An Artistic Collaboration through time

“It is through our material makings that we can touch time. We can reach forward and also backward in time with our ‘things’,” says Megan Samms, the creator of the body of work called, this is how we can visit, currently exhibiting at the Rotary Arts Centre in the Tina Dolter Gallery. “I feel that I can communicate across time more effectively through making than with my words and body as it is now, especially with textiles, which can last hundreds of years.” Megan Samms found her great-great-Grandmothers hand woven textile more than 10 years ago.

It was wrapped around a rusted pipe in the ruins of her great-great Grandparent’s home. Megan lives across the road from the ruins and she walks past the stone foundations and hearths of their home daily.

“When I found that textile, it just felt like such an intergenerational connection through time, a touchable one.” Megan had already been a weaver herself for more than 5 years. She wished she could have learned weaving directly from her great-great-Grandmother but felt the synergy that this craft had been a tradition in her family line that had still made its way to her. “My family is very disarticulated,” Megan explains, “they are very connected to the land and this

place but not necessarily to each other. There is a lot of missing information.

I always kind of mourned that.” Megan carried the textile with her for many years, waiting to find the right way to collaborate with her relative. “I wanted to respond to her weaving, not copy it.” About a year ago, Megan began the process of creating her own textile, responding to elements of her great-great-grandmother’s work, but adding in her own artistry and voice. She then had

the two weavings photographed together by Kristin Pope in five generations of her family’s homes, from the ruins of her great-great-grandmother’s home, to her own. The weavings, the photographs and other family heirlooms make this exhibition. “This work has been a long time in the making,” says Megan. “It is medicine making.”

this is how we visit

By Megan Samms with Kristin Pope

At the Rotary Arts Centre Tina Dolter Gallery

Sept. 25 - Nov. 15 2024