Growing up in a household of strong women, it was natural for Red Deer artist Matt Gould to someday want to tackle symbolic female portraiture.
Four years after his show Totems of the Masculine sewed portraits of men in fabric and leather, Gould has created Exemplars of the Feminine, which will be on displayed until Jan. 6 at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery.
The word exemplar is used instead of totems to describe his upright portraits of 16 women — created with wool, cotton, linen and leather symbolically wrapped around four-by-four posts — because Gould didn’t want this exhibit to seem like a “chapter two” of his 2014 show.
Also, his mother and his sisters have inspired him his entire life, he added, “and I think of them as being (powerful) examples of the female.”
More than a year and a half ago, Gould put out a call for women interested in exploring ideas of womanhood. Sixteen responders (11 of them fellow artists) filled out personality questions, listing their successes, failures, childhood heroes and goals.
They also gave Gould boxes of meaningful artifacts — photographs and letters, stones, bits of jewelry, and even their children’s baby teeth — to help with his symbolic depictions of their inner selves.
Gould envisioned museum goers circling his abstract columnular portraits and reading from them clues about the kinds of women they are based on.
He stitched religious symbols on a portrait of a spiritual subject. A guitar shape represents another woman’s musicality, while there are children’s rhymes and fashions stitched onto other poles.
None of the subject’s faces appear. (Even the few artworks featuring embroidered faces are of persons who are important to the women depicted.)
But look carefully and you will see a star — representing Wonder Woman, one of the subject’s heroes — extending from the top of a pole, and scars stitched to the portrait of a woman who suffered trauma.
Gould admitted the tall, narrow shapes were inspired by African grave markers. This is especially notable since three of the portraits are rendered all in black for the three women who started with his project, but died before the exhibit opened.
One of these women was the artist’s mother, Mavis Gould, who passed away at age 96 in August 2017. Her portrait includes an outline of her childhood cat standing guard, and a heart aflame, representing his mom’s passion.
“Her death has been very transformational for me. In some ways, her passing has given me the courage to do this,” he admitted.
Gould, an award-winning artist who has exhibited all over the country, enjoyed spending time with the 16 women when they met at the beginning of the project.
He thinks of his diverse columnular artworks as being reminiscent of trees, maypoles or even memorials, each reflecting the nature and personality of the subjects.
There will be a First Friday opening reception for the exhibit from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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