Artist Statement
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The universe and everything in it is full of mystery, beauty and fragility. Art allows me to be in touch with that mystery. Since ancient times, cloth has been used to protect our fragility and to express our creativity. I believe the love of beautiful textiles is in the DNA of Indian women and I am no exception.
I started working with textiles in 1999 when a friend and I began cutting up silk blouses to make scarves. It was a difficult period and combining old blouses, shirts, and saris, with new fabric to make something useful and beautiful became a vehicle for re-inventing my life…reconciling the old and the new, my Indian and Canadian heritage, the squares and the circles. I love working in silk and use it in all my quilts, scarves and wall hangings. I always work intuitively, allowing colours, textures, brocades,velvets, and beads to speak for themselves and play with each other in unexpected ways. Most of the pieces are functional as well as decorative. Many are completely hand-quilted while others are a combination of hand machine quilting. In 2009, paper making came into my life. The plasticity of the fibers, allows me to work three dimensionally. It feels like I am making cloth with pulp fibers, moulding and shaping as I go. Whether working in fabric or paper, I allow the creative process and the materials to lead me. Inventing as I go…. Bio
Neera Huckvale moved in B.C. in 2014 and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Born in India, she moved to Canada with Her family when she was 10. She studied at the Ottawa School of Art in the 1980s adding fabric later to her list of mediums. Fabric has been her main focus since 1999 though she did go on to explore paper making. She was an Artist-in-Residence at The Ottawa School of Dance, and where she co-ran Gallery 200. Some of her works still reside there. As a member of the group “Out-Of-The-Box-Fibre-Artists” she has shown with them in Ottawa as well as at the Montreal Centre of Contemporary Textiles (2007). She participated in an exhibit with MainWorks artists (1999) and had a solo show of charcoal drawings at the University of Ottawa (1993). As one of four artists-in-residence, she has also exhibited yearly at The School of Dance since 2007. Neera's work has been exhibited at The Chandler Gallery in Arizona and the Trinity Gallery in the Shenkman Centre in Orleans. In 2012, The City of Ottawa purchased one of her works. |