Artist Lois Klassen’s vision is of a bed piled high with luxuriant quilts to warm body and soul.
Klassen’s Comforter Art-Action: Princess City is an invitation to the people of the Fraser Valley to participate in generating this social wealth. The installation is part of A Common Thread: Textiles from Stó:lō, South Asian and Mennonite Communities.
Klassen produces collective-action projects, performance, video and installation works. Since 2001 she has hosted Comforter Art-Action, an ongoing material response to human displacement that has involved over 200 individuals and groups from over 20 countries. The September 11 attacks, and the subsequent retaliatory strikes that produced millions of displaced people, was the impetus for her to send an invitation for contributions of fabric squares or textile art that she would incorporate into a ‘refugee blanket’. She learned how to make these blankets, for use in refugee camps, from her mother who was involved in the Mennonite Central Committee Canada.
Through Comforter Art-Action Klassen has made about 100 of these blankets to send overseas. Through discussions with The Reach staff the focus for the Comforter Art-Action: Princess City installation shifted to gathering quilts for those in need in the local surrounding area. Klassen invites the community to contribute new hand-made quilts or purchased quilts or blankets for the bed on display in the gallery. In early December The Reach will distribute them, through the Fraser Valley Housing Network, to women-serving organizations to give to women in need. According to Klassen, “Just as the bedding in the old story, “The Princess and the Pea” demonstrated great wealth and comfort, this pile of blankets in a museum today signifies our collective social capital.”
Klassen has exhibited and participated in the Means of Production Community Garden artists residency (Vancouver); Banff New Media Institute Liminal Screen Residency; Richmond Art Gallery’s Archive City; CityScape (North Vancouver), VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), The Western Front (Vancouver), Transportale (Berlin), and aceartinc (Winnipeg). She is currently an instructor and a Masters of Applied Art Candidate at Emily Carr University in Vancouver.
