I love you to the end of the universe and back
Brie Graham Watson
An exploration of Northern Vancouver Islands Fibreshed, home, and matrilineal lines.
“I Love You to the End of the Universe and back”
As children, my mom would say to my sister and me every night before bed, “I love you to the end of the universe and back.” We’d stretch our arms as wide as we could and say, “this much.” She’d always say, “even more.” Using
Informed by Shelly Niro’s work at the Vancouver Art Gallery, I am inspired by the way she honours the women in her family, creating work from a place of love and care. Her work moves me to reflect on the ways I could honour the women in my own family. Spending many hours speaking to my mother and grandmothers, the progression of this work is a reflection on and thinking through my love for them. I feel my project captures their softness, care, and strength and is a vehicle for larger theoretical ideas of what is intimate and private. Working with the language of craft and familial relations, I used Stephanie Syjuco’s book The Unruly Archive as a reference point for what it means to create a personal and protected archive. An archive that breathes.
To produce the materials in this work, I washed, carded, spun, dyed, and wove the fibre by hand ,with the support and knowledge of my community. My goal was to understand the full scope of what it takes to process a raw fleece from start to finish. Working consistently, this project has taken me over a year of labour, and remains a developing body of work. This process of learning and paying great attention to the time and effort that goes into textile production mirrors the care of building the familial archive.
All materials used in this work were sourced from within an hour’s drive of my hometown, Port Hardy, BC, on Northern Vancouver Island. The alpaca fleece was generously gifted by Sointula Lodge, from their alpacas, Uncle and Patches. Natural dyes were gathered from my mother’s garden and foraged along the shores of Hardy Bay.
The final work weaves together both materiality and my connection to family, emphasizing the importance of understanding these through land and place.
Alpacas in Sointula BC, this image was taken when I went to go visit the alpacas at the Sointula Lodge. Before using the fibre we had to wash it. I had two friends come over and help me wash it over a two week period.
Once the fibre was washed I carded it using a carding machine. The carded fibre was then spun into yarn.
I dyed the spun yarn with dahlias, goldenrod, alder bark, and fireweed. The skein farthest to the left is dyed with fermented alder bark. I fermented the alder bark with copper for two weeks to get a light tan shade. Historically the bark would be fermented for years to achieve a deep red. The next two are both dyed with Dahlias dried and preserved from my mother’s garden, the one closest to the left is treated with an iron bath to get a more greeny shade of yellow. The final two are dyed with goldenrod collected from the front of my childhood home. The first skein was put in a dye bath with onion skins after to achieve a deeper yellow, while the final skein is golden rod with an iron bath.
