As Cloth in Common artists, we spend so much time planning, thinking and perhaps worrying about what would relate to our prompt. Seeking inspiration for what will be included in our next project or bringing the storylines of the inspiration for our art to you relies on our connections to the world around us.

In my area of Canada and living along Lake Ontario and many of our lakes and creek side waterfronts, there is so much to learn and bring along as inspiration. Is the focus a possible sky or plants, trees, and movement in the waters? Fortunately, there is so much opportunity for creativity in colour, cloth, threads and design play. What is often forgotten is the baseline connection with a simple, everyday part of our lives – WATER!

Movement is everywhere in our daily lives. However, we have concerns about how movement disturbs and undermines our daily lives. WATER is so much a part of the concern in my area, The loss of a large bridge that helps our community move from one end of our city to another and bringing us safely across the waterways is hugely concerning. It’s AGE, much like many of us who have looked forward to our movement in the waterways and in using the waters as a part of our lives at home and in cottage country.

Ships that followed the waters and moved under that bridge were kept from navigating the waterway north to Ottawa and beyond. Lakes and rivers are nearby and so well loved… yet, we have lost our connections with visitors, boating, and the hugely needed transfer of the waterway crossing for jobs, shopping for food, and getting to our hospitals and families – waiting.

The bridge is now totally blocked and planned to be replaced with another, albeit taking the entire summer away from visitors, employed locals, and fully to our community. This happens as aged bridges and waterways that are so needed and part of our lives decay or are damaged. For us, the use of a bridge forbidden from the use of cycling, walking, and driving along the road that moves traffic through from one side of the City of Kingston to another leaves us to dream only – again, waiting.

It is summer, and we celebrate the waterways, ponds, and rivers nearby. Many of our local artists work today, sharing their beautiful art as they tell lakes and waters stories both on cloth and stitch.  Summer days find the water a place to stop and enjoy plein air painting, photography, and other planning cloth art designs or sitting alongside rivers and lakes knitting and stitching. Many friends are submitting their new artwork to Art Quilt shows and exhibitions that travel.

RIVERS OF LIGHT (above) and REFUGE (just below) are my artworks inspired while focusing on water.

Silver Rain above by friend Seymone Armstrong

Our St. Lawrence River nearby drains water from the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem, The Great Lakes. Its natural flow has been drastically altered and is declining due to numerous hydropower dams and the infrastructure developed to create the St. Lawrence Seaway, one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors! We are seeing enormous, often overflow amounts of storms and rain this spring into the summer of 2024. While drying hills and fields and low-water areas move into one area. Some are are inundated with overflowing creeks and rivers. We have no control, but the climate change is certainly a connection.

I am still focused on creating artwork that brings water into the play… colour and stitch along with bold lines and movement. Remembering the joy of watching the sunset over one of our beautiful Canadian Lakes, I am working this year on another version of Lake Ontario, inspired by the beautiful art of a Cloth in Common Artist, Leigh Higgins some years ago.

FLOW, Leigh Higgins, Connections Fibre Artist, 2018

The movement of WATER is mesmerizing and exciting to work with on cloth. (as seen in the photo of my piece created for Cloth in Common, below…). Working with the stories and photos of the waters close to us as we move through the designs/creating our projects is an inspiration and exciting.