![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/rsz_brant1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nChelsea Brant in front of her work<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next door to her is the work of Montreal based Marielle Saucier. She is a self-described textile artisan. Her work is a reminder of how traditional crafts are not limited decoration. Originally a student of music and psychology, Saucier then studied at the Institute of Crafts and the Centre for Contemporary Textiles of Montreal. Her work focuses on the theme of the tension between order and freedom. This tension is essentially expressed visually in terms of straight lines and curves respectively. The artworks on display here are canvases embroidered \u2013 sometimes including beads \u2013 that feature amorphous shapes. There is a wonderful quiet lyricism to all the pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nMarielle Saucier in her booth<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The work of Toronto multidisciplinary artist Ehiko Odeh is located next to Saucier\u2019s. Odeh studied fine art at OCADU, with a minor in creative writing. In this show her focus is on advertisements featuring hair products for Africans. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria, hence her interest in African advertising in particular. These paintings are \u2018Warholesque\u2019 in style, that is, a riff on pop art roughly echoing Warhol\u2019s Campbell soup series. One work consists of two columns of ten small square paintings of such adverts. They are playful, energetic and loosely painted, suggesting an interest in recording style and language, rather than wanting to copy them faithfully.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nEhiko Odeh with her advertisements<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In another aisle are the textiles of Sarah Zanchetta. She is a graduate of OCAD University and has a master of visual studies from the University of Toronto. The theme of her textile work is a little idiosyncratic, namely, poisonous plants. Her interest is in our increasingly limited connections to nature. I guess that our inability to recognize the poisonous plants that grow all around us is emblematic of this loss of connection with nature. Indeed, her whole approach to the subject is itself idiosyncratic. We see a beautiful display of embroidered images of deadly nightshade. As well, she has theatrically installed velvet gloved hands holding up off-white cloths stained by poisonous plants. \u2018Imaginative and delicious\u2019 is the best way to describe this work.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nSarah Zanchetta among her textiles<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the same aisle is located four small sculptures by Heather Rule. Rule is a self-taught artist from Toronto. She is a living embodiment of the fact that one doesn\u2019t need a formal education in art to be a great artist. This work is stunning in its understated way. The base of each of the four sculptures is a ceramic vase-like figure with elongated gesturing hands. Placed on the top of each ceramic figure is a paper bag form. We have a raven\u2019s head, two masklike heads with carefully cut-out features, and a block head with a hand holding a cigarette. Overall, they are wonderfully playful. The gesturing of the ceramic hands plays off beautifully against the paper forms ontop. One of the most difficult things to do in art is to make work that is just right in the balance of its elements, both formally and in content. Rule has done this brilliantly here.<\/p>\n\n\n