This Fragile Dwelling Place

Events

Anatomy and sewing patterns have always coexisted in Janet Shaw-Russell’s family history: her mother was a home-economist and her father a surgeon; both have left behind traces of their work in medical textbooks, journals, and notes. In the context of this personal history and the tradition of medical drawing, Shaw-Russell has explored the body as a fragile home. She has drawn its anatomy on translucent paper sewing patterns, delineating internal organs on delicate sewing patterns. Through drawing, printmaking, installation, and found objects, This Fragile Dwelling Place extends outward through personal and collective recollection. Tying together divergent streams of research and serendipitous connections, she mourns her parents’ deaths from cancer, while responding to the history of women’s rights, and the local tragedy of the 1916 Syndicate Block fire at the current site of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.