone Days

Date(s): Jun 7 2007, 7:00 pm

Event

Stone Days

© B. Todd, 2006

Website Launch http://www.stonedays.ca

For the launch, a selection of Stone Days drawings will be on view and the artist will give a brief presentation of her work.

Stone Days is a diary of days. All kinds of days: good days, bad days, on days, off days, slow days, stone days. In 1927 Barbara Todd’s grandfather built a cottage on the shores of Lake Huron. Every year, she gathered stones on the beach. For almost as long, Todd has also gathered gems of speech from passing conversations and the radio, as well as from her wide ranging reading, especially of poetry. For one calendar year Todd assigned herself the task of selecting one text each day. She then allowed that text to suggest an arrangement of small stones on a light table. The arrangements were made quickly and intuitively. They were then photographed, Photoshopped, and printed on vellum. The translucent layering of these images evokes qualities of presence and memory: the cumulative effect of the passing of days. These are the three hundred and sixty five drawings and texts of Stone Days.

Stone Days

© B. Todd, 2006

Barbara Todd is an interdisciplinary artist best known for her innovative, quilted textile works. She marries a minimalist aesthetic to a poetic and politicized sensibility. Her Security Blankets, which have been exhibited internationally, create an unnerving link between the mortal body, domesticity and warfare. Subsequent bodies of work A Bed is a Boat and Heaven and Earth draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including children’s drawings, poems, and the everyday.