The Granny Blankets

Granny Blanket #1, 2022-2025

Granny Blanket #2- in progress

More than a decade ago Hall found some old hand-crocheted doilies in a thrift shop. They were priced at less than a dollar, but clearly represented many many hours of skilled work. They were a beginning of the long and ongoing  “conversation” the artist has been having with the women who made them and who left them behind as emblems of their beautiful labour in the domestic sphere.  Is such labour undervalued because it was domestic? Decorative? Voluntary? The product of individual rather than corporate labour? Are these works now too “pretty”? Too nostalgic? Too pre-feminist and “colonial”? Too “private”? to be valued for their skill and deep investment of time?

Hall pursues this slow and gentle process as if visiting with her Grannies. Hand stitching one doily to another, laying them side by side until they find their “place”, and hand stitching them to a vintage bedspread made by the Nan of a friend, or her own Gran’s old crocheted tablecloth. Day be day, stitch by stitch – this is slow, meditative, quiet and repetitive work – using up time and old things that are worth much more than their thrift store price tags. Everything here is full of memories and of value.

The artist is grateful to The Canada Council for The Arts for their support of this work.