I am So thankful to have had help from Stacey when hosting our juried show. Aside from curating, helping with the media release and editing the online presentation, Stacey also designed our printed catalogue to celebrate the exhibition! Beginning in April, you’ll be able to purchase your copy at Gallery 33.

Keep an eye on our upcoming newsletter for more information!

Meet the curator of elemental unravelling, Stacey Hare Hodgins:

Stacey is a social worker, facilitator, writer, and community arts organizer deeply committed to the (re)creation and sharing of our stories, especially the ones that disrupt dominant narratives about grief and trauma.

Stacey's narrative practice includes guiding therapeutic writing with individuals, facilitating self-reflective writing workshops with groups, and collaborating with organizations. Some of her most meaningful work has involved developing and facilitating arts programs for under-represented girls and for teenagers coping with anxiety, providing artistic direction for the survivor-informed community-engaged projects Honouring Our Stories and the Art of Resistance, and coordinating Jumblies Theatre’s Community Arts Exchange (Northwest Ontario).

She knows firsthand that writing can help us heal by (re)connecting us with ourselves and each other. Her own writing and mixed media explores themes of grief/loss, identity, in/visibility, dis/connection, and family/memory. Her recent MA project, “Making Feminist Meaning of a Miscarriage,” is a creative autoethnography.

To bring the exhibit to life, I sat down with Stacey to discuss the show, her role as curator and to learn about what she’s been up to.

In Conversation with Stacey Hare Hodgins:
Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Carol: You have been involved as curator, and helper on the side to me in all sorts of ways, what has felt meaningful or has excited you most about being a part of the exhibition?

Stacey: Well, at the beginning of 2020, or maybe it was fall of 2019, I had signed a contract to assist with the exhibition and to facilitate workshops around artist statement writing, and then the pandemic changed all of that. Things had to be pushed back, and things were different for me, as I didn’t end up having as much time as I would have liked. So all of that is to say that I’m grateful to have the opportunity to still be involved. I didn’t have enough time to make work to be considered for the show, and so to be able to curate the exhibit was awesome - I loved it! The process was interesting because I was basically organizing the way things were displayed aesthetically, somewhat thematically, but only based on what my own interpretation was at the time. I didn’t have the statements to see if there were connections coming from the artist's own intentions behind their work. My favourite thing about the work - all of the work is very visually interesting and engaging - but it’s really the stories behind the work I gravitate toward. I want to know why an artist made this, using these things, at this particular point in time. Seeing everything all together - the statements with the work - is what I enjoy most, especially since we don’t always see artwork presented like that. 

C: Is there anything about your approach to curating you’d like to elaborate on?

S: First of all, let’s be clear: I am not a curator. I curated the show, but my approach would certainly be different from somebody who, say, has a degree in art history or has formal education or training in curatorial history or practice. I’m someone who is self-taught in a lot of ways, and I do a lot by feel or by eye. I try grouping artwork to see if the colours and scale can work together within the constraints of the space.  And so that’s how I approached it, kinda by trial and error.  I’m like “yes, that looks right,” to me.

You’ve been involved with other projects that touch on curatorial practices or even working at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery before. Do you want to share a bit about previous projects or experiences that have led up to or influenced curating this exhibit?

S: When I worked at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and you were also there at the time, there was this massive retrospective exhibition of the work of Lynn Johnston, the comic artist who created For Better or For Worse, and that was going to fill all of the main gallery spaces. And then we had the community room, where I wanted to create an exhibit of local comic art. And the way I remember it, everyone was busy with this major show and even though it was my role also at the time to obtain sponsorships and assist with planning the events for the main show - I got the opportunity to organize the entire local exhibition. I called it UNCONSTRAINED: Comic Art by Five Local Artists. The title was a nod to constrained comics, a kind of comic one of the artists introduced me to. And it wasn’t until after it was installed that Alastair, the Communications Coordinator at the time, said, “You curated your first show!” and I was like, “Oh, I did! I did! I curated it.” It was a lot of work, but I learned so much from the process and from Nadia Kurd, the Gallery’s then-curator. There was some diversity in mediums and styles among the artists. Some worked primarily digitally, some focused on comic books, some also did large scale graffiti art. So it was really cool to see it all come together in that space. Because Lynn Johnston was there, I was able to organize what I thought would be a mentoring session for the local comic artists, where she could share some of learning and how she made it in this industry - what some of the pitfalls were - and actually, she was the one who referred to it as a knowledge exchange; she was learning just as much from these emerging artists as they might learn from her. Because it was a group exhibition, I also organized a panel discussion instead of the usual artist talk. I really love all of the behind-the-scenes details involved in curating an entire exhibition, so I think that’s what drew me to it. That was something I feel really fortunate that I got to organize.

