A depiction of the North Pacific Cannery just outside of Port Edward by a group of northwest friends and artists is making its way across the northwest, beginning in Houston.
Each of the four in the group is a quilter but this collaborative project has moved them into incorporating a variety of materials and objects.
Friends for years, COVID brought them together via Zoom where they would quilt, sew and talk about art.
"When we started talking, we said, 'Oh, I'd like to venture out into the fibre art world instead of making just quilts," said Houston artist Pamela Sjoden. "And that's what we've done as a group.
Aside from Sjoden, the group includes Shirley Hobenshield from Kitwanga, Sheila Seideman from Prince Rupert and Lois Acheson from Terrace.
The project began by choosing a photo of the cannery taken by a group member and then slicing it into five pieces so that three artists were responsible for interpreting one slice and the fourth artist for two.
Sjoden describes the preparation work as painstaking in detail and intent.
"Once the photo was chosen we had to decide how we would go about making the slices and determining what size they would be," she said. "Then we had to determine what techniques and we chose to do any form of technique in the fibre art quilting area," she said.
What happened next was two years of weekly Zoom meetings during which they worked on their individual slices, a routine interrupted only by the odd holiday.
"It was a lot of hours, a lot of days," Sjoden said of group members exploring techniques and sharing what they had found out in pursuit of their artistic impressions.
"It was a really great sharing experience of encouraging each other and helping each other explore new avenues," she added.
Sjoden used a technique called thread painting, involving a myriad of fabrics and then threads of different colours to give the impression of paint. It is a technique that required hours of self-guided machine work.
Terrace artist Lois Acheson used a silhouette technique simplifying objects into shadowed outlines.
"To further this them I chose a single fabric with a range of one colour and utilized different values to add more interest to the background," she wrote in describing her contribution.
It was a full year before the artists met at a quilters' retreat in Kitwanga to place their pieces together for a visual update.
"The one common denominator of the photograph was going to be the guardrail," said Sjoden of a feature of the photograph's foreground. "So when we hung them beside each other we went, 'Oh my gosh. It worked.' It was so amazing."
She said the group hopes those viewing the finished product will be encouraged to visit the North Pacific Cannery, which is a national historic site.
The project is on display at The Palisades Café in Houston for the rest of November. Explanation cards under each of the five slices of the project carry the thoughts of the artists and describes their approach.
Although no schedule has yet been established for after Houston, the piece will take a turn being displayed in each of the artists' home community at some point. A permanent display location has yet to be decided.
