Katherine Boyer
The Grieving Bag, 2023. Seed beads on stroud cloth, cedar and fir 2x4’s, chord. Photo credit: Ateliers d’art de France
Artist statement
A bundle… of gathered… is a set of stacked 1x1’s supported and held together by a thin strap featuring a beaded sky above Beaudry Provincial Park, just West of Winnipeg, MB. The piece, and the place, represent the essential stage of gathering one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, and materials, to be able to make and generate change.
Meet you Across the Medicine Line is a story about family relocating from the United States to rehome in Canada. A journey that featured many struggles but ultimately leads to a new home amongst extended family in the Souris Valley.
The Grieving Bag documents the beginning and final stages of life of the artist’s father. A long-term process of grieving is felt, and chronicled in the work, with a terminal cancer diagnosis.
The Sky Shawl is a gift to the artists Aunt, featuring the same sky in the Grieving Bag as the shared place of birth in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The Sky Shawl illustrates family networks and honours the important work and research that her aunt undertakes.
Meet you Across the Medicine Line, 2020. Seed beads on stroud cloth, cedar and fir 2x4’s, chord.
Artist’s biography
Katherine Boyer (Métis/white settler) is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work is focused on methods bound to textile arts and the handmade - primarily woodworking and beadwork. Boyer’s art and research encompasses personal family narratives, entwined with Métis history, material culture, architectural spaces (human made and natural). Her work often explores boundaries between two opposing things as an effort to better understand both sides of a perceived dichotomous identity. This manifests in long, slow, and laborious processes that attempt to unravel and better understand history, environmental influences, and personal memories.
In the past year she has exhibited in significant exhibitions such as: Storied Objects (Remai Modern); Radical Stitch (Mackenzie Art Gallery); Kwaata-nihtaawakihk – A Hard Birth (Winnipeg Art Gallery); along with her solo exhibition How the Sky Carries the Sun, which has toured to multiple locations such as the Art Gallery of Regina, Platform Centre and is scheduled to exhibit into 2024/2025. Most recently Boyer was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award and a recipient of the Falconer Emerging Researcher Award. She currently holds a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba, School of Art.
