Collection Connections: (Un)becoming and Impermanence

By Ashlyn Gregory

In their exhibition Keeping Time, on display in the Queen’s Square Gallery from March 15 – May 31, 2025, Laura Peturson and Andrew Ackerman create an enchanting environment that invites viewers to consider the passage of time. Inspired by the woods surrounding their home in Callander, Ontario, the artists use the remnants of children’s forts as a foundation from which to examine natural life cycles and the aging of children.

Drawing on similar themes of time and change, Sandy Harris’s 2002 work, Despair, is a meditation on impermanence. The work features crewel embroidery, a labour-intensive needlework style popularized in the sixteenth century Often stitched by young women of the gentry and nobility, traditional crewelwork patterns include biblical scenes, repetitive designs, and floral imagery (1).  In Despair, the artist embroiders natural forms that represent the cyclical (re)birth and death of nature- with acorns symbolizing spring and vivid leaves representing autumn.

The striking contrast between the delicate needlework and stark elements of decay calls attention to the loss of innocence that accompanies the passage of time. Moreover, the work critiques the traditional expectations of women and the gendered perception of embroidery as a domestic art. Through the act of intentionally dyeing, slashing, and burning her embroidery, Harris echoes the unlikely coexistence between spring and autumn, creating a piece that is simultaneously coming together and falling apart.

The theme of impermanence is reinforced by the use of ephemeral materials. Linen and wool, as organic fibres, are inherently susceptible to deterioration. The distressing and ageing of the fabric emphasize the fragility of textiles and the inevitability of change. Similarly, the hand-painted murals and wheat-pasted prints in Keeping Time will eventually be removed from the walls of the gallery, never to exist again in the same way.

1. Melinda Watt, “English Embroidery of the Late Tudor and Stuart Eras,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 1, 2010, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/english-embroidery-of-the-late-tudor-and-stuart-eras