No Ordinary Magic
104 pages
Published: September 12, 2023
Non-Fiction / Art & Architecture
Hardcover: 9781773103457 $40.00
Shortlisted, APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
Laurie Swim is an artist of extraordinary range and vision. For more than forty years, she has been among the most capable and passionate practitioners of textile art.
Published: September 12, 2023
Non-Fiction / Art & Architecture
Hardcover: 9781773103457 $40.00
Shortlisted, APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
Laurie Swim is an artist of extraordinary range and vision. For more than forty years, she has been among the most capable and passionate practitioners of textile art.
In her chosen art form, Swim captures the essence of the seacoast. For the ocean, she works with silk, pulling stitches until they pucker to create gentle ripples. For vegetation and seaweed, she combines quilting, embroidery, painting, dyeing, and other seemingly opposing techniques.
As award-winning writer Carol Bruneau suggests in No Ordinary Magic, it’s not only Swim’s unconventional use of materials that is distinctive, it’s her gift for narrative that makes her art both resonant and endlessly intriguing. In this retrospective volume, Bruneau explores Swim’s history, her defiance of convention, and her reinvention of quilts as paintings-made-of-fabric. The result is a profound exploration of Swim’s sometimes monumental yet astonishingly intimate work.
As award-winning writer Carol Bruneau suggests in No Ordinary Magic, it’s not only Swim’s unconventional use of materials that is distinctive, it’s her gift for narrative that makes her art both resonant and endlessly intriguing. In this retrospective volume, Bruneau explores Swim’s history, her defiance of convention, and her reinvention of quilts as paintings-made-of-fabric. The result is a profound exploration of Swim’s sometimes monumental yet astonishingly intimate work.
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Authors
Carol Bruneau is the award-winning author of nine books. Her reviews, essays, and articles have appeared across Canada, and she has previously taught courses on writing for the arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She lives in Halifax, NS.
Laurie Swim has worked as an artist for forty years, developing unique and innovative treatments to fashion her imagery in textiles with fabric and thread. She is the author of five books, including The Joy of Quilting (with an introduction by Alex Colville), Quilting, Rags to Riches: The Quilt as Art (with an introduction by Mary Pratt), and a children’s book entitled Hope and Survival on the Halifax Explosion.
Swims's works grace many private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Art Bank, Nova Scotia Designer Craft Council, the City of Toronto Art Collection, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
Awards
Shortlisted: APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
Reviews
“Impressively informative and a pure pleasure to simply browse through in full appreciation of a truly gifted textile media artist.” — Midwest Book Review
