Till the Tide

Till the Tide, is a site-specific textile installation comprised of three handwoven Jacquard pieces. The installation is located on the Queen’s Landing steps, situated on the Halifax waterfront. These large-scale weavings portray a single image of an abandoned wooden pier truss in the harbor and are over laid with an altered quote from Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘By the Sea’.

The jacquard woven cloth is adapted from a photograph I took of an abandoned wooden pier truss within the harbour. Two lines of text are visible across the three weavings. The altered quote is from Emily Dickinson’s poem By the Sea. Jacquard woven fabrics allow for a large amount of detail to be rendered, and the finished textiles have a photographic quality.

The depicted pier trusses feel out of place. They are no longer in use but they still stand as a skeletal remnant of the past living in the present. I use these wooden beams to keep track of the sinking and rising tides as I make the daily walk to my studio. I’m drawn toward processes and concepts that are a push and pull between a reveal and an erasure. In this outdoor installation, I’m utilizing the tides, the harbour water reaches the weavings submerging the bottoms and then it pulls away. This is a unique opportunity to collaborate with the ocean tide that has been a habitual part of my life in Halifax. The water becomes another medium that highlights and also hides or obscures. The tide in this project is environmental, visual and conceptual presence. Emily Dickinson’s adapted text is a personal reflection about a lack of control and the desire to be part of reciprocal relationships, as in to move others and to also be moved. Although this project stems from very personal feelings, I believe the desire or search for mutual connections is a communal feeling, whether that be within a relationship with a person or with the natural world.

Images by Paul Atwood