At first glance, Ruth Scheuing’s Granville Island studio gives off an industrial vibe. A massive, computer-assisted loom commands centre stage as six rows of warp rise and fall in synchrony with bursts of compressed air and the clatter of solenoids. Ruth is at the breast beam, an open laptop at her side. Whoosh. Another burst of compressed air sends the shafts up and down. Ruth is realizing her creation and letting the machine do most of the heavy lifting. After all, the former teacher of textile design at Capilano University—and recipient of the 2010 Chalmers Award in Crafts—has a diploma in chemistry and is no stranger to technology, in fact she welcomes it.
“I looked through electron microscopes,” she says of her early days as a cancer researcher in Switzerland, where she was engrossed in technology and what it could do for humanity. When she emigrated from Switzerland to Canada in 1969, she changed her focus, “I felt there was more room to express your ideas in art than in science,” she says, and so she enrolled in a four-year Fine Arts program at Halifax’s Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Art school not only introduced her to technique but opened her mind to the issues of the day.
“I was very much into message,” she says. “I was in art school, and I had a big show. I did a lot of complicated patterns and I kind of thought they could be really important and say something. People said ‘It looks nice,’ but I didn’t want nice. They didn’t get the message.”
The message? Weaving can contribute to the conversation on climate change, gender roles, equality, and empowerment.
All photos courtesy of Ruth Scheuing
