One of Vancouver’s most respected fabric artists, Jeannie Kamins, is off to new horizons with her upcoming exhibition at the Unit/Pitt Gallery from March 27 – April 7, 1984.
Jeannie continues an imaginative and highly charming approach in recycling fabric to create spirited figurative images – she has an uncanny eye for correlating the fabric’s pattern and colouring to suit its new role. She also throws in liberal doses of humour to help us look at ourselves as we really are.
Her Unit/Pitt exhibit focuses on portraits of friends as well as various individuals involved in Vancouver’s own cultural fabric. For the first time Jeannie has applied paint to her work, in this case it is used to model the faces, and we find a new vitality added to her already lively images. A sampling of the portraits include gourmet supreme Susan Mendelson and her twin sister Lynne, artist Alan Wood, broadcaster Eleanor Watchel, Vanguard editor Russell Keziere, and curator/writer Alvin Balkind.
Kamins says of her current direction, “I decided to make portraits by incorporating my people into everyday world images. The people would be the people I wanted to paint, and my messages would be related to the life of whom I was painting, but also common to all people”.
Unveiled for the first time will be one monumental work where Jeannie has left the fabric in the closet and attacked with paintbrush. Called THANK GOD THEY DON’T HAVE THE BOMB, this 6’x10′ oil on canvas painting is a portrait of the Social Credit Cabinet, feasting in interpretive dress. Written descriptions of each Minister’s “contributions to retraint” will be provided for the viewer.
The Gala Opening for this exhibition will be on March 26, 8 – 10 p.m.
