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Salle de presse
Esther Bryan and Her Amazing Techni-coloured Quilt
by Debra Fieguth "Our only real belonging is being part of God's family" Esther Bryan has a quick errand to run before she settles down to talk about the project that has consumed her for the past two years and will take up another couple. She has to mail a piece of caribou hide, sent from one northern First Nation, to another group in a different part of Canada. Errand completed, she moves from room to room of a former municipal office building, exuding enthusiasm as she explains the time lines, sponsorships, people groups, creative designs, political gaffes, personal stories and miracles that are all part of the Invitation Project. This is all in aid of making a quilt. But this is no ordinary piece of patchwork. This one, when finished, will be 10 feet high and 140 feet long. It will include fine art made with porcupine quills, abalone shells, cedar bark strips, beading, embroidery, applique, cross-stitch, hand-weaving, the finest English wool, a nugget of amber from Lithuania, worry dolls from Guatemala, kente cloth from Ghana - and caribou hide. A quilt? "Invitation - the Quilt of Belonging" - encompasses every First Nation (including the Beothuk, as a memorial) and every country represented in Canada - a total of 273 blocks of exquisite textile art telling the story of who we are in this vast country. It's a massive amount of work and for Bryan, a visual artist for the past 20 years, a labour of love. "I knew it was going to be huge because I knew I couldn't leave anybody out." The project is called Invitation, she explains, because "it's an invitation to know God, to participate, to have a place." Born in Slovakia and raised in France by missionary parents, Bryan has a head start on the concept of multi-culturalism. When she finished a fine arts degree about seven years ago her father, who had left Slovakia as a refugee and had not returned in 46 years, invited her to go back for a visit. "The impact on him and on me was unbelievable," she remembers. "Everything poured out of him. What he thought was buried came back." Her dad was the only one from his family who escaped. The experience raised some questions for Bryan. Why do some survive and not others? Who are we? What makes us belong? She reflected on her own experience by producing a multi-media art exhibit called "Return," using textiles, painting, drawing and hand-made paper. "The response to that was phenomenal," she says. "Everybody wanted to tell me their story. They wanted to show me their stuff. They wanted me to know that they had something special, that they were unique." Head start As a former MK who lived in several places before settling in the village of Williamstown with her musician husband, Bryan knew what is was like to struggle to belong. "People have this tremendous need to feel like they belong somewhere," she observes. But when it comes right down to it, "our only real belonging is being part of God's family," she says. Gradually it dawned on Bryan what her next art project would be: a quilt that would include everyone in Canada, that would make everyone, no matter which part of the globe they came from, no matter which native tribe they were from, feel like this is where they belong. Where you belong But the idea was not a small undertaking. "At first," Bryan admits, "I dismissed the idea and said this is not possible." But it wouldn't let her go, and before she knew it she was contacting embassies, looking at immigration records, writing to Indian bands, meeting with crafts guilds and mustering up an army of volunteers to help with everything from legal work to vacuuming floors, researching cultures and stitching pieces of fabric together. Along the way Bryan has met a rainbow of people with amazing stories: the woman from Sierra Leone who didn't know if she would see her husband and three daughters again after they were trapped behind enemy lines for a year and a half; the woman from El Salvador who spent time in prison for political reasons; the shy lady from Japan who transformed herself into a beautiful brocaded Japanese doll for the project launch on Parliament Hill. Bryan worked with people from Afghanistan and from the Cambodian killing fields. Artisans have gone through fires, cancer and car accidents. Bryan listens with sympathy to the tragedies and heartaches she encounters. It's all part of the project. "I love people," she points out. "I love to meet people and pray for people." Not every story is sad by any means. Some are rather amusing. The group doing a block representing the United Kingdom decide to incorporate the official flowers from every country and territory of the UK, only to find out that Pitcairn Island didn't have a flower. Never mind. The island appointed a commission, chose a flower and subsequently designed a postage stamp to match. With about a third of the quilt blocks now in, it will be another two years before the project is ready to hit the road as a traveling exhibit. In the meantime, in the converted municipal office building in nearby Williamstown, Ontario, near Cornwall and not far from Ottawa or Montreal, the story of the world abides in a quilt and its creator.
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