Our Fifth Show of the 2025 Season:
Geology
A Solo Exhibition By
Frances Dorsey
Sept 13 thru Oct 26, 2025
Artist Biography
Francis Dorsey
Francis Dorsey is an artist and gardener living in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. Retired now from teaching at NSCAD, she is grateful for this time that allows an opportunity for reflection, making and observance of the astonishing worlds surrounding us all. In the daily scramble we often don’t have the opportunity to appreciate the rocks, plants and weather phenomena for what they actually are, so being able to slow down and ponder is a wonderful gift. Her work has been shown across Canada as well as in Korea, Australia and the United States, and she is a recipient of various awards. Most recently she has been curating a series of small exhibitions featuring the work of artists who draw inspiration from the Backlands, a rare and endangered site of jackpine and crowberry barrens and small lakes. This beautiful preserve, so close to the Halifax peninsula, is full of endangered creatures and geological mysteries, and each of the arrists engage the terrain distinctly, together creating a multi-faceted consideration of plants and stone as entities.
Artists Statement
Working with cloth is slow and allows time for reflection. For example the act of weaving allows me to build an image or pattern directly in the structure: the idea is intrinsic to the material itself. The slowly accumulating weaving gestures that assemble something out of a pile of string on the floor has a weirdly sensuous aspect that is both seductive and horrifying. And, dyeing and printing the yarn or cloth, and then sewing it together permits a different kind of intervention on an already existing material, changing forms, colours, patterns or graphic marks without altering the physical nature of the cloth. Reconciling these divergent impulses, some slow and controlled, others recklessly fast and unpredictable, has been fascinating, even thrilling, but can also be mindlessly frustrating.
This work process becomes a metaphor for geological and evolutionary actions over time. While considering rocks and plants I hope to reflect the vulnerable, layered, multiple lives and functions all around us and beneath our feet, while also noting the mind-bending function of geological time, which stretches into millions and billions of years. During our current global and political moment, it is comforting to take the long view of life on planet Earth, and to maintain hope in some kind of future, despite the likelihood that it may not be something we can imagine right now.
Thanks so much.
Frances
