University of Manitoba Canada 1974-1982

After graduate school I was offered a teaching position at the University of Manitoba School of Art in Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada. Great school by the way, really great fine arts program. Looking at the job offer as a whole new adventure I found myself in my car loaded with all my personal belongings on the road headed straight north. Yes, it was quite the culture shock and it was hard settling in at first but I managed.Eventually I was able to find a studio that I shared with another faculty member in downtown Winnipeg and my Canadian art adventure began.

I carried with me a lot of the graduate school thoughts and ideas…earthy, organic, spontaneous, physical…and stayed with it for awhile but replaced my use of canvas with thin sheets of latex rubber. I could use them as a wrap or hang them in thin sheets…some sheets were supported or reinforced with string and woodhen stained or rubbed with water based paints. Over time the latex rubber when suspended by itself begins to dry out and become fragile so the more support and acrylic sealer you can use the better.

After spending a couple of years there I discovered Winnipeg had a large garment industry that specialized in winter coats and jackets. I visited a couple of the warehouses and found out they would be more than happy to give me as much of the scraps of fabric as I wanted. They had huge bags of small pieces left over from the cut patterns…bags of brightly colored fabric used as lining for down filled winter coats. I began to fill my studio with bags of fabric scraps…this started a whole adventure…new color, new ideas and ended up being the focus of my work the last few years in Winnipeg before returning to Texas.