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Currently on view at ‘Environments for Reading’ at the Salmon Arm Art Centre, Salmon Arm B.C.
Slow Calendar, Cutblock Curtains
The Only Animal’s ‘Slow Calendar’ is a collaboration between Barbara Adler and emerging visual artists Kinar (Kira) Saragih, Sena Cleave and Megan Lane. 247 crocheted and knitted patches were stitched together in a hyperbolic crochet pattern, infesting the grid of calendar time with the uneven, expressive time of our bodies. When finished, the piece will use 366 patches – just over a year’s worth of days. The ‘Cutblock Curtains’ connect thread and yarn scraps gathered from our past projects to evoke the textures and shapes of a replanted cutblock near Barbara’s home. In many cultures, these clippings (‘orts’) are precious because they contain the energy of the maker. The public helped us sort and knot the materials at The Only Animal’s Slow Socials series, which featured live readings from “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and “Freedom is a Constant Struggle”, by Angela Davis.
‘Slow Calendar’ and ‘Cutblock Curtains’ are components of Slow Practice, a travelling work-in-progress textile installation by The Only Animal that will gradually transform into the stage environment for Mermaid Spring – an original, place-based music theatre concert premiering in 2026.
Materials: salvaged and saved yarns, threads and jewellery fittings; red alder windfall