As a CCEPS fellow I am grateful for the opportunity to archive the collection of Annette (Thorley) Françoise, a prolific textile fine artist, professionally lauded for her incredibly abstract quilts. Her archival materials lend themselves to the portrait of the artist in question and illustrate how thoughtful and inspired every piece was. I have been a long time admirer of fine art, particularly European surrealism constituting the likes of René Magritte, thus as an appreciator of the abstract I was intrigued by the textile medium. The beauty that lies in abstraction and Françoise’s original pieces is in part due to the freedom of perception and interpretation, they evoke feelings rather than prescribe them.
Françoise was an alumnus of the Claremont Colleges, receiving her MFA from Claremont Graduate in 1967, originally interested in sculpture art. However, it was a newfound interest in Amish quilts at the time that oriented her to textiles as a medium, this would come to be her entrée into the Toronto art scene. In the Toronto fine art scene her quilts were a welcome and eye-catching presence in galleries such as the Isaacs Gallery, the Atrium Gallery and the Gallerie Dresdnere to name a few. In the states her work was featured in the Deson-Zaks Gallery of Chicago and the Long Beach Museum of Art in sunny southern California in which she personally contributed to the legitimization of the textile medium in fine art spaces. In a piece profiling Françoise she discloses a motivation behind her proclivity: in the fabric she saw vibrant colors utilized by paintings waiting to be stitched together in their own ensemble.
At the end of my first week with the Françoise collection I am happy to say all of her materials have been surveyed, a processing plan has been conducted and processing of the collection is underway.