Sarah Maloney

Making sense of where we are now in the Anthropocene involves looking at the history that brought us here, for settlers that must include the roots of colonialism. Museums and taxonomy also have those same roots, in the mindset that allows one to try and collect the world.

Collect-Arrange is a suite of embroidered compositions that incorporate plaster relief sculptures as a framing device. It’s concept is rooted in collecting—the images used were purposefully selected to speak about what is selected to be collected, and about the hierarchies within collections, the unspoken biases at play in any selection process. The Chinese vases depicted in these works are in the collection of the British Museum; they are available to view in online catalogues. The embroideries show the vases at their actual size, measurements readily available on the website. The individual flowers all come from historical botanical illustrations from other British collections. They were created in a pre-photographic age as a tool to collect and identify new species, drawn, and painted to fix a single ephemeral plant specimen in time. All the images are embroidered in approximations of the colours that the original artist or artisan used. The images sculpted in the bas-reliefs depict native Canadian plants and are based on the work of the 19th century Nova Scotian painter Maria Morris Miller from the collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Her paintings were published as lithographs, collected in a portfolio for sale in London. Exotic there and then, these are all plants I see regularly on my walks in the woods of Nova Scotia. In Collect-Arrange the images from the new world frame ones collected by the old, the labour of the colonist supports the spoils of the colonizer.

This suite of works incorporates historical objects and imagery, and are made using historical techniques in the embroidery and gold leafed bas-reliefs. They should appear familiar at first glance, as if they would not be out of place in the grand rooms of a museum or historical home. It is my intention that they do so, despite the inevitable doubts as to their propriety that further looking may inspire. The work references the ‘high arts’ of sculpture and easel painting, albeit in the more lowly form of genre imagery, still lifes of domestic objects. Even today the decorative is mistrusted in so-called high art, often seen as frivolous or unserious. This work is purposely decorative and utilizes material and processes associated with ideas of the feminine. The materials used in this work—velvet, gold leaf, embroidery—speak to ideas of wealth and luxury. They are signifiers of power.

The arrangements themselves eschew the more formal floral arrangements that are the subject matter of so many still life compositions, they are meant to feel as though someone took a few flowers and popped them in the nearest vase. Of course, no one would ever be allowed to put water or flowers in these priceless vases. In my compositions I have laboured to create detailed large scale embroidered images, with flowers and vases embroidered to their actual sizes, I, in some ways, become an imagined chatelaine of the collections, ordering the images and objects at my whim.

Many of the problems in today’s world—Capitalism, Colonialism and Global warming—have their roots in the mass exploration by Europeans that took place between the 15th and 19th centuries. ‘Discovering’ new places, peoples, resources, and species of plants and animals led to ways to exploit them. It also led to acquiring new and exotic objects and species. Landscapes changed as the ability to cultivate non-native species developed. ‘Nature’ was reshaped by the desire to collect, and with the planting of exotic species and crops from other continents. Plant collecting changed gardens, medicine, food, and agriculture.

The collecting habit in Europe has it roots in the age of enlightenment and the age of sail. Wealth that was accumulated through the movement and sale of goods and people allowed for the accumulation of private collections of rare and prized objects. Many of these private collections have now entered public collections in our modern museums. They beg the question, what was collected by whom? And for whom?

Sampling theses collections and then embroidering the chosen objects speaks to the absence of women/women’s work from so many collections. Needlework historically was a way for wealthy women to pass the time, they too were part of a collection kept at home while men went off to explore. I am drawn to embroidery because its history, process, and materiality speak to both traditional and contemporary ideas of women’s work. The context of women’s work—so often considered ‘merely’ domestic and social rather than public and political—is ideal for my research, which is feminist at base. It is a rich and vibrant context, for all it’s historical limits. After all, women’s work is never done.

Collect - Arrange #1, 2021

Collect - Arrange #2, 2021

Collect -Arrange #3, 2021

Embroidered cotton on velvet, hydrocal, imitation gold leaf, walnut, plywood.

96 x 119 x 4.3 cm each.

photos Steve Farmer

Pleasure Grounds is a reference to the designed and manicured gardens of English country homes. The work consists of groups of pitcher plants ‘growing’ out of the floor. The forms of the plants, phallic and uterine at once, are suggestive of another type of pleasure.

