Sunday, February 16th, 2025

Years ago, Mary Anne Tupling met for the first time a distant cousin who posed a peculiar question.

“What book should I read in order to know you better?” she asked. It was an intentional question and quite different from asking, what is your favourite book? Tulping’s reply at the time was Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (but she has since changed her answer to Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons).

The cousin, who she has since gotten to know better, said her book was Something Happened by Joseph Heller.

Each title is now assigned to one of her fabric pictures included in an upcoming exhibit about associations, putting pieces together and of becoming acquainted.

Tupling has created a dozen textile art pieces for a new solo exhibit this month at Curiosity House Books, exploring the theme of getting to know the village of Creemore from an outsider’s perspective. Each piece is loosely associated with a person Tupling knows and is titled with the name of the book they have offered up as an insight into who they are.

Tupling, a landscape architect by trade who has always had an interest in textiles, embroidery and quilting, is an admirer of the work of UK textile artist Janet Bolton, who creates pictures that are iconically British, depicting boats, sheep, girls in cardigans and women pushing prams.   

Tupling took a weeklong course with Bolton when she once visited Ontario and also studied textile art in Vancouver, Haliburton and at OCAD University in Toronto.

While working on her farm outside of Creemore, raising ducks and geese, Tupling said she started to think about what is emblematic of Creemore.

“When it’s your home it’s much harder to see them,” she said. “I try to look at home the way a visitor might as a way of getting to know my own home.”

The result is a landscape made out of fabric, thread, hand-stitched illustrations of rural life that include animals, crops, fencing and roads. The rolling hills in the background, the unfinished row in a farmer’s field where the soil was too wet and page wire fences are all recognizable details to anyone who spends time in this area.

She starts with fabric, some picked up in her travels, given to her by friends and some salvaged from old clothes. Sometimes she changes the colour of the fabric using her own dyes made from natural colourants. First she builds up the background and then embroiders and appliqués the scene on top, adding embellishments of buttons and beads.

Throughout the fabric pictures are intentional imperfections to symbolize the importance of mending, be it a fence or a building.

Mary Anne Tupling will be in attendance at the opening reception of the Something Happened exhibit from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 7. The show continues throughout the month.

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