Kathryn Ruppert

25 April 2002 - 1 June 2002
Opening Reception 25 April 2002 8pm

Front Gallery:

Delhi

“Artists working with textiles often tend to be marginalized; fabric is customarily allied with the domestic arts. Thus, much contemporary textile works deals with issues of materiality, the separation of art and craft, and the history of manual labour traditionally ascribed to women.” – Lise Hosein

Kathryn Ruppert was born in Delhi, a small farming community in Southern Ontario. Her father Steve Ruppert taught her oil painting at an early age, in the basement of their family home and her mother Patricia Ruppert taught her corking (a child’s knitting toy). She lived outside of Delhi, on a working tobacco farm until the age of eighteen when she left the farm to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. She graduated in the interdisciplinary Arts Program. On a vacation to Japan, the artist learned to crochet from Shigeko Takahashi (Obaachan). Initially to pass the time before a long train ride to Kyushu, in Southern Japan, the artist later took that knowledge and adapted it to her paintings.  Recently the artist acquired raw fleece from her aunt and uncle’s (Roger and Anne Van Houcke’s) sheep farm and taught herself to clean and manipulate the unspun fibres into yarn, combining elements of knitting and painting into a modern fine art craft.

Artist lecture: April 25, 7pm, Elisabeth Arkhipoff.