Photos: Steve Farmer courtesy The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Mitch Mitchell

Collection of The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

The title for First Flowers refers to both the history of a specific plant, (magnolias originated over 65 million years ago and are one the few species of primitive flowers to grow continuously since,) and to the fact that they bloom so early in the spring, branches full of flowers before the trees leaf out. These wall mounted bronze and steel sculptures are like wallpaper come to life, growing out of the wall, recreating the barrier that actual tree branches create within the architecture of the gallery.

My current research is engaged with flowering plants, which I am modelling in wax and casting in bronze and using to create larger bodies of work. I am interested in the forms of the plants and flowers, their evolutionary histories, how they were used and how they continue to be used. I am also interested in plant habitat and the relationship between what is natural and what is altered or constructed. I use bronze for this work because of its long history as a sculptural material and its use in monuments for many centuries. The contrast of the metallic permanence of bronze with the temporality and fragility of the flora that is my current subject matter is of particular interest to me in this stage of my research. I am venturing into landscape sculpture, where the works themselves render landscape (a human construct) from elements drawn from the natural world. I am working to create sculptural landscape with an awareness of the history of Canadian landscape art refocused through a lens of feminism and what is associated with so-called women’s work.

First Flowers, 2014. Bronze & steel.

photos: Morrow Scot-Brown & Dan Froese.

Water Level is comprised of bronze water lilies and lily pads on steel stems. In this freestanding modular sculpture, “water level” is at gallery hanging height (54-56”) – eye level. I used bronze for this work because of its long history as a sculptural material and its use in monuments for many centuries. I am interested in the contrast of the permanence of bronze and its metallic nature with the temporality and fragility of flora.

My current research is engaged with indigenous Canadian plants, which I am modelling in wax and casting in bronze and using to create larger suites of work. I am interested in the forms of the plants and flowers, their evolutionary histories, how they were used and how they continue to be used. I am also interested in plant habitat and the relationship between what is natural and what is altered or constructed. I am venturing into landscape sculpture, where the works themselves render landscape (a human construct) from elements drawn from the natural world.

I am undertaking an exploration of using flora to create sculptural landscape with an awareness of the history of Canadian landscape art refocused through a lens of feminism and with the history of sculpture and its materials. Landscape is primarily associated with painting – I’m interested in creating an immersive experience in the gallery using sculpture to re-create the familiarity of being in the landscape.

I would like to thank the University of Windsor School of Visual Arts for inviting me to be Artist In Residence at their foundry in October 2012 where much of this work was completed.

Waterlevel, 2013. Bronze & steel. 148 cm height. 

Photos: Morrow Scot-Brown

Orchids are a family of plants that include over 20,000 species that grow on every continent except Antarctica. In the wild each species grows in very specific places as they require certain combinations of soil, fungi, mold, etc. to provide the ideal habitat. They do not transplant well as recreating and maintaining these conditions is difficult. Some tropical orchids are readily propagated and sold as houseplants but anyone who has tried their hand at growing them know they need special care in order to thrive.

In the series Reflection I have created bronze lady slippers that inhabit mirrored dressing tables. The three types of lady slippers are members of the orchid family and grow in western Newfoundland. The common name lady slipper is a rough translation of the Greek genus cypripedium, which means foot of the Cypriot one, who is Aphrodite (Venus). In the natural world lady slippers have a very specific habitat, but once they are transformed as both subject and object into bronze sculptures their habitat becomes the base. In this case the bases are constructed mirrored dressing tables on which each flower faces the mirror so the only way the viewer can easily see the front of each flower is through its reflection.

Reflection: Yellow Ladyslipper, 2010. 162 x 36 x 31 cm, birch, bronze, mirror

Reflection: Pink Ladyslipper, 2010. 130 x 73 x 49 cm, aspen, bronze, mirror

Reflection: Showy Ladyslipper, 2010. 169 x 70 x 40 cm, maple, bronze, mirror

Photos: Morrow Scot-Brown, Pierre LeBlanc

The word Orchid is derived from the Greek work orchis which translates as testicle. Orchids, as all flowers, contain both the male and female reproductive organs for the plant. Part of the fascination and obsession with orchid collecting has been due to the fact that many of the flowers resemble human genitalia. In the nineteenth century orchid societies did not allow women to join because the flowers were deemed too sexually explicit for them. Eve and Adam is an embroidered piece that explores some of these themes. Two different species of orchids are embroidered on a bright green leaf patterned brocade invoking notions of an idealized garden and a time where our biblical ancestors were not ashamed of their nakedness.

