Cicadas sucking sap from tangled roots, chestnut ink soaking and burnishing carved wood, berry stains, frenetic stitches, thorns and pendulums—I build speculative worlds from an ever-growing lexicon of characters and materials. My textiles and sculptures mimic patterns found in my surroundings: mounting layers of soil, slug trails, and scarred tree bark.
Through my work, I express moments of deep looking when the boundary between the observer and observed becomes blurred: they merge into each other through a moment of reciprocal gazing. I examine touch and texture to get closer to what isn’t visible to human eyes. My projects start from a gradual accumulation of material that builds and evolves. I gather fabric and material secondhand, explanatorily carve and stain wood, and dye material repeatedly. My resulting works comprise many stitched components, layers of hand-applied dyes and pigment and are unified with overlaid hand-stitched patterns and knots.
My work is imbued with folklore; I see recurring symbols and stories as integral to understanding human history and sustaining the spirit. Increasingly, my practice fixates on spiritual survival. Even if our bodies survive each passing year, how do our spirits remain intact? As the world becomes increasingly inhospitable to many forms of life, primarily because of human impact, I create work that gathers stories from a slew of inspirations: vegetation and other non-humans, dreams, mysteries, and the textural world to process our knotted relationships and histories.
Through my work, I express moments of deep looking when the boundary between the observer and observed becomes blurred: they merge into each other through a moment of reciprocal gazing. I examine touch and texture to get closer to what isn’t visible to human eyes. My projects start from a gradual accumulation of material that builds and evolves. I gather fabric and material secondhand, explanatorily carve and stain wood, and dye material repeatedly. My resulting works comprise many stitched components, layers of hand-applied dyes and pigment and are unified with overlaid hand-stitched patterns and knots.
My work is imbued with folklore; I see recurring symbols and stories as integral to understanding human history and sustaining the spirit. Increasingly, my practice fixates on spiritual survival. Even if our bodies survive each passing year, how do our spirits remain intact? As the world becomes increasingly inhospitable to many forms of life, primarily because of human impact, I create work that gathers stories from a slew of inspirations: vegetation and other non-humans, dreams, mysteries, and the textural world to process our knotted relationships and histories.
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Laurel Rennie is an artist who works with writing, drawing, and textiles. She creates textural pieces that focus on the tangled relationships and stories between humans and the rest of the living world. She was raised in Ontario and has lingering roots in Nova Scotia. She is currently based in Montreal.
contact: laurel.h.rennie@gmail.com