Autumn-Winter, Spring-Summer: Frilly Audio Speakers

In the spring of 2022 (before my arrival at The Only Animal), Denise Oleksijczuk invited me to create a piece for Cabinet, a tiny art gallery staged in a vitrine on the fourth floor of Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. The first piece, ‘Autumn/Winter 2023-4’ prompted an ongoing process in relation to fashion colours and the changing vegetation of a replanted logging cut near where I live in xwesam/Roberts Creek.

I machine-sew silk fabric cases to cover a pair of audio speakers and cover these with a growing collection of hand stitched hyperbolic crochet. To start, I worked in response to a single logging cut, which flanks a forest service road that connects to forested trails I used to explore with my horse, Monet. As Monet has aged, I’ve included colour prompts from flatter trails, still within the xwesam/Roberts Creek watershed on the lower slopes of Mount Elphinstone.

My initial premise was to set up a hard contrast between ‘natural’ seasonal rhythms and industrial or commercial labour, creating a project structure where my hand labour would always run late against the demands of fashion, ie. “capitalism’s favourite child”(Werner Sombart). Eventually, my horse and I tired of slogging up the same hill. I gave myself mild tendonitis from daily crochet and ruined a batch of beautifully dyed fabric by sewing in a hurry. Now, I hibernate and meander as needed.

When this project is working towards a showing, I re-cover the speakers roughly every six months using seasonal colours predicted for the following year. In early iterations, the speaker cases were commercially dyed and the crochet was stitched using threads I natural-dyed. Now, I natural dye all the materials. The fabric colours are inspired by fashion palettes released by Premiere Vision, a French textile trend forecaster. The crochet colours are based on photographs of the cut from the previous year –– I try to guess what the vegetation will look like as it grows. My future-sight is foggy in comparison to the visions of the fashion forecasters. These come to pass because they’re promoted at industry trade shows, part of a commercial chain.

Since starting this project, I’ve noticed a gradual simplification of the colour palette I see at the logging cut, as the planted Douglas firs gradually crowd out the early ‘volunteer’ species. Periodically, roadside trims tidy the edges and edit out some of my favourite species (hardhack, pearly everlasting, red alder) and colours ( purple/gold/back, cream/sage/tan, green/yellow). At the end of summer and sometimes late into October, key colours include the grey road dust that coats the dry vegetation, alongside the uncanny cover up of blue skies under wildfire haze. New logging cuts open up all the time, even as intact forest become increasingly rare.