Lead Lines

Leadline: a nautical surveying tool made of lead and rope, used to measure water depth and collect floor samples.

With the queer urge to know and love oneself, I am reaching into the depths of familial memory to learn about my late grandmother, Marion Joy Reid. Who is this person I am connected to? Who is the quilter, the mother, the daughter, the twin, the grandmother, the friend, the original family glue? It’s taken me over twenty years since her death to ask these questions.

Lead Lines explores multigenerational family dynamics and intergenerational gifts, trauma, and memory, holding these complexities in queerness. Using the quilts Marion made in her later life as familial leadlines, I interviewed her five children in their homes. I studied five of her quilts, one from each household. The quilts ended up being the way of getting to her story. This was an uncomfortable and, at times, devastating process of receiving oral histories within a family full of silence. It informed me as much about my grandma as it did about who I am: a non-binary artist who unintentionally created an art practice with a quilted centre.

A leadline produces a single-point data reading, and it is the cartographer’s job to interpret it and understand its relation to other data points. They ultimately strive to create a map of something they cannot experience. Lead Lines is an act of translation, transformation, and transfusion, and the installation echoes these three parts in audio, paper quilts, and furniture. The audio work explores the incomplete and sometimes contradictory memories tilled up within the family during the research of this project. The paper quilts are leadline manifestations, transforming the original quilts with memory into new understandings of the past. Three generations are present in the gallery, as represented by the furniture and paper quilts. Viewers are welcome to sit on the furniture to embody the work.

With immense gratitude, Brenda Mabel Reid would like to thank their family–Jeff, Scott, Steve, Colleen, and Bonnie–for their participation and vulnerability. They would also like to thank the following people for their role in the project: Jo El-dik – Artist Assistant; Sheila McMath – Curatorial Support; Julie Hall – Project Management Consultant; Jacob Irish – Audio Technician; Geoff Martin – Writing Coach; Brendan Lacy – Supportive Spouse. Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous financial support.

Artist Bio

Brenda Mabel Reid is an emerging non-binary visual artist with a social practice. Their work explores friction within power dynamics in Canadian society, including our structures, systems, and beliefs. Their practice includes textile, print, sculpture, installation, audio, and animation. Brenda completed their Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Architectural Studies at the University of Waterloo. They have completed residencies in Kitchener, Hamilton, Guelph, and St. John’s. Brenda has received grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, and the City of Kitchener. They are based in the Haldimand Tract and reside in Kitchener.