The Flight [Cage]: Anne Steves

Anne Steves is a Welsh/Canadian multidisciplinary artist living and working in Cumberland, Vancouver Island. She works with material and social practices that share a repetitive quality (rug-making, fly-tying, casting, embroidery, string games, storytelling, handwriting). In her art practice, Steves is concerned with the role of distance and contact in building belonging in our contemporary communities and environments. After collecting narratives of our local and personal connections to place, Steves develops material projects that allow us to engage with each other, our environments, and other species, more deeply. Through re-working, re-learning, and re-telling in different spatial and community contexts her work attempts to provide a sense of stability during times of social and personal crisis.
In the project 'The Flight [Cage]', Anne Steves is working with the rug form as a transportable space for connection, vulnerability, and storytelling. Her current rug works are in the shape of dead birds using images sourced from distant friends and acquaintances. In Welsh mythology birds are messengers, shape shifters, companions and carriers of the soul. It is with this connection to the avian world in mind, that she aims to create space for thoughtfulness and empathy during moments of trouble. Each rug is paired with a QR coded tag linking to a website where texts, images and soundbites describe our psychological connections to birds and each other through these times of ecological and social crisis.
This project is supported by the BC Arts Council
photo credit Joslyn Kilborn at Cumberland Studio
https://theflightcage.myportfolio.com