I also curated and helped Angie Jensen install Mindful Makers’ first exhibition, Breaking Ground, here at the Baggage Building in the summer of 2019, while you were at an artist residency in Finland! 

C: How is this exhibition unique to say, that show or shows you have seen?

S: This one resonates with me, this theme of unravelling. I’m a member of Mindful Makers too so...I don't want to make any assumptions about where any artists are at or you know, how they live or approach their work, so I look at it through my own lens and knowing how my depression and anxiety can interfere with what I’m actually capable of creating - or even that I can create something, but then I won’t share it. So when I see a collection of work come together like this - 16 individual artists are making art in their own lives, in their own way, but then it all comes together, it just feels brave and amazing to me. I feel more of a personal connection being involved with this show versus, say, even the comic art show. Writing is my primary arts practice, and anything around narrative, especially disrupting a dominant narrative by sharing a story visually or through text, feels really important. Art created by artists who have lived experiences of marginalization, or trauma, or working within limitations, and finding ways to adapt or resist or provoke - is essential. Artists are always doing those things - looking at the world differently and using art to express their unique points of view. It’s just cool to see it all come together with so many styles and perspectives on a theme in one space. 

C: Unlike traditional curators, you didn’t get to play a part in selecting the artists or the artwork - all you had to deal with was the aesthetic value of the works and how they relate to the room. Is there anything surprising, expecting or challenging you had to deal with?

S: I would say that I found the actual installation process the most challenging. We’re exhibiting in a space that really no longer functions like a gallery as it used to. You know, even when we came here ready to install, we didn’t realize we would need to bring everything ourselves. There was no ladder on site anymore, no tools, no extension cords. And, of course, we’re also working on a couple of small walls, around building signage, while keeping in mind that the space might be used for other events while the show is up, and we have one piece that needs to be viewed on all sides, possibly by someone who uses a wheelchair or walker. Because of the variety of materials used by the artists, some pieces required a bit of creative problem-solving to install properly. And when things hang on wires - which is necessary to preserve the gallery space - it can make it difficult to install work that is either top heavy or super lightweight so that it hangs without tilting. (C: factors out of our control). For me, that’s the most challenging because I like to be in control of the way works are displayed. So I had to be like, “well, that’s just gonna hang like that because that’s where the fastener happens to be on the back, and that’s the weight of the piece, and that’s the way the wire is working.” 

C: I know some artists are perfectionists and want to see their work perfectly hung, and the hanging wires do pose a bit of a challenge and it’s just the way it is and we just have to accept - and it looks great.

S: And that’s something I had in mind the whole time: “why can’t I get this to hang perfectly straight?” There’s a whole bunch of factors at play making that impossible. But I’d still wonder, “would this artist be okay with this? I would not be okay with this.”

C: And I know the piece made by Christine Cherniski that has birch bark, leading up to the exhibit, they were frustrated because it wasn’t hanging properly just because it kept curling. When we first hung it, it was straight but now it’s curled again. But it was interesting because Sarah came by and she was like, “you know, that’s the nature of birch bark.” And she just saw it as part of the work. And so hopefully that gives solace to that artist.

S: Mindful Makers creates these professional opportunities for artists; opportunities to exhibit your work. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel like an elitist pursuit. It feels accessible and supportive. For me, even the practice of installing the work was a practice of letting go of perfectionism. Which is really difficult!

C: It would be nice to find out a bit about you - what you’ve been up to lately, and how what you’ve been up to has intersected with the exhibit itself, or maybe the theme - or any way it may have influenced your work.

S: Since the fall of 2020, I’ve been doing a masters in Social Justice Studies, specializing in Gender and Women’s Studies. I’m doing a creative project instead of a conventional research project. It’s a feminist autoethography about my miscarriage using an arts-integrated phenomenological approach. I’m basically writing creative non-fiction and making art to make meaning of my miscarriage as someone who couldn’t reconcile my grief with my pro-choice beliefs. There’s a lot of silence and stigma around miscarriage and I’m exploring the contradictions and tensions in that. So when I think about this show and what I was thinking of right before I came here - I just finished writing a piece this morning, actually, and a line that keeps resonating with me is, “we remember what we pay attention to.” I mean, that’s pretty much the way that memory works, right? I was focusing on a lot of memories for this piece. So it was interesting to notice what I paid attention to, what I held on to, what I remembered, and then what else I remembered once I revisited old emails and things from that time. And so basically what ended up happening was this whole period of unravelling. I was unravelling what I thought was a particular experience in order to re-story it in a way that feels more meaningful for me. I think we make art about what we’re paying attention to. And so when I see all of these pieces and read the statements I’m always fascinated by what it is an individual artist, as well as a group of artists, are paying attention to - because that’s what we remember.