Kathleen Vaughan 

Unbalanced/Rebalancing 

Unbalanced/Rebalancing is the final piece in Kathleen Vaughan’s artistic investigation of Canada’s 1,200-kilometre-long St. Lawrence River. The woven tapestry depicts a spot near the Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood in Montreal, where the river flows past a restricted area of contaminated land. Vaughan photographed this abandoned area, where sprouting ‘weeds’ demonstrate the resilience of nature. She combined one of her photographs with a map of the river and images of a dancing Oglála Lakȟóta artist – to emphasise that humanity must restore its balance with the earth.

The 2-by-5-metre design was woven in three sections on the 170-cm-wide jacquard loom. Vaughan had placed the additional elements as a transparent layer over the photo, through which the background colours are still visible. The challenge was to maintain these two distinct layers in the fabric. A combination of natural, biodegradable yarns was selected: merino wool and cotton to produce realistic colours and viscose to give the river a subtle sheen. For the first two days of the development process, Vaughan worked remotely from Canada. For the final four days, she worked with Judith Peskens in the lab. The result was on display at the Orillia Museum of Art and History, Ontario until mid-January 2025, in the exhibition ‘Tradition Transformed’.

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Photos by Kathleen Vaughan