Stitched and Drawn

Richard Boulet

Curated by Wane Baerwaldt.

This IKG-organized touring exhibition includes more than thirty recent works by Edmonton artist Richard Boulet. The artist addresses issues of an eventual spirituality through the cultivation of mental health. His practice is a multifaceted one that includes mixed media drawings and fibre sculptures incorporating quilting and cross-stitching techniques.

Boulet’s work has probed subjects including his personal history of schizophrenia and references homelessness, psychosis, crisis intervention, family issues, medication, and coping strategies. It is important to Boulet to mention the word schizophrenia as a point of departure in a complete list of mental health topics addressed in his work. By providing this context, there is as much consideration paid to recovery as to pre-diagnosis hardships.

The artist's latest body of fibre work is decidedly reflexive in nature, confronting past behaviours and decisions that have impacted negatively on his mental state. Boulet's time-intensive working process provides the artist an opportunity to contemplate the past and, stitch by careful stitch, to put things right. As he explains, “To use quilting and cross-stitching in a body of work that alludes to the psychological dilemmas of redressing regrets seems appropriate, in that there is a strong sense of comfort and self care in these two fibre techniques. Things can't be so bad, so confused, so basically wrong, if the resulting product produced instils a sense of a home well tended, eventually.”

Commenting on the contrast between two aspects of his practice, drawing and quilting/cross-stitching, Boulet explains that drawing provides him an outlet for another sort of expression. “My drawings have a much different job to accomplish. This is when I mentally let loose. I let my mind slide into the energy of the atavistic psychological experience. I jump into the psyche with abandon and see what I can pull out by the seat of my pants. Drawing can be a testing ground to see if I have finally managed to recover to the point that there is no hidden danger lurking in my mind. Yes, the schizophrenia is always present at a certain level, but rules for maintaining mental health do exist, in part; drawing rules that were learnt in university and on my own. It is the sublime training of experience applied to the task at hand that eventually allows the fears and joys of the past to be investigated and given light.”

Ask us about the special print edition Richard Boulet produced in association with students in the ACAD Print Media Department.

Richard Boulet has worked and lived in Edmonton for the past twelve years. He has a BFA from the University of Manitoba School of Art, Winnipeg, and an MFA from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Boulet has exhibited at Plug In ICA, Winnipeg the 2007 Alberta Biennale, Creative Growth, Oakland (in association with Paul Butler’s Collage Party and Matthew Higgs) and Keyano College Art Gallery, Fort McMurray, Alberta.