SiSTER SISTeR | Kathy Pick
Haida Gwaii Museum at Ḵay Llnagaay, Skidegate, BC - To Dec 24
It was a sense of loneliness and isolation from her women friends during COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that first sparked the inspiration behind SiSTER SISTeR, artist Kathy Pick’s latest exhibition at the Haida Gwaii Museum. Woven and stitched together with materials like bark, dried kelp, seashells, rusted metal, pine needles, bones, old T-shirts, waxed linen and wasp paper, the pieces reference sisterhood not just in form but also in process.
To create the 36-foot-long Rainbow Serpent piece that hangs from the gallery’s ceiling, Pick invited friends over for coffee and to chat while they cut up old T-shirts she had sourced from thrift stores. These were later woven into the serpent’s body. “To me, that was a really important part of the whole process, was to include some of the community,” says Pick, who also priced the pieces on display relatively low for local residents.
“I started thinking about how important some of these women were and how much they influenced what I did, and even up to a point, what I did with my work,” she says. These relationships are “not of blood but …of heart,” and Pick wanted to communicate that importance through her work. Though each piece in the show is unique, some are “related,” says Pick, and paired together in ways that remind her of sisters. The materials used are all gathered, processed and woven by hand; they reflect Pick’s long-standing
relationship to the natural world and to Haida Gwaii in particular, where she has lived since the 1970s.
Some of those who attended the show’s opening told Pick that her art inspired them to make contact with old friends. “That’s what a lot of my work is about, is trying to connect people with nature, or connect people with others. Make them think a little bit,” she says.
