Skip to content

Uncommon Threads join ideas

Red Deer textile artist Matt Gould manages to get complex ideas across using a simple needle and thread in his retrospective exhibit, Uncommon Threads, at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery.
C05-ArtistMattGould
Fabric artist Matt Gould poses with pieces from his current show uncommon threads at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery.

Red Deer textile artist Matt Gould manages to get complex ideas across using a simple needle and thread in his retrospective exhibit, Uncommon Threads, at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery.

One of his quilt-sized pieces, the wall-hanging Hoppy in Troubled Times features a giant replica of his childhood stuffie — a soft, pink rabbit he still has at home.

Looking well cuddled, but little the worse for wear, this large version of Hoppy is contrasted with some sketchy machine-stitched outlines of tanks and bomber planes. In the distance, stick figures can be seen being blown up by artillery, a house is on fire, and some trees are burning.

“I was pretty disgusted with the Iraq War,” recalled Gould, who wanted to create a linen-on-blanket piece in 2006 that juxtaposed the comforting image of a kid’s toy with the horrors of war, which many children in the world experience.

“It’s like the close-ups you sometimes see (in the news) of a child’s toy lying in the mud. It represents the loss of innocence, or the loss of life,” said Gould.

Another of his darker pieces features the head and torso of a Jamaican man and the words “batty boy,” an anti-gay slur used on the island.

Gould was inspired to create this work, in the shape of an African grave marker, after reading the Thomas Glave story Out There. It’s about an openly gay Jamaican man who returns to the house of his dead mother and is burned alive in an exorcism by townsmen.

“Jamaica has a very poor record on gay rights,” said Gould, who has a same-sex partner, and has created other works along this theme.

Perhaps the most moving is My Lady of Mayerthorpe. Shaped like a mini-shrine, the piece is actually a textile portrait of his mother at age 89, with loose threads and knots representing the vestiges of time on her face.

Gould stitched on symbols of her love, her family home, and her athleticism in her younger days.

And around his mom’s figure are the words “sadness,” “guilt” and “never embarrassed.” An accompanying write-up gives more detail: His mom said she was sad when Gould told her of his homosexuality in the mid 1970s because her son’s life would be harder than most people’s; she felt guilty at the idea that, somehow, she was responsible for his sexuality; but was never embarrassed because she’s proud of her child.

Gould grew up in Edmonton with a love of drawing and painting. After high school, he moved to Toronto and tried a couple of post-secondary programs — starting with radio and television and switching to animation. He eventually quit both to focus on his own art and book illustration.

Some years later, Gould graduated from the Vancouver Film School and worked in movies, until he decided the crazy schedules were “ridiculous.”

He spent time in art auctioneering and on cruise ships as a youth program supervisor — a position that, along with his singing training, gave him a good basis for stepping in as artistic director of Treehouse Youth Theatre in Red Deer.

Although Gould came here in 2003 “for love” — his partner is a local accountant — it was the move to Central Alberta, and a recommendation from local artists that he join the Alberta Craft Council, that put him on the path to making his acclaimed textile creations. (He recently received a best mid-career artist award in a show of fine crafts from the three Prairie provinces, which is also at the Red Deer museum.)

Gould uses natural, subtle colours, which are less common in the realm of textile art, as well as stitched wording. The 55-year-old joked that he puts “the text back in textiles.”

He likes that there’s something “slightly subversive” about a man working with fabrics, usually considered a women’s pursuit. “We are what we are. We’re all a combination of male and female,” said the artist, whose grandfather used to hook rugs.

He also enjoys the “anti-technology” aspect of cutting and stitching. And for a guy who’s admittedly a restless soul, Gould believes there’s something “zen” about the act of sewing.

“I enjoy when something is handmade and you can see the knots in it.”

His Uncommon Threads exhibit continues to Aug. 26.

lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com