CARNEGIE CHRISTMAS
Unique pieces made by area artists delight
The Carnegie Gallery has been transformed into an enchanted world.
A world where clocks are inhabited, not to mention seriously quirky, thanks to Roger Wood.
A world where Santa Claus doesn’t stuff stockings, he fits into them. Monika Shedden’s art doll Santa is just the right size for a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, and you could stuff him into one of Cornelia Wilhelm’s fabulous felted Christmas stockings.
The gallery’s Christmas Market offers paintings, photographs, ceramics, glass, jewelry, textiles and tree ornaments, all handmade by leading local artists.
Wilhelm, a Hamilton textile artist and a new addition to the market, has a passion for sewing.
“I’ve been sewing and working with fabric my entire life, having had a great teacher in my mother, who was herself an accomplished seamstress and the owner of her own dress shop in Hamilton,” she tells me.
An avid recycler, Wilhelm makes tea cosies, bags, hats, Christmas stockings and tree ornaments from felted wool.
“I first began working with felted wool about 10 years ago, buying sweaters from second-hand shops and using a hot water process to felt them. I love the sculptural quality of working with wool fabric.”
Wilhelm’s creations boast wonderfully hued and intricate patterns. She embroiders and appliqués her hats with stylized flowers, each one strikingly different from the other. Flowers, paisley forms and insects enrich her padded and beaded tree ornaments. And her substantial Christmas stockings, embellished with flowers, curl at the toes.
“More even than painting and drawing, working with fabrics has always held a special appeal for me,” she says.
“It’s a medium which offers a uniquely vast range of possibilities and applications for me to explore. The result is an art form which I
find extremely fulfilling.”
Shedden, a supertalented Dundas dollmaker, fashions a variety of magical, gorgeously garbed characters such as elves, fairies and abundantly bearded types that can easily pass for Santas.
One such Santa, a rosy-red-cheeked, bespectacled guy, stands about two feet tall. He sports a red and gold hat topped with a bell, a red jacket and wide trousers tucked into soft red boots that turn up like jesters’ shoes.
Wood’s timepieces, or klockwerks as he calls them, are unique and whimsical batteryoperated clocks. He constructs them at his Queenston Road studio from recycled and found objects such as machine parts, bits of metal, wire, paper and tiny figurines.
His clock on wheels incorporates an almost surrealist domestic setting. A man and woman sit among furnishings that include a yellow gramophone, a red tree, a tiny white cup and saucer, and some small birds.
Birds are one of Lori Skinner’s many interests. A wood carver, she aims for the lifelike in the sense that her birds are inspired by real ones.
She’s carved about 30 species of birds, but she also tackles fish, fruit, vegetables and doll heads with historical hairstyles.
Equally great offerings include those made by Donna Ibing, Diane Irons, Katherine Matwiyiw, Renate Minoo, Paull Rodrigue, Lorraine Roy, Barb Sachs, Paul Simon, Hugh Widdup and many more.