Sandra Brownlee doesn’t like going to gallery openings much. The Dartmouth N.S.-based textile artist and weaver says she finds the whole thing a bit awkward, not always knowing who to approach in a room full of people who all seem to know each other. In a way, her social anxiety is sort of right: In the insularness of the Halifax visual art scene, most of those people will know each other. But if they’re not aware of Brownlee, then they’re guilty of missing an incredible talent right under their noses.
Because, despite her shy demeanor, Brownlee is a powerhouse, and her resume is undeniable. Since the late ‘70s, she has shown works everywhere from Toronto to Australia as part of group and solo shows. A Governor General’s award winner and Pew Fellowship recipient, she’s had numerous pieces purchased for public collections by both the Nova Scotia and Canada Council’s art banks. She also was a longtime instructor at NSCAD.
So why, then, has it taken until now for her to receive a career-charting show that’s both an overview of some of her best works and a celebration of new pieces? “I mean, it’s the story of this place a little bit, no?” says Emily Falencki, a visual artist and founder of Halifax’s The Blue Building gallery. “People can have whole incredible careers of making, and not get their due.”
Thankfully, now Brownlee will no longer be one of them — and anyone in HRM who doesn’t know her name has the perfect opportunity to get caught up to speed. The Word Made Physical, a show celebrating the 77-year-old Brownlee and showcasing a host of new and landmark works, runs Sept. 12 to Nov. 7 at The Blue Building Gallery. (Falencki describes the show as “magnificent, in that it’s almost all language — so almost every piece is words, and [Brownlee] has hand-stitched every single word on different kinds of surfaces.”)
One of Sandra Brownlee’s piece of sewn text art. (Aaron McKenzie Fraser)
The Blue Building Show puts Brownlee amongst distinguished company, as the north end gallery seems to have an unofficial mandate of showing the city the talent it’s been overlooking: Ursula Johnson, the first-ever Atlantic Canadian artist to win the Sobey Award (the biggest national prize for visual arts), showed her first post-win, solo exhibition in the province at TBB. Scene linchpins like Mitchell Wiebe and Lucie Chan are on TBB’s roster, as well as the Whitney Museum-exhibited Emily Vey Duke.
“Right off the bat, I opened with five or six artists, mid-career folks who had a lot of attention, had very successful careers in a lot of ways, but had never found commercial representation,” says Falencki. “That has always been at the core of the passion of it: Is to give space to exactly people like Sandra.”
The show acts as more than an introduction to Brownlee: It almost feels like peeking inside her diary. The artist herself compares her works to a life story. Recently, a friend of hers told her “‘I think what you’re doing is creating an emotional memoir,’ and I would say it’s an emotional textile memoir,” Brownlee says.
Brownlee still remembers the day Falencki first visited her studio. She extended the invite after the two found themselves at the same north end hair salon. (Something that Brownlee, a self-described “non-networker” still can’t believe she did). Falencki says the visit gave her a better insight into who Brownlee is as an artist: “With Sandra, it is an encompassing aesthetic,” she says. “Like, just a very strong way of thinking about looking, and creating space… Everything is very slow and meticulous.”
Sandra Brownlee working on one of her sewn text pieces. (Aaron McKenzie Fraser)
“Whenever I need to understand something, connect to something, I sew,” Brownlee says while explaining how her style of hand-embroidered text developed. She traces it back to a trip to India in her early career and struggling with what to write in a letter to her husband: “I had a pen. It ran out of ink, so I got my needle and thread out, and I sewed the rest of the letter, and when I sewed the letter, I knew what to say,” she says, explaining that “rhythmic making” like stitching or weaving has “allowed me to connect, to access thoughts, feelings, memories, and ideas, specifically through the sewing. So that’s the seed of The Word Made Physical. By making it physical, with a thread, the needle, the floss, in and out, up and down, I was able to express myself in a sincere and unselfconscious way.”
As Brownlee’s practice evolved, the space where language fails has remained both a reference and inspiration. At The Word Made Physical, she hopes that viewers will feel like they “couldn’t follow the story, but [they] felt the words” when they interact with her art. She mentions that as part of the show’s opening, other artists have been invited to read what Brownlee’s pieces say aloud repeatedly, creating an intentional state of semantic satiation (when a word becomes meaningless through repetition) to allow greater emotional meaning to come through.
Brownlee shares that some of the artworks that act as turning points in her career will be on view as part of The Word Made Physical, including a linen slip embroidered with words that is a meditation on her relationship to her body and a letter she embroidered in place of writing an essay to the folks behind her Pew fellowship. There’s also a piece made of wire that Brownlee manipulated into text (a piece that Falenecki is excited for viewers to see). The bits of poetry and prose and thoughts that are captured in each feel like Brownlee’s own ode to living, and making art, no matter what.
“One of the things I like about life is the ritual of living,” Brownlee, who still creates art daily and will be 78 next month, says. “I just am aware that I’m alive,” she adds, comparing herself on an average morning to Scrooge the day after he’s learned the value of Christmas. “I’m at that stage where I’m just going over in the window and shouting and saying ‘good morning, good morning.’ I feel like that.”
Sandra Brownlee: The World Made Physicalruns from Sept. 12-Nov. 7 at The Blue Building Gallery (2482 Maynard St.) in Halifax.