This weekend we took a little road trip to see some art. When we lived in Montreal, Hubs was part of an art-ideas studio/lab led by artist Ingrid Bachmann called IEL, which stands for the Institute of Everyday Life. Their work was being shown in an exhibit called FABRICation: Studio Production Textiles for Interiors. It was running at the same time that Fibreworks, the contemporary Canadian fibre art biennial was going on, so there were all sorts of textile/fibre events and things happening in Cambridge, which is a smallish Canadian city, with a really beautiful old downtown area (that you get to after you drive through a really ugly commercial area, its kind of like a reward at the end of a difficult hike). My mother-in-law is visiting us from Vancouver this week, and she is also a fan of all things fabric-y, so we packed up the Little Dude and headed out to Cambridge.
Our first stop was the Cambridge Galleries to see the art.
These are some big coiled felt stools made by Kathyn Walter of FELT studio. How I love felt. I wish we had one of these big grey stools at home, and so does the Little Dude.
After having absorbed quite a bit of art, we went outside to burn off some energy. They have a lovely square there, with a war memorial, and a fountain that was built to commemorate the Centennial, I think.
There was a sort of metal medallion with the Centenial logo on it in the sidewalk that the Little Dude promptly sat on, which gave me this great shot.
The big dramatic centrepiece of the Fibre Arts weekend was the Knit Bridge, which was an installation done by Sue Sturdy who is this year's Artist in Residence for the Cambridge Centre for the Arts.
She covered the sides of the Main Street Bridge in downtown Cambridge with knitting. It was pretty impressive, especially when you consider that hundreds of people contributed their knitting to it.
The best part of it was watching the Little Dude interact with it. He seemed to love all the colours and textures, and that he was allowed to poke and prod at it (which, after an afternoon of being carefully shepherded around the galleries learning not to touch things was a great relief I'm sure).
He literally go into it at one point, tucking his head under a dangly scarf-y bit. He was pretty pleased with himself for that.
Then, he noticed all the confetti on the ground. It was probably left over from the opening ceremony.
He was very excited about it, especially after Hubs showed him how it worked. Gather it up, throw it in the air, and voila! instant fun.
It pretty much summed up our afternoon: experiencing everyday things that are beautiful or extraordinary when found out of their usual context. Which is a really art-catalogue-y way of saying we had a lot of fun, and slept like logs when we finally got home.
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