Caitlin Erskine-Smith, Writing Down the Gauntlet @ Luminato & Tug of Warp @ Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

I first fell in love with Caitlin Erskine-Smith's work at the Luminato Box in Sam Pollack Square during Luminato, the Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity last June. As I visited the Luminato Box each day of the ten day festival, I became intrigued and fascinated with the way each artist chose to utilize the space. While some artists used the space much as they would any other gallery space, others such as Erskine-Smith integrated their work within the space.

Caitlin Erskine- Smith, Writing down the Gauntlet 2009
Luminato Box, June 12, 2009
Sam Pollack Square, Toronto

As Erskine-Smith's textile work is about communication and information generation, her sensitive use of space is not surprising. Writing Down the Gauntlet investigates the complexities of viewing. For this work, Erskine-Smith created a series of large woven textiles that combine two different versions of the same story each woven on reverse sides of the cloth.

Caitlin Erskine- Smith, Writing down the Gauntlet 2009
installation detail
Luminato Box, June 12, 2009
Sam Pollack Square, Toronto

The woven textiles were hung and draped through the space, engaging the viewer as they move through the curtain-like structure. At first it appears as shapes, symbols and designs are woven on the cloth, but on closer inspection words appear. The competing duality of the words and text that appear in mirror image of one another play with both the viewers visual and cognitive senses. I found myself trying to decipher the words on the cloth as I looked for meaning and understanding, while at the same time my eyes danced and skipped across the cloth panels admiring the patterning of the individual letters and words and how seamlessly they integrated with the texture and fluidity of the cloth.

Caitlin Erskine- Smith, Writing down the Gauntlet 2009
installation detail
Luminato Box, June 12, 2009
Sam Pollack Square, Toronto

Erskine- Smith's artist statement reads: "Fabric and clothes play important roles in the construction of identity, marking our different experiences and communicating the struggle of cultural preservation or evolution in a dynamic and changing world. Fabrics serve to reinforce, reclaim or reject identities, which in turn serve as filters for communication, obscuring meaning as we strive to comprehend it." Utilizing traditional weaving techniques Caitlin Erskine-Smith forces the viewer to consider the contemporary world, where we are constantly barraged with visual and verbal messages that can overwhelm our senses causing us to question or search for meaning in this heightened communicative context.

Caitlin Erskine- Smith, Writing down the Gauntlet 2009
installation detail
Luminato Box, June 12, 2009
Sam Pollack Square, Toronto

Writing down the Gauntlet is one of those works that has remained rooted in my memory. I often find myself re-visiting the photographs I took of the installation when searching through iPhoto. There is something comforting but also disquieting about these distorted words woven into fabric in black and white.

Caitlin Erskine- Smith, Writing down the Gauntlet 2009
installation detail
Luminato Box, June 12, 2009
Sam Pollack Square, Toronto

Caitlin Erskine-Smith artistic practice focuses on the use of textiles to consider modern conflicts of identity, language and change. For Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Erskine-Smith created Tug of Warp, on-site in Clarence Square, just south-east of the King Street West and Spadina Avenue intersection. This new work involved two separate looms placed 20 meters apart, at opposite ends of the park, attached to one another with threads of neon warp.

Caitlin Erskine-Smith, Tug of Warp 2009
Clarence Square. Toronto
Zone B, Independent Project
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, October 3, 2009

As the two artists simultaneously wove their weft threads through the warp, the looms were pulled ever slowly closer to one another reaching until they would meet in the centre. I visited Caitlin and Tug of Warp around midnight, at which point the looms had progressed about three meters inwards from their original starting positions. Despite the torrential downpour earlier in the evening, both artists were fervently weaving away in the midst of this quiet dark sanctuary, lit only by battery operated neon lights placed in the centre of the work and the ambient glow of the street-lights on Spadina.

Caitlin Erskine-Smith, Tug of Warp 2009
Clarence Square. Toronto
Zone B, Independent Project
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, October 3, 2009

Tug of Warp provided a wonderful and much-needed respite from the crowds, noise and spectacle of Nuit Blanche. Watching the shuttle filled with yarn shooting through the warp threads is rhythmic and soothing, but also somewhat life affirming as each pass of the shuttle turns individual threads into a piece of cloth.

Caitlin Erskine-Smith, Tug of Warp 2009
Clarence Square. Toronto
Zone B, Independent Project
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, October 3, 2009

One of the problems with events like Nuit Blanche and works such as Tug of Warp is that you only get to experience moments in time. With so much to see and only twelve over-night hours to do this in, one feels like one must always press on. I would have loved to see the looms meet as dawn approached and Clarence Square began to fill with light. But by then I was home and fast asleep.

Caitlin Erskine-Smith, Tug of Warp 2009
Clarence Square. Toronto
Zone B, Independent Project
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, October 3, 2009

Tug of Warp deals with issues of collaboration and communication. Each artist focuses on their own individual work, knowing that their work is connected and that the actions of each artist will affect the other as the looms get closer and tug against one another. Ultimately, the single piece must become two as the warp is cut freeing it from the two looms. I did wonder, what will happen to these two pieces of cloth? How different will they be and what qualities will they share? One thing I do know is that once again, Caitlin Erskine-Smith has created a work that not only engages the senses, but which prompts ongoing dialogue with itself and between the work, the artist(s) and viewer.

A second installment of Tug of Warp will be created as part of Nocturne in Halifax, October 17, 2009 at Pier 21. Writing down the Gauntlet will be exhibited as part of Ontario Craft '09 at the Ontario Craft Council Gallery in Toronto, November 12 - December 31, 2009.