SFF1910@outlook.com
www.stephaniefordforrester.ca

21 Hague Blvd., Lakefield ON, K0L 2H0

Working in luminous silks and cottons, batiks and hand dyed and painted fabrics, my pieces are meditations on the transitory mysteries of our beautiful breathing earth. The immediacy and delicacy of the extensive hand work I employ is a crucial part of my creative process reflecting that same fragile and elusive process I see and experience in nature. A return to painting more directly with liquid dyes on wet textiles and separate mixed media explorations are currently well underway with an extensive new cycle of work in mixed media, primarily photo montage and paint, based on my collection of Afghan embroideries and photographs made during travels in Afghanistan many years ago in a brief time of peace.

Two of my recent mixed media pieces were chosen for the Art Gallery of Peterborough’s Juried Exhibition, seams and strata, which opened Nov 23, 2023 and runs until March 17, 2024. This unique show resonates with themes of memory, legacy, nostalgia, ghosts, survival and growth and is the launch exhibition for the Gallery’s 50th anniversary year.

Fragments in Time 2023 is a mixed media relief; canvas, very old hand-split lath, plaster, horsehair, copies of antique wall papers, and newsprint. This piece was chosen along with Fragments in Time # 3, also mixed media.

Both of these and three others in the series evolved directly from my hands-on involvement in the necessary and careful deconstruction of a 207-year-old squared log building in Perth ON, most likely built by British Army engineers who established the Perth Military District in 1816 to being planning a route for the building of the defensive Rideau Canal to protect from another possible invasion from the US, the War of 1812-14 having just ended 2 years earlier. The logs and other original materials are now stored at Algonquin College, Perth Campus, awaiting repairs to and/or reproduction of the age-damaged or compromised ash logs. The hope is to rebuild this unique historic structure in the future.