Letters

by artist Nancy Cole.
 
Nancy Cole is a textile artist based in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. Her contemporary practice is based on traditional quilting skills, which she uses to produce concept-based textile art with a strong narrative component.  As she puts it, "Through my own language of abstraction, I tell stories.  Stories about foreign adoption, synchronicity, Canadian cultural identity, etc...." 
 
Ms. Cole makes all of her pieces out of multiple layers of silk, often heavily frayed, and each layer contributes to the storytelling.  A recent series of semi-transparent and textured panels is titled "Sorrowful Letters".  Inspired by Henryk Gorecki's third symphony, she's incorporated diaries and letters of three Island women from the mid-20th Century, a period that Cole calls "... a time rife with fear of (the) world('s) annihilation."