STATEMENT
Weaving is how I make sense of the world. I transpose system, relationship, communication, and my experience of language. My linguistic portrait oscillates between French and English, with incidental Spanish and other Latin languages. Simultaneous and uncompartmentalized translations are my norm. I live with constant doubt that I am using the correct language structure. I feel peaceful when I can access multiple versions at the same time: reading side by side, overlapping, combining text and sound.
I understood that weaving would become the center of my practice when I discovered layered weaves: I could express simultaneous translations and the relationship between languages in a visual manner. How can I write or model a combination of words and structures from different languages that form my language? Can weaving model what I cannot express in words?
I work in loops, reusing textiles, pigments, and natural dyes. Fluidity and unconscious borrowing between mediums mimics language use, using the words of one language with the structure of another. Printmaking from my weaves extracts the trace of the message. The printing press is my “translation-machine”.
BIO
Weaving and natural dyes are at the heart of Anie Toole's practice that extends to printmaking, clay and sound explorations. Her artistic research addresses language through multi-layered weavings to extract systems of communication for multilingual speakers. Toole holds an MFA from Memorial University of Newfoundland, a fine craft diploma in constructed textiles from la Maison des métiers d'art de Québec and an Honours BSc in Mathematics from the University of Ottawa. Toole participated in artist residencies at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, the Vermont Studio Center for which she received a Windgate Artist Fellowship, at Stelo/Camp Colton in Oregon and at the Digital Weaving Lab of Praxis Fiber Workshop in Ohio. In 2022, she received Craft Ontario's Helen Frances Gregor Award, and in 2021, Emerging artist in fine craft awarded by the Prix d'excellence des arts et de la culture Capitale-Nationale et Chaudière-Appalaches. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Materia and Moulin de la Chevrotière (Quebec), as well as at the Harbourfront Center Artport Gallery and Queen's Square Gallery (Ontario) during Fiberworks 2022, a biennial exhibition of contemporary Canadian textile art.
Culture Capitale-Nationale et Chaudière-Appalaches, « Matières à découverte | Épisode 4 – Calcul » [vidéo], 19 octobre 2023.
Handweavers Guild of America, « Textiles & Tea with Anie Toole » Episode 99 [video], November 22, 2022.
La Fabrique Culturelle, « Dans l'œil de... l'artiste textile Anie Toole » [vidéo], 3 mars 2021.