UNIVERSITY PARK — The HUB-Robeson Galleries presents ‘Embroidered Environments,’ featuring a selection of artwork by Amanda McCavour, in the HUB Gallery through Tuesday, Sept. 12.
McCavour works with stitching to create large-scale embroidered installations. By sewing into fabric that dissolves in water, she can build up stitched lines on a temporary surface. While sewing, she crosses the threads over themselves repeatedly. After the fabric has dissolved, the thread drawing can hold itself together, despite appearing as though it could easily unravel and fall apart at any moment.
Through experimentation and creation, McCavour investigates line in the context of embroidery, drawing and installation. She uses stitching to explore connections to home, fibers of the body and more formal considerations of thread’s accumulative presence. She is interested in thread’s assumed vulnerability, its ability to unravel and its strength when sewn together, and her works explore embroidery’s duality: its structural possibility versus its fragility and its subtle quality versus its accumulative presence.
McCavour earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from York University, where she studied drawing. In May 2014, she completed her master’s of fine arts in fibers and materials studies at Tyler School of Art. She most recently displayed her work in Canada in Ottawa and Vancouver as well as in Virginia Beach, Va. She has received numerous awards and scholarships from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Handweavers and Spinners Guild of America, The Ontario Crafts Council, The Ontario Society of Artists, The Surface Design Association and The Embroiderers Guild of America.
