Alexandrya Eaton

Digits & Threads: Reflections on Rug Hooking 2022

For Eaton, taking time to practice slow fibre art that pulls together diverse threads and reestablishes pattern and use, is taking time to honour, taking time to mourn. If we mend something, we value it sufficiently to make it whole. Not perfect, but whole. Sorrow becomes tactile, soft. The pop appeal transforms into a poignant and thoughtful response to the presence and absence of female influence, and, in doing so, these works invite wisdom, true power, and the dignity of humanity.

Nadine Flagel — Digits & Threads

Reflections on Rug Hooking: Alexandrya Eaton’s “Everything in Between”

Written by Nadine Flagel www.pretextstudio.com

Published Digits & Threads, January 2022

To read the full article, please visit: www.digitsandthreads.ca

"In Eaton’s work, a simultaneous and generous repetition of motifs, especially female figures, stands in for generational or sequential motifs, the things that get passed down from woman to woman in families. Rather than offering a movement through time or a sense of chronological development, the paintings and rugs freeze time, honouring Eaton’s grandmother not simply as an ancestor (her importance derived from her identity as the source of the artist’s identity) but as having a full and complete life in herself (her importance derived as separate from the artist’s identity). Yet the frequent grouping of three or four of the figures is suggestive of the number of generations of women that often co-exist (grandmother, mother, child, and beyond)."

Owens Art Gallery, 2021
Owens Art Gallery, 2021