A life-long artist whose body of work is walking around on the bodies of people across the world as unique clothing is bringing a special collection of textile art to Collingwood library for the first-ever Canadian showing of the collection.
Annie Thompson recently moved full-time to Wasaga Beach where she runs her own studio, but the textile works she'll be showing at the library, she made in Kolkata, India with the help of fellow artists and artisans she met and befriended during five years of travelling to the city in West Bengal.
Thompson is in her 43rd year designing clothing, about 70 per cent of which is made by her at her Wasaga Beach studio. Clients can shop by appointment, and Thompson does custom work as well as her own designs.
One of the highlights of her career was winning the 2017 Design Forward Vanguard Award for sustainability and leadership in eco-fashion. Her pieces are sourced in Canada and made with recycled and up-cycled fabrics. The designs are unisex and created with comfort and practicality in mind.
"I love a deep pocket," said Thompson. "In fact, I was dubbed the 'Pocket Queen' when I had my store on Queen West in Toronto for 10 years."
It's her textile art that will be on display at the Collingwood Public Library later this month. The pieces were made over several months spent in Kolkata, India, during multiple trips. Thompson built a network of artists and friends while she spent time there, and together they created the pieces in Thompson's show called The Powerless and The Glory.
"The theme is collaboration and community, because, without collaboration and without community, I would not have built this body of work in Kolkata," said Thompson, who lived in the city for three months at a time for five years.
"I had a lot of help from new friends there to create my body of work and I worked with local textile people and silk screeners and block printers," said Thompson. "I wanted to go to a place I'd never been and experience a culture that was very different from mine."
She showed the work in India 10 years ago, and the Collingwood Library show will be the first time this body of work will be shown in Canada.
At the show in Kolkata, Thompson also worked on a live dance/movement performance set to music, and she's bringing the same concept here with help from a local musician.
The performance is one-time only, at the 2 p.m. reception on Sept. 16, but the show will be featured in the library until the end of October.
The collaborative aspect of the textile art and the performance, Thompson hopes, shows a creative courage.
"We hope to inspire people to make their dreams come true and just go for it and not be too self-conscious about things ... but to actually put themselves out there," said Thompson.
"I hope that I can inspire others, through my collaboration with other artists, to just do what they feel they're interested in and show it to the world and don't hold it in, because I think we hold things in and we don't express ourselves, and we can get unhappy," said Thompson.
For more on Thompson, visit her website at anniethompson.ca.
