Stretching the fabric is what occupies the artistic mind of Joy Cotter.
She doesn't contemplate how to pull it into different sizes, it is about how to get the most out of the cloth in her hands. She will stitch it, cut it, weave it, dye it - all the usual treatments fabric gets - but she will also paint on it, print on it, combine mediums upon it, and dress it up. The images she creates sometimes use fabric as a base and sometimes as the primary imagery. It takes the viewer to new realizations about cloth, and it takes the artist on a soul journey.
There's a destination in that sojourn. Viewers can see a retrospective of Cotter's art at the Studio 2880 Feature Gallery from today through April 4.
Cotter has been an active community member in Prince George since she and husband Jerry moved here more than 50 years ago, and she was a trained artist long before that. She is a graduate of Vancouver School of Art and is literate in many forms of visual creativity. Oil, acrylic, watercolour, charcoal, pencil, ink, she can handily use all these tools and more, which may explain why she doesn't look upon a sheet of paper or a swatch of fabric and only see its literal form.
"I love the combinations, the possibilities. Fabric has so much you can do with it," she said. "Sewing has always been an interesting part of my life. So fabric art for me evolved very naturally. I have worked with fabric using surface design and painterly techniques in many ways, especially because I have always been involved with church art and environment. Our cathedral (she is a longtime parishioner at Sacred Heart) lends itself to large art pieces."
She has made artwork for the church on multiple occasions and the environmental art she mentioned is a nearly constant inspiration. Each year, she and an ad hoc collection of artists contribute to a month-long group exhibition at Artspace celebrating Earth Day and all it espouses. She has also made art themed on her opposition to a proposed mine at Teztan Biny (aka Fish Lake) in Tsilhqot'in territory, and to a proposed downtown biomass plant in 2008 to which residents took successful exception.
"I really like to say something in my work," Cotter said. "I think you can sometimes make a little bit of a difference in what you have to say with a piece of art."
She and Jerry, along with many friends from church, got used to seeing small gestures turn into grand results. In the early 1980s they would take it upon themselves to bring carloads of coffee and sandwiches down to hard-hit areas of town and dole it out to hungry people in need. Eventually this habit evolved into the foundation of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in 1982 that does heroic work today to help those in hard financial straits.
"It's a gesture to show we're interested in their particular plight," said Jerry Cotter to The Citizen in 1983 on the eve of a free Thanksgiving dinner the young society was providing. "We're not going to cure the ills of anybody, but we can show some concern for our fellow man."
Jerry passed away in 1992 but Joy stayed on all these years, and to this day still lives in the same house they first purchased upon their arrival in 1965. The Cotters raised their six children there, and now she is enjoying her 12 (so far) grandchildren, even though they are spread around Western Canada.
"It is such a wonderful community here, a caring community, so I feel this is where I always want to be," she said, but she certainly isn't content to hold back on issues she considers important, like the city's lack of a full-service visual and performing arts centre in the downtown.
"Could City Hall please get going on that, please?," she said, with a wan smile. "And the sooner the better because I won't be around all that much longer. It's very much needed and I want to be there the day it opens. Could you hurry?"
Cotter is a personified demonstration of how staying in one place can nonetheless represent a long and adventurous trek. Her exhibition is called A Soul Journey, a name selected from among the dozen-or-so items on display.
"A Soul Journey describes the simplicity of a woman's soul," Cotter said, describing both the multimedia fabric rendering and also the underlying thinking that inspired it. "She moves quietly and gently along life's pathways. The soft edges and muted colours harmonize with the intersecting passages that flow with movement and light. The soul is the centre, gradually moving outwards continuing on her journey."
Cotter has been a member of the Artists' Workshop group of visual creators, and also the Cottonwood Group, a collective of fibre artists led initially by Canadian superstar quilter Gail Hunt before she moved away from Prince George.
These two associations led Cotter into many group exhibition opportunities, but this is the first time she has ever had a solo show all to herself.
"I've been thinking about it, and I have friends who kept telling me I should, and then Studio 2880 gave me the opportunity and I'm so thankful and excited," she said.
