Mornings at the Press
Monoprints and embosses from a daily on-site small loom handweaving of Seine cotton twine.
Handmade inks from lake dyes (cochineal, brazilwood, chamomile, black walnut and myrobalan) and pigments (indigo and red ochre) on St. Armand abaca and cotton paper and Stonehenge cotton paper, brush dyed paper with madder and weld, indigo dipped paper, handmade indigo wax crayon and indigo watercolor paint.
My use of colour contrasts with how I approach weaving which is planned and pre-tested for density once washed. When colour is introduced in woven or printed work, it is at once scientific, intuitive and a barometer of how I feel. Leftover dye baths from plants, insects, and earth pigments are transformed into lakes to extract the pigment. These pigments are the base for explorations of drawing inks, printmaking inks, watercolor paint, wax crayons, and pastels.
In printmaking, some of my recent explorations are brush dyeing the paper with natural dyes prior to printing, preparing monotypes plates of handmade inks from lakes to transfer the dried inks onto damp paper when run through the press. Experimenting with thickened inks made from pigment and a binder for relief prints, drawing or painting by hand on a finished print. The joy is in the process, by the end of a print session all the leftover prepared colours get combined. Provoking accidents and surprises. My favorite prints are the ones in which I can no longer trace the steps it took to make it.
Learning historic knowledge and creating my own personal stories and relationships with each specific colour is developed slowly. Every colour has a scent, a texture, that I learn to recognize. Each colour has a temperature and duration for fugitive or stable results. Each print is a record of intuitive colour process.
Anie Toole received the 2022 DesignTO Founders’ Award for her participation in the collaborative exhibit “Shared Terrain” shown at Harbourfront Centre’s Artport Gallery and is the 2021 Emerging Fine Craft Award Recipient for Quebec City and Chaudière-Appalaches region. She has received funding from SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, Canada Council for the Arts and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec. She holds an MFA from Memorial University of Newfoundland (2021), a Fine Craft diploma in Constructed textiles from Maison des métiers d’art de Québec (2018), and a BSc Honours in Mathematics from the University of Ottawa (2001). She was awarded residencies at La Bande Vidéo and Penland School of Craft and exhibits her work across North America. Weaving and natural dye are at the core of her studio practice and extend into printmaking, clay, and sound explorations. Her work materializes translanguaging through a transdisciplinary practice.
