Image + Cloth: workshop with Joanna Schleimer

An emerging multi-award winning textile artist and weaver based in Hamilton, Joanna Schleimer’s weaving focuses on creating delicate, personal and nostalgic woven textiles using fine thread. She is inspired by textiles that have had a life before, handed down to loved ones by family members. All of her work echoes this reverence and respect for the past and previously cherished textiles.

Though the themes of the preciousness of human relationships and the sentimentality they invoke imbues her work, she is equally inspired by the yarn and its fineness. Upon closer examination of her weaving, the
off-white woven surface is a combination of transparency and opaqueness, revealing a form that emerges, delicately and finely woven, often in an inlay technique, at other times embroidered. These inlayed forms, serene and ephemeral, allude to some past life or tradition that once existed. Depending on proximity, the image is revealed.  These combination of elements are repeated throughout Schleimer’s body of work and imparts it with an intimacy embellished with preciousness.


While being a teaching assistant in the Material Arts Department at OCADU, she has already had several exhibitions and received a commission for the President’s Office at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, where she obtained her Bachelor of Design and a university medal for Best in Program.  Joanna had a residency at Harbourfront Centre’s textile studio, and is a past member of the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-Operative.

In this workshop, weavers will have the opportunity to embed personal imagery into warp and weft.  Participants will explore various woven image-making techniques including inlay, brocade, boutonne, embroidery and tapestry techniques as well as digital printing in a sampler-like fashion.

Workshop details:   Burr House, 528 Carrville Road, Richmond Hill. June 13-16 2016. 9am-4pm. $350. For more details, contact Line Dufour at linedufour.tapestry@gmail.com. To see more of Joanna’s work, go to her website www.joannaschleimer.com.