Month: April 2022

As of this week I have started to put the finishing touches on Annette’s small but sweet collection. I have completed the front matter almost to it’s entirety, with just the proofreading left. Front matter included the scope and content of the collection, biography of the contributor, provenance establishment, date ranges and series level descriptors to aid in future research. When attempting to gather the date range Annette’s collection spanned, I was able to once again familiarize myself with parts of the collection that I had forgotten about. On the other hand, I was able to find new glimpses of the collection that did not catch my eye before. Though the date range of the materials is tentative, due to my wish to double check (to make sure everything is being catalogued with the highest accuracy), it appears the collection’s breadth encompasses 1963-2002. With that being said, Annette’s collection in it’s own way is a piece of living history. 1963 was the year that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and also the year my grandparents met. They would go on to marry 2 years later, as of 2022 they just celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. All this to say, though much has changed since 1963, Annette’s collection serves as a relic of a past that gets further and further away in the rear view mirror of time. Collections like Annette’s, as well as others that are processed by CCEPS fellows, Special Collections and beyond, provide us with windows to bygone eras.

This may be my last post on Annette’s collection, as there is not much of the process left. However, I look forward to her collection becoming a part of the wide repository of research materials available to the Claremont Colleges, in which she can provide perspective to other inquirers. As for me, I want to thank Annette and her carefully curated materials for orienting me (even as a novice observer) to textiles, specifically quilts, as a medium for abstract fine art. It has been an absolute pleasure to process this collection as a CCEPS fellow under the direction of Special Collections and Lisa Crane. Lastly, thank you to my supervisors Lisa and Ayat, my experience with this collection and others has been a wonderful and formidable experience as a first year graduate student.

As I get closer to finishing the archival process of preserving Annette’s collection, I can’t help but feel like I will always remember the way her pieces exposed me to an entirely new fine art medium. I had been familiar with textile pieces, but primarily tapestries. Until this collection I had never seen quilts serve such an artistic purpose. As I inch closer to finishing this process I can somewhat grasp the amount of finesse (Thorley) Françoise utilized in order to make such coherent yet striking pieces. While putting the finishing touches on the collection and assessing the scope of the materials I was rereading all of her accomplishments outlined in her CV and it reacquainted me with the breadth of her contribution to the textile fine art space. Her prestige is unmistakable, but in her writings and professional communications there is also an unmistakable humility. Despite many awards, published reviews raving about her work, commissions and exhibitions it is clear to me Annette never stopped seeking to evolve. Through that evolution she maintained her originality and novelty, a dexterous feat in which she makes fluidity appear easy, despite the many challenges humans face while attempting to grow.

This collection offered me the opportunity to experience something new, my guess is many observers felt this way in the presence of Annette’s work. This speaks to the many pieces’ longevity and consistency tantamount to being a fixture in the Toronto fine art scene. I am inspired by women like Annette, who put their own spin on an underrepresented path and truly make it their own. Some of my final thoughts while processing this collection revolved around how she was very much an artist cut from a different cloth, and how rare that can be in an epoch like this. While others strived to model masterpieces, she achieved optimal distinctiveness. In the same vein, I am reminded of an excerpt from The Great Gatsby when I think of this collection: “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.