Co.Lab Gallery presents
MARY JANE MACDONALD
SLOW STITCH The Embroidered Landscape
Friday April 11th 7-10pm
Exhibition continues until April 30th, 2025.
Slow Stitch: The Embroidered Landscape
This exhibition culminates multiple research projects developed over the last three years, primarily during Mary Jane’s Master’s thesis research. It explores the intersections between the textile industry, its environmental consequences, and the potential for textile creation to serve as a means of repairing human connections to nature and addressing the issue of waste.
Through the medium of embroidery, Mary Jane examines the profound impact of the textile industry on the environment while exploring methods of reconnecting the human to the natural world. By working in a fibre-based medium the artworks in this exhibition establish a connection to the environmental damage caused by the textile industry while simultaneously utilizing embroidery as a means of repair. Through embroidery, textiles become terrain, sites of renewal rather than waste. Each stitch serves as both a record and a potential—capturing the time and care invested against fashion’s relentless cycle of disposability, while gesturing at the possibilities of new futures. The intimate scale and intricate details of each piece invite careful observation, inviting a moment of pause and celebrating the beauty of slowing down.
- “The needle is used to repair damage. it’s a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive; it’s not a pin.” - Louise Bourgeois
Mary Jane is a Thunder Bay-based multidisciplinary artist and sustainable fashion researcher. Her academic research explores sustainability in many facets of the fashion industry with a particular focus on the development of sewing and repair skills at the community level to promote social and economic development and textile waste reduction. Her art practice often intertwines with her academic research and is devoted to redeveloping relationships with nature primarily through embroidery and textile creation.
