My recent path

I have taken a bit of a winding road to arrive at the piece I am making for Kizuna so it seems appropriate that the piece itself will be in the form of a path. But let me start at the beginning.

My work tends to revolve around clothing and how clothing can be interpreted or reformatted, so when I started looking at the collection at JCNM, I was naturally drawn to textiles, clothing, and wearables. My first inclination was to start thinking about patterns in both the literal and metaphoric sense. I was looking at patterns woven into textiles and sewing patterns for example, but i was also interested in the kinds of social patterns that I could see emerging.

When I came across Mary Ohara's display upstairs, I felt an immediate connection to her life. For one thing, we had the same pin cushion. Now, I know this pin cushion is fairly common and it is just a small thing but there were a lot of little things like this that were small but somehow meaningful. I found out later that when she and her sister went back to Japan after WWll, they supported themselves by making western style clothes out of old kimonos that people would bring to them since fabric was so scarce. Mary was the designer and her sister was the seamstress. I felt an affinity to this industriousness since not only do I make a living designing and making clothes but I am also almost finished a one year long project for which I have been wearing only things that i have made myself, everything from shoes to clothing to accessories. I think the connection between Mary's situation at that time and my self-imposed situation has something to do with the immediacy and the necessity of making garments, while still trying to maintain an element of style.

When I finally met Mary we discovered so many other parallels and common interests in our lives. She was very willing to tell me so many things about her life. The most important thing that I learned from our meeting was that everyone has a story and even though our paths are different, they share so many points of intersection. These personal histories are the starting point for my piece.

The work I am making for Kizuna will be a path made from rocks and stones that I have collected and then covered in clothing. The rocks have been collected from all over - my hometown, around my studio here in Vancouver, my sister's home, Gambier island where my boyfriend's family has a cabin, Burnaby where Mary lives and many other places. The clothes and fabric have also been collected from a wide variety of places. In essence I am collecting histories, both my own and shared to make a path that is specific to me but common to many other people in my life. Anyone who walks along the path will briefly intersect and thus become a part of this collective story.

The piece is both an homage to Mary's sometimes difficult but always colourful life and a personal walk through my own past.

Natalie Purschwitz

Mary Ohara in her home in Burnaby