Wendy Cain Cathryn Miller Gina Page Carolyn Qualle Susan Warner Keene
	Artwork Artist Statement Biography Contact

"No two seasons ..."   2004 34" x 27" x 1" 86.4 x 68.6 x 2.5 cm handmade flax paper My most recent body of work is based on excerpts from the writings of three English writers who described their encounters with the southern Ontario landscape in the 1830s, Anna Jamieson, Susanna Moodie, and Catharine Parr Traill. Their published observations, which reveal a shared ambivalence toward the landscape, now form a part of the historical record that may prove more durable than the forests they describe. This piece, based on a an excerpt from Catharine Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada (1836), can be read by starting at the upper right corner and reading down .

Semblance #3     1998 handmade flax paper, linen cord, unspun flax 18.25" x 21.5" x 1.75" 46 x 55 x 4.4 cm By working with the potential of flax pulp to develop high rates of shrinkage, translucency, and surface texture, I am able to get closer to issues that interest me, such as the effects of experience, time, biological change -- phenomena that I think of as the scar tissue of life -- and to approach qualities like vulnerability and a certain delicacy, a poised quality, the moment of the indrawn breath.

For several years my work in fibre has concentrated on the membrane of the "page" as an expressive form. As a medium, papermaking attracts me because of the congruity between the material aspects of the process and human physical concerns: wetness, pressure, thickening, dessication - the paper undergoes these successive conditions. Responding to nature and circumstance, the sheet of paper embodies experience, as we do. The ability of flax pulp in particular to develop high rates of shrinkage, translucency, and surface texture makes possible a language that can speak of the effects of time and change.

At the same time, paper is culturally linked to ideas, language, and communication, crucial features of our humanity.  I have often used the familiar layout of the folio -- two facing pages -- as a suggestive format for several series of paper works concerning our desire to document and describe.

My work explores implications of embedding image and language within the paper, to give  the "narrative" a material presence. In earlier work the body and the codex form have been important. In recent pieces, I have given  greater priority to text, allowing words to form the entire structure. Here, the shapes and patterns of individual letters, words, and phrases dictate the physical form of the "page" when inscribed in high shrinkage pulps. The result is a fretwork of language which casts its shadow on the supporting wall.

This approach emerged from several overlapping areas of interest: in narrative as a kind of personal mapping; in the possibilities of language as physical form; and in paper as the substance rather than the traditional substrate of a work of art. My objective with this work was to explore the space between literal meaning and physical presence, to generate new forms from the shapes, rhythms, and meanings of language as it encounters the physical nature of paper pulp.

Susan Warner Keene is a Toronto artist working in textiles and handmade paper who has ben exhibiting her work in Canada and abroad since 1980. Her work can be found in public, corporate, and private collections, and in 1991 she was awarded the Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in the Crafts. In addition to her gallery exhibitions and commission work, Keene has been active as a teacher, writer, editor, and curator. Her most recent solo exhibition was Verso at the Durham Art Gallery, Durham, Ontario. More of her work can be viewed on the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art web site at www.ccca.ca.

Swkeene@sympatico.ca