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
Currently living and working in Quebec City, Anie 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. Her studio research focuses on language, bilingualism and linguistic multiplicity, and materializes in weaving, handspinning, basketry, natural dyeing and printmaking. 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, at Atelier Circulaire, Textílmiðstöð Íslands in Iceland, Union House Arts in Newfoundland, La Chambre Blanche and Martha Street Studio. Recipient of several grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts, she received the Émergence en métiers d'art award in 2021 and the Ellen France Gregor award from Craft Ontario in 2022. Her work was 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. She is presenting a duo show with Caroline Ariane Bergeron at the Maison des artistes visuels francophones (Winnipeg) in winter 2025, as well as solo shows at the Centre de Diffusion Presse Papier (Trois-Rivières) in 2024 and at the Galerie d'Engramme (Québec) in 2023. She attended numerous international workshops, notably in weaving at the Centre International d'étude des textiles anciens (CIETA) in Lyon, and in typography with Dafi Kühne in Näfels, Switzerland.
La Maison des artistes visuels francophones. « Forme, Contreforme - Caroline Ariane Bergeron et Anie Toole » [vidéo], 26 février 2025.
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.