Laurie Swim Biography

“I have been alive for a long time and I do not have exaggerated expectations. I was astonished and deeply affected when I saw her Eve’s Apple,” said Alex Colville, in his Introduction to Laurie Swim’s first book, The Joy of Quilting.

Laurie Swim has worked as an artist for more than 35 years developing unique and innovative treatments to fashion her imagery in textiles with fabric and thread. As a significant contribution and use of this medium, she has shared her art form and practice with others to create meaningful public art. She has also written three books, two published internationally, on quilt art. The Joy of Quilting with an Introduction by Alex Colville, 1984, made her an early leader in this field. Laurie’s third book, Rags to Riches: The Quilt as Art with an introduction by Mary Pratt, was published in Canada, Fall, 2007.

Laurie’s works grace many private and public collections, including the Nova Scotia Art Bank, Nova Scotia Designer Craft Council, the City of Toronto Art Collection and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Her work It’s No Fish Ye’re Buying is part of Textile Traces, a collection being compiled by Lloyd Cotsen, who was recently honored by the Textile Museum in Washington DC for exceptional contributions to the field of textile arts. According to the American Craft Council, he has amassed “a collection of some 5,000 small works, garments and fragments, thought to be one of the most important groups of historical textiles in private hands.”

Stonehurst Houses, from her first solo show, At the End of the Day at del Mano in 2007, acquired by Barbara and Robert Hunter for their quilt art collection, was recently donated, along with thirty-nine other pieces from their private collection, to The National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. These works are on display October 10 to January 13, 2009, in the exhibit of this collection entitled Eye Catchers.

Because her primary medium is fabric, Laurie has had a unique opportunity to combine fine art and public advocacy. Her large-scale works, completed with the help of volunteers from the community, are aesthetically significant; and by participating in the process of production, people are able to express their deeply felt concerns and remembrance. The resulting art is not only a celebration of the creativity of a community but it becomes an effective means of bringing the issues to public attention and instituting cultural change.

Laurie began initiating large scale community-made quilts with volunteers in 1995. The first, Pulling Together, the Builders of the Rideau Canal, 1826-32, was created in collaboration with the Kingston (Ontario) & District Labour Council and volunteers from the community, with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. This piece, 9’x15’, was worked in pointillism, created with thousands of thumbnail-sized bits of fabric. The work is now part of the Workers Heritage Museum Permanent Collection in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

With the help of dozens of volunteers from many parts of the Greater Toronto Area, she created Breaking Ground: The Hogg's Hollow Memorial, 1960, with COSTI Immigrant Services in 2000. Portraying the victims in their last moments in the tunnel, the work is a tribute to the five men who died so tragically. Their deaths were the catalyst that led to the profound changes in construction safety. That changed the course of history in Canada. This fall of 2008, the 7-foot by 20-foot work will be installed in the York Mills Subway station in Toronto, Ontario.

Bringing the community together in her hometown of Lockeport, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 2000, Laurie created Lost at Sea, 1961, memorializing 17 fishermen who drowned in a terrible storm. Twelve years old at the time, Laurie never forgot the tragedy that left 16 widows, 65 fatherless children and a town forever changed. In this community where traditional crafts and fishing define a way of life, this fine work is truly meaningful to the women and men who helped make it. Laurie, with her brother Dan Swim, a filmmaker, documented oral histories in a short film that accompanies the artwork.

Laurie embarked in 2001 on a major project: The Canadian Young Workers Memorial Quilt. This is both a stunning work of art and a massive effort to involve the whole of Canada in a socially significant cause. Laurie tirelessly attended all sorts of community events -- from labour meetings, to quilt guilds where she raised the issue of safe workplaces for young people in her talks and through her craft.

In 2003 she received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship from the Ontario Arts Council to complete her series, From Our Back Yard, started in 1997. In 2004, she moved back to Nova Scotia where she grew up and has since worked on a number of projects celebrating the area. The first was The Ragged Shore, a series inspired by the maritime landscape. Next came They were Fishers, homage to the culture of fishing, now diminishing, on the east coast. Both are ongoing, culminating in a major body of work to be completed in the next few years called Land, Sea and Memory. She received a Canada Council grant for Assistance to Contemporary Fine Craft in 2007 for research and development of processes to interpret land, sea and memory for mixed fibre wall-hangings. This work will tour in North America, opening at the Mary E Black Gallery in Halifax in 2010 and culminating at the del Mano Gallery.

Del Mano Gallery of Los Angeles has represented Laurie since 2007, beginning with the solo show At the End of the Day in February of that year. One of the works in that show, Laurie Swim's "Stonehurst Houses" was acquired by National Quilt Museum in Paducah KY, (Museum of the American Quilter's Society) by way of a donation by Barbara Hunter. The work, said Judy Schwender, Curator of Collections, “is a small jewel in the Hunter Collection. Laurie’s use of threadwork, raw-edge appliqué (both flat and crumpled) impart wonderful surface texture that make this view of homes by the sea come alive. You can smell the salt air.”

Regaining Paradise is Laurie’s second show in the gallery. Land, Sea and Memory in 2010 will be the third. This fall, she is the featured artist at the Handworks of America Gallery in Acton, Mass. She is also represented by Zwicker’s Art Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Amicus Gallery in Chester, NS.

Larry Goldstein
September 25, 2008

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Rags to Riches - now available!
Rags to Riches - now available!
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