Art Commissioned to Help Celebrate Saskatchewan's Legislative Building 100th Anniversary!

Miranda Jones with her installation at the legislature

          
























To help celebrate the 100th anniversay of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building, Saskatoon artist Miranda Jones was one of eight artists that were commissioned to create artwork that would explore the history and signficance of the Legislative Building.  Two components of this project was community engagement and legacy artwork.  During Jones' two week residency program at the legislature in Regina and through her creative envolvement with children in both Saskatoon and Regina, Miranda's large metal installation was a collaboration between herself and the children.   

Jones traced the beautiful silhouette's on her metal screen directly from the children's drawings, which in turn were a direct response to her wonderful gift for story telling, artistic vision and practice.

Miranda and Friends

The unveiling of Miranda Jone's piece and that of the other seven participants took place on December 5, 2012.  Each of the eight installations is currently displayed in a designated alcove in the rotunda area of the Legislative Building.  It is my hope that if you are in Regina, you will take the time to view each of these wonderful pieces of art!

How to Contribute to the Unity Quilt

  When I have asked people if they would be willing to participate and contribute hand written 'truths' for the Unity Quilt, the most commonly asked question is, "What do you mean by my truth?" Others respond that they either don't have a truth or positive affirmation that they tell themselves to help them reach their highest potential, or are not creative enough to write one. Clearly, these responses suggest that I need to clarify what I mean by my request.

So for today's blog, I have decided to provide a few varied examples that  have been offered. Each contribution has been stuffed with batting and secured with metallic thread on transparent 13" x 13" tulle blocks.  

These blocks will eventually be sewn together as they are added to the Unity Quilt.  Participants have not only written their own personal mantras or truths but many have written already existing spiritual or philosphical sayings that offer them inspiration, some participating artists have chosen to submit pieces within their own disciplines. I have attempted to chose blocks that represent a little from each of those possibilities.

In addition to the contributions provided from the public, I have also chosen to include selected hand written quotes from a wide variety of scriptures, philosophers, religious sages and spiritual authors alike.  The act of stitching these truths together onto the quilt, is my attempt to symbolically exemplify our oneness with all that is.

Unity Quilt Deconstruction and Reconstruction

For those of you that were at my last loop gallery show in June/July, I continue to work on my Unity Quilt, which is a collaboration between the public and myself.  As a bit of a refresher and for those of you who are familiar with the project and for those of you who are not familiar with this work, I had invited and continue to invite the public at large to contribute their hand written highest 'truths' or those guiding principles that help them achieve their highest potential. I had also created a mixed media installation piece to receive more hand written 'truth offerings' from gallery visitors so that the quilt could continue to grow  and circulate beyond loop gallery.

The quilt was still in progress at loop gallery with the possibility of also further modifying it.  As time wore on, I was visualizing different ways of creating each quilt block, so I decided to deconstruct  the 'Unity Quilt' that I had begun for my last show at loop gallery last June/July and as a result I am currently reconstructing it.  As part of the reconstruction phase, I decided to create blocks of repeated designs that I alternate between each of the 'truth' blocks.  

The motif for these blocks, is one that has been repeating itself in my work for the last few years and has come to represent that divine spark that resides in each and everyone of us.  Indeed in everything!  At the core of the design is the seed of life and surrounding it is a DNA strand.
I have included Fibonacci's number sequences beneath each motif which continues to grow with each individual block that I create. These sequences are included because they seem to draw upon that hidden truth, that all things in nature and indeed the entire universe began with a single point and their very proportions are constantly being repeated everywhere and in everything!

My Studio

The logical place to begin my first blog entry is to introduce you to my studio, this is where my all my creative ideas take shape.

The first photograph was taken within the first few weeks of moving to my new condo loft studio in Saskatoon at the end of April 2011.  It looks so tidy in this early photograph.  Trust me however, this is not the way it looks any more!  The only time it looks this good is if I have an open studio, then I spend the entire day before the opening madly cleaning and reorganizing! 

So... just in case you should decide to pop over and visit me at the studio, I have decided to provide you with a couple of pictures that reflect the normal state of my working space, which is so much more realsitic on an ongoing basis since I am involved with a number of different projects at any one given time.  This also relieves me of the responsibility of feeling that I must keep things more orderly, because after all this is a working studio and when it comes to any kind of cleaning, I would much prefer to make art!

Those tables are a little neater than usual and often get configured differently, depending on what I am doing.
Looks like I have room to serve you some tea too.  I hope you do drop by!