An Ode to Phoebe

With An Ode to Phoebe, I bring my contemporary textile work into conversation with the hand-painted china of Phoebe Watson created more than one hundred years ago. In setting my wall-mounted textiles and freestanding sculptural forms alongside Phoebe’s historic painted ceramics, I reflect on the importance of plants and pollinators in southern Ontario over time and on the ecosystems of the Grand River Valley and the Niagara Escarpment—places shaped by time, human activity, and seasonal cycles.

This body of work is a meditation on time, place, and materials. I am working in the 2000s with textiles and natural fibres in the Niagara Escarpment, while Phoebe Watson (1858–1947) worked in the early 1900s using paint and china in the Grand River Valley. Phoebe is best known for her expressive florals and landscapes painted on china, but she also worked in watercolour and oil, documenting the land around her with care and sensitivity. Despite this century-long distance, I feel a strong kinship with her. Like me, she was a gardener, an observer, and someone compelled to present plants as more than decoration—as living, essential presences. Her work captures a moment when decorative arts were deeply entwined with daily life and landscape appreciation.

In my own work, I draw with thread. My landscapes and nature studies are built stitch by stitch, often appearing photographic from afar, yet revealing dense layers of colour, texture, and labour up close. For this exhibition, I combine modern longarm stitching with stumpwork, a historically rich embroidery technique that allows me to create three-dimensional, sculptural forms, as well as millinery and basketry techniques. These techniques are not decorative choices; they are tools for close environmental observation and for storytelling.

This exhibition is also an assertion. I reject the commonly held view, formalized by the British Royal Academy in the late 1700s and persisting to this day, that fibre art and painted china are “lesser arts”. Through An Ode to Phoebe, I aim to show that thread and ceramics can carry just as much expressive, conceptual, and aesthetic weight as traditional painting or sculpture. Across a century, Phoebe and I are united by our love of the land and our desire to honour it through making.