FILAMENTOUS

By Elaine Whittaker & Kelley Aitken

(Red Head Gallery, Toronto, 2022)

“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.” Robin Wall Kimmerer

How do we measure these passing pandemic years? Is it the daily tea bags consumed while isolated at home? Is it the number of masks hanging on a peg by the door? Is it the daily walks in the neighbourhood, or the incessant scrolling on the internet? Or, perhaps, it is the hope that draws our breath while watching a pair of robins build their spring nest, and the promise of a clear blue summer sky as the air starts to warm—the freedom to move about outside and connect with nature.

The artworks in Filamentous, a collaborative exhibition by Elaine Whittaker and Kelley Aitken, contemplate these questions, drawing on the daily rituals that became part of their lives and art practices during the pandemic. They bring attention to those quiet details and the importance of connecting with nature while coping with isolation. During this time, they found lessons of endurance in their gardens, the strength garnered in caring for family and friends, and hope through writing and creating art.

Filamentous threads these ideas through mixed media installations of drawings, sculptures, ceramics, text, and photographic processes. Hand-crafted wire and paper interventions enmesh and entwine displaced nests and plant roots. Inks, watercolours, and cyanotype blues wash across translucent tea bag papers and silk textiles. Detailed observations of moss, lichen, fungi, and microbes reflect on nature’s resilience, while fragile ceramic forms and delicate paper constructions evoke vulnerability. Combined with urban found objects, the artworks in Filamentous are a homage to connection, with home, family, friends, and community.

During these last two years we nestled in our homes, rooted in the knowledge that Covid and the pandemic would continue around us but that we were connected to each other through the filaments of friendship and the binding threads of nature. Ultimately, Filamentous honours these filaments of our lives.

Performance by Julia Aplin with music by John Gzowski.

Poetry Readings by Kelley Aitken, Maureen Hynes, Sheila Stewart, Dilys Leman, Jim Nason, Laboni Islam, and nancy viva davis halifax.