[BCMA] Media Release: Comforter Art Action a call to contribute to "Social Wealth - The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

October 22, 2009
For immediate release

Lois Klassen’s Comforter Art Action a call to contribute  to "Social Wealth "
A Common Thread: Textiles from Stó:lō, South Asian and Mennonite Communities
The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford
32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford


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Abbotsford…. Artist Lois Klassen’s vision is of a bed piled high with luxuriant quilts to warm body and soul. Klassen’s Comforter Art-Action: Princess City  is an invitation to the people of the Fraser Valley to participate in generating this social wealth.  The installation is part of A Common Thread: Textiles from Stó:lō, South Asian and Mennonite Communities, currently on exhibit at The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, 32388 Veterans Way.

Klassen produces collective-action projects, performance, video and installation works. Since 2001 she has hosted Comforter Art-Action, an ongoing material response to human displacement that has involved over 200 individuals and groups from over 20 countries. The September 11 attacks, and the subsequent retaliatory strikes that produced millions of displaced people, was the impetus for her to send an invitation for contributions of fabric squares or textile art that she would incorporate into a ‘refugee blanket’. She learned how to make these blankets, for use in refugee camps, from her mother who was involved in the Mennonite Central Committee Canada.

Through Comforter Art-Action Klassen has made about 100 of these blankets to send overseas. Through discussions  with The Reach staff the focus for the Comforter Art Action: Princess City installation shifted to gathering quilts  for  those in need  in the local surrounding area. Klassen invites the community to contribute new hand-made quilts or purchased quilts or blankets for the bed on display in the gallery.  In early December The Reach will distribute them,  through the Fraser Valley Housing Network, to women-serving organizations to give to women in need.  According to Klassen, “Just as the bedding in the old story, “The Princess and the Pea” demonstrated great wealth and comfort, this pile of blankets in a museum today signifies our collective social capital.”

“In the exhibit “A Common Thread,” the quilts and blankets celebrate generosity and a concern for comfort, as well as skill and creativity, across ethnic, cultural and historic lines,” says Klassen. “They also make me imagine the people for whom the blankets were intended. I hope that Princess City also makes obvious that even in a well resourced city like Abbotsford, there are people requiring the assistance of the organizations that are part of the Fraser Valley Housing Network and encourages everyone to participate in assembling those resources.”

Klassen has exhibited and participated in the Means of Production Community Garden artists residency (Vancouver); Banff New Media Institute Liminal Screen Residency; Richmond Art Gallery’s Archive City; CityScape (North Vancouver), VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), The Western Front (Vancouver), Transportale (Berlin), and aceartinc (Winnipeg). She is currently an instructor and a Masters of Applied Art Candidate at Emily Carr University in Vancouver.

A Common Thread: Textiles from Stó:lō, South Asian and Mennonite Communities on exhibit till January 3, 2010 is a collaboration of  The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) Faculty of Arts, The UFV Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies, the Mennonite Central Committee BC(MCCBC), Stó:lō First Nations educators and artisans and the Maiwa Foundation.  A Common Thread explores a tapestry of cultural traditions from weaving to quilting to the story-telling that embroiders each piece of work.  For more information on Comforter Art- Action or A Common Thread or to make a donation of a quilt please contact Kat Wahamaa, Cultural Programs Manager at 604-864-8087 or email kwahamaa at thereach.ca

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Media Contact:
Kat Wahamaa
Cultural Programs Manager
t 604 864 8087 x 124
f 604 864 8048

The Reach
Gallery Museum Abbotsford
32388 Veterans Way
Abbotsford, BC V2T 0B3
thereach.ca<http://www.thereach.ca/>

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