Eve & Adam, 2009. 156 x 205 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton, steel armature.

Photos: Morrow Scot-Brown

Skin, a piece I worked on, on and off, for nine years. It is a life size woman’s skin made from approximately 400,000 tiny glass beads and nylon thread; it hangs from the ceiling like a garment on molded acrylic shoulders. It was incredibly labour intensive to make as each bead could only be added one at a time.

The process by which the piece was constructed speaks to the labour and seeming invisibility of women’s work as well as the way in which bodies are built from conception right through life cell by cell. There is no head as this is not a portrait but much more of a kind of garment that perhaps the viewer could visualize being worn. The ‘shed’ skin has a reptilian reference that ties into ideas about Eve, the serpent and the awareness of nakedness that came with knowledge from the forbidden fruit, linking it to paradise and the garden which is how I see it as relating to my more recent flower based work.

Skin 2003-2012. 42 x 23 x 170 cm, approx. 400,000 glass beads, nylon thread, acrylic armature.

Photos: Steve Farmer, courtesy the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy Canadian Clay Clay & Glass Gallery.

Heart was made while I was working on the nine-year process of making Skin, I really wanted to make a smaller beaded piece that I could finish. I had used the heart as subject in earlier work, such as drawings, embroideries and crocheted multiples. The beads I chose were a shiny dark red and felt very different from the matte pink ones used for Skin. It is an object that fits nicely in the hand and I constructed the shelf to be a similar size. Heart is mounted on the wall at chest height to remind the viewer of their own heart.

Heart, 2008. 17 x 12 x 10 cm. Glass beads, nylon thread, magnet, steel shelf .

Photo : Anthony McLean courtesy La Guilde.

In the 1630’s the Dutch were consumed by a tulip mania that saw a single tulip bulb inflated to be worth as much as a good house in Rotterdam or Amsterdam. As with all artificially inflated markets it collapsed and is documented as the first market crash. Collapse is an antique fainting couch, upholstered in rich red paisley brocade that and has twenty bronze tulips growing out of it, all bent over as they might be in a garden after a heavy rain. This piece began with the idea of tulip mania and its collapse, but speaks to environmental collapse, Freud and psychoanalysis, Victorian notions of women’s hysteria and even post coital collapse.

The tulip embroideries each have a pair of tulips dancing or courting on a paisley background. They are anthropomorphized into figures as the inclusion of bulbs and roots implies mobility and the proximity of the two tulips in each piece speaks to notions of romantic love. Tulips (and the paisley pattern) originated in Persia, over the centuries humans have been able to take the bulbs from their original habitat and grow them in gardens across the world as they are easily propagated and adaptable. Their habitat has become the garden, a constructed natural environment.

Collapse, 2009. 74 x 66 x 194 cm, antique fainting couch, bronze, fabric

Photos: Morrow Scot-Brown; Pierre LeBlanc, courtesy Grenfell Campus Gallery; Kelowna Art Gallery; Manif'D'Art/8.

The tulip embroideries each have a pair of tulips dancing or courting on a paisley background. They are anthropomorphized into figures as the inclusion of bulbs and roots implies mobility and the proximity of the two tulips in each piece speaks to notions of romantic love. Tulips (and the paisley pattern) originated in Persia, over the centuries humans have been able to take the bulbs from their original habitat and grow them in gardens across the world as they are easily propagated and adaptable. Their habitat has become the garden, a constructed natural environment.

Tulip 1, 2009. 90 x 130 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton, oak frame.

Tulip 2, 2009. 90 x 130 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton, oak frame.

Tulip 3, 2009. 90 x 130 cm, embroidered cotton on fabric, oak frame. Collection Dalhousie Art Gallery.

Tulip 4, 2009. 90 x 130 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton, oak frame. Collection Nova Scotia Art Bank.

Tulip 5, 2010. 90 x 130 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton, oak frame.

Tulip 6, 2010. 90 x 130 cm, embroidered cotton on fabric, oak frame.

Photos: Morrow Scot-Brown

Orchids have always been considered one of the most overtly sexual flowers and women were banned from owning and collecting them in many places until the early 20th century.
Orchids in the wild are opportunistic and will grow in the crook of a tree or on a fallen log. Wallflowers consists of 10 slipper orchids, modeled in wax, cast in bronze that now inhabit white upholstered side chairs. This work references the mix of vulnerability and seeming sexual availability of young women; specifically the white dress and the orchid corsage of girls at a prom. For what are these “wallflowers” waiting?

