At Home with Alexandra Jean Auger

How would you describe the art you make? How did you get started?

I'm a textile artist, and currently that looks like woven fine art tapestries, designed to be wall hangings. To date these are pictorial scenes or woven versions of everyday objects, inspired by the bit of poetry--melancholy or euphoric and sometimes both--found in life's everyday grime and grittiness. I work from my own mobile snaps, or create composites culled from online search results. With every piece, my aim is for the viewer to be struck with that a-ha moment of  "I've done that!" or "I've felt that!", even if it only ever reached their subconscious before now.

As a little kid, I thought an artist was a painter in a beret and striped top, and I wanted to be one.  “Artist!” I exclaimed with six-year-old confidence when my favourite sitter asked what I’d like to be when I grew up. Imagine my bewilderment when she replied, “what kind?” So I did paint. I drew. I became obsessed with zines and artist's books, even enrolling in a Printmaking minor so I could access the bookbinding courses (those couple classes were great, but I'm a sloppy, impatient printmaker). I take dozens of photos a day and have shot film since high school, but never learned to properly use my camera beyond "automatic". I didn't know weaving was an option. 

But by mid-2016, let's say, I couldn't ignore the textiles I was seeing on my social media feeds and at galleries. I was enamoured by complex, painterly tapestries, and colourful, celebratory garments that challenged the idea of ‘dress’. They were clearly moored in tradition, but exhilaratingly modern. I think it was staring at this simple but oddly captivating little tapestry on a friend's wall while snowed in at her apartment that finally pushed me. In early 2017 I enrolled in a two-day Weaving 101 workshop at The Workroom, fully aware it might end as another abandoned pursuit, but it clicked. I loved it and have been weaving since, teaching myself through trial and error to create more complex shapes and to mix colours, experimenting with natural dyes, building my own crappy frame looms. I'm genuinely excited to keep learning more about weaving, which is how I know I've found my thing. It's funny I didn't think of textiles as art until so recently, because really my mother is, and her mother was, textile creators in their own right. It feels good to carry that on. 

To see the full interview and photos click here!