Wallflowers 2007-2009. Barbara, Julie, Elaine, Linda. Amanda, Kimberley, Heather, Caroline, Stephanie, Tracy. Various dimensions, antique chairs, fabric, bronze.

Photos: Morrow Scot- Brown

Lilies are symbolically a more chaste flower whose use in art history is in reference to the Virgin and are most often seen in Annunciation paintings from the Early Renaissance on. I have been using images and forms that include the whole plant, flowers, leaves, stems, bulbs and roots. Most flowers are seen cut in a vase or growing above the ground, rarely is the whole plant seen.

In Greek mythology Iris was a messenger for the gods. In the embroidered panel the bulb or tuber of the iris looks as though it could run away. In Annunciation, the embroidered Lily shows one of the ways it propagates through sending out new shoots, a kind of virgin birth. Both panels are embroidered on large dark red fabric that is reminiscent of ecclesiastical damasks. 

Lily, 2008. 51 x79 x 131 cm, antique table and bronze

Annunciation, 2007. 100 x 160 cm, embroidered cotton on fabric

Messenger, 2008. 100 x 160 cm, embroidered cotton on fabric. Collection: Dalhousie Art Gallery.

Photos: Morrow Scot- Brown

My research for this suite of works explored the similarities of botanical forms to anatomical structures within the body. My source materials came from historical medical and anatomical drawings, engravings and wood-cuts that looked as much like plant forms as parts of the body. The forms of the lungs, milk ducts and ovaries are reminiscent of flowing plants; the pericardium hangs like ripe fruit and the brain looks like a cabbage or broccoli sliced in half. These images embroidered on linen reference the long history of women’s decorative botanical and floral embroidery.

The tiny stitches that make up the whole are much like the cell structure of both plant and human bodies. Cast in bronze and mounted on wooden armatures or antique furniture covered in patterned fabric, these same forms take on an unusual physical presence. The armatures become ‘the body’ with the bronzes mounted on the front, over patterned fabric that echoes the shape, form and colour of the sculptures. Themes of decoration, domesticity and a feminized body (as a garden, a place for nurturing and growth) are present in this work. The position of the bronzes on the armature, furniture or plinth questions the traditional relationship between object and base, of the one on top of the other.

Botanical Study: Lungs, 2004. 45 x 45 cm, embroidered cotton on linen, steel frames

Botanical Study: Ovaries, 2004. 45 x 45 cm, embroidered cotton on linen, steel frames

Botanical Study: Milk Ducts, 2004. 45 x 45 cm, embroidered cotton on linen, steel frames

Botanical Study: Pericardium, 2004. 45 x 45 cm, embroidered cotton on linen, steel frames

Botanical Study: Brain, 2004. Embroidered cotton on linen. Collection: Memory Disability Clinic, QEII Health Sciences Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Botanical Study: Leaves, 2005. 100 x 75 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton.

Botanical Study: Two Figures, 2005. 88 x 125 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton Collection: Canada Council Art Bank.

Botanical Study: Three Figures, 2006. 70 X 125 cm, embroidered cotton on cotton.

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My research for this suite of works explored the similarities of botanical forms to anatomical structures within the body. My source materials came from historical medical and anatomical drawings, engravings and wood-cuts that looked as much like plant forms as parts of the body. The forms of the lungs, milk ducts and ovaries are reminiscent of flowing plants; the pericardium hangs like ripe fruit and the brain looks like a cabbage or broccoli sliced in half. These images embroidered on linen reference the long history of women’s decorative botanical and floral embroidery.

The tiny stitches that make up the whole are much like the cell structure of both plant and human bodies. Cast in bronze and mounted on wooden armatures or antique furniture covered in patterned fabric, these same forms take on an unusual physical presence. The armatures become ‘the body’ with the bronzes mounted on the front, over patterned fabric that echoes the shape, form and colour of the sculptures. Themes of decoration, domesticity and a feminized body (as a garden, a place for nurturing and growth) are present in this work. The position of the bronzes on the armature, furniture or plinth questions the traditional relationship between object and base, of the one on top of the other.

Botanical Study: Lungs, 2007; Botanical Study: Milk Ducts, 2005; Botanical Study: Ovaries, 2007. Installation view: Finding the Invisible, Stride Gallery, Calgary, Alberta 2007

Botanical Study: Lungs, 2007. 53 x 49 x 90 cm, bronze, fabric, chair

Botanical Study: Ovaries, 2007. 52 x 50 x 84 cm, bronze, fabric, chair

Botanical Study: Milk Ducts, 2005. 46 x 33 x 200 cm, bronze, fabric, wooden armature

My work recreates parts of the human body using various techniques in fibre. Knitting, crocheting, embroidery, quilting, petit point and needle point have all become media I use to render human anatomy. Many, many stitches created with needles make up a whole piece, much like the cells within our own bodies, tiny parts of the whole.

My use of these materials and processes allows for an examination of how traditional handwork, so called “women’s work” is seen. We live in a society that still expects women to be primary caregivers within families, and as such women are socialized for a more nurturing role. Much of the work they do is socially and culturally invisible and for that reason is often undervalued. Women’s handwork has also been undervalued, seen as decorative, utilitarian or both.

The first wave of feminist artists who introduced “women’s work” into art galleries paved the way for artists of my generation to fully explore the possibilities of textiles as a fine art medium, moving handwork out of the domestic sphere and making it visible in the larger culture.

Brain, 1999. 35.6 x 35.6 x 152.4 cm, knitted cotton, stainless steel armature. Collection: Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Vertebrae, Sacrum, Coccyx, 1999. 36 x 36 x 189 cm, knitted cotton, stainless steel armature. Collection: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Feet, 1999. 38 x 43 x 61 cm, knitted cotton, stainless steel. Collection: Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Hearts, 2000. 30 x 30 x 82 cm, crocheted satin cord, stainless steel.

Knitted Arms, Shoe Forms, Gloves, 1997. Variable dimensions. Collection: Beaverbrook Art Gallery

My work recreates parts of the human body using various techniques in fibre. Knitting, crocheting, embroidery, quilting, petit point and needle point have all become media I use to render human anatomy. Many, many stitches created with needles make up a whole piece, much like the cells within our own bodies, tiny parts of the whole.

My use of these materials and processes allows for an examination of how traditional handwork, so called “women’s work” is seen. We live in a society that still expects women to be primary caregivers within families, and as such women are socialized for a more nurturing role. Much of the work they do is socially and culturally invisible and for that reason is often undervalued. Women’s handwork has also been undervalued, seen as decorative, utilitarian or both.

The first wave of feminist artists who introduced “women’s work” into art galleries paved the way for artists of my generation to fully explore the possibilities of textiles as a fine art medium, moving handwork out of the domestic sphere and making it visible in the larger culture.

Circulatory System, 1999. 305 x 112 cm, embroidered cotton on silk. Collection: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Skeletal System, 1999. 305 x 112 cm, embroidered cotton on silk. Collection: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Major Organs, 1999. 305 x 112 cm, embroidered cotton on silk. Collection: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Corpus, Exhibition view. Corpus, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 1999

This work was created while I was pregnant with my first child. I was rather overwhelmed with my swelling body and consumed with its new role as a site of production for new life. It was at this time that I began to examine and question my dual roles as artist and mother, the creation that is inherent to both, and the cultural assumptions and biases of each. The title implies a rather idyllic state, The Land of Milk and Honey being a prosperous and rich place, in this instance created from nipples and tongues (cast from life) with their implied sensuality. The vessel is lined with beeswax, heightening the sensory impact of the work. It is a work more about the myths of motherhood and fecundity, than it is about its actual experience.

Milk and Honey, 1993. 36 x 31 x 25 cm, bronze vessel lined with beeswax. Collection Canada Council Art Bank

Annunciation, Offerings, Broken Promises `992– installation view Buckham Gallery, Flint, Michigan. 

Offerings, 1992. Plaster, Xerox transfers, coloured pencil, gold leaf and wood.

Annunciation, 1992. Found Dressmakers forms, plaster, gold and silver leaf.

Three Graces, 1990. Variable dimensions, welded steel, paper sewing patterns and shellac.

Hand In Hand, 1988. 90 x 20 x 120 cm, welded steel

A Leg to Stand On, 1988. 28 x 10 x 85 cm, welded steel.

Two Figures, 1988. Ribcage,  30 x 26 x 20 cm, Sternum and Collarbone, 25 x 26 x 20 cm, welded steel