I am a Grade 11 Co-op student straight from C.D.C.I West who’s looking forward to a career somewhere in Art & Design. Working alongside Alice, I’ve been helping her sew, snip, and stitch together pieces for the Fish Commission. Besides that, I’ve also been doing small chores such as organizing the mountains of fabric in the studio, attempting to win the attention of some kindergarten kids,  and maintaining this very blog.
These past couple of months have been wonderful so far – while most kids in the Co-op program are doing hours of heavy lifting, sorting documents into filing systems, and punching numbers into cash registers; I sit in Alice’s sunny studio with a tea in one hand and some beautiful fabrics in the other – doing something I love to do - create and design. In this small town of 18 500, it’s great to find people who have such a passion for art that they make a living off of it, and to be able to assist and learn someone who does is definitely great.

Each fish was made out of a creative spirit, but there was one fish also created out of love and fond memories for a very special person.  One fish was made in memory for Cheryl Laver.  Cheryl worked in the town’s finance department for six years.  In November of 2009, after fighting a courageous battle with cancer Cheryl passed away.  Her co-workers gathered fabrics and memorabilia that were significant to Cheryl.  Their contributions reflected Cheryl’s deep love for her cats and for horses.  The Art Gallery of Northumberland’s curator Dorette Carter created the fish.  Pictured here is Dorette applying the finishing touches to a very unique fish dedicated to the lovely and very unique Cheryl.

Each fish was unique.  Many of the fish had two very different sides as each side was created by textile material from the community.   Each fish was photographed by my husband Mark, in a careful and professional manner.   Of the one hundred fish,  there were one hundred and thirty images.

This morning, in the local daily newspaper there is a photo of the one hundred fish hanging in new Cobourg Community Centre.   It was stunning to see the fish there, in the photo.  For so long they have been here all over my studio in various stages of completion.  As all people that work with textiles know, there is an incredible amount of detail that goes into each piece.  Seeing the photo, while reading the paper over the calm of the morning coffee,  I realized that the impact of all those details had finally added up into one sculpture.

As mentioned earlier on this blog each step of the creation was a process.  So to it was with the hanging.  The town of Cobourg did a class act of “doing it right”.   For the hanging they provided two skyjacks,  four men in harnesses, two spotters, and the town engineer, Teresa Behan, to oversee the project.  The most important element of the hanging process was everyone’s goal to do it right.  In the end this even meant redoing a whole row and creating even more overtime for everyone involved.   We had two days to hang all one hundred fish.  The skyjacks were finally rolled out with barely a minute left on the time allotment.  We had been at the job for a total of twenty five hours!

The process of hanging the fish began with the help of Kaye Jackson,  and Ed Hagedorn in laying out all the fish.  You might notice the hard hat, vest and special boots.  Legally we were still on a construction site.  Short of proper foot wear, we made a quick trip down to the town “yard” were the town employees, literally took the boots of their feet so that we could use them.  Community at it’s best!!!!  We were later joined by my husband Mark who I think looks smashing in the construction get up.   Christine Stewart joined us as well and provided incredible help and support throughout the two days.

Here is a picture of Teresa Behan the town engineer.  She oversaw the whole project and was responsible to seeing that it was completed in the allotted two days.  In spite of that pressure she consistently maintained that the project should be exactly as I wanted it to be.  In this image she is holding a stick as we are trying to determine if a hockey stick could reach the fish.  A consideration for sure.  If truth be told Teresa never needed a “stick”to get things done.  She simply earned everyone’s respect right from the get go.  That she gave the guys chocolate, and kept them well fed with donuts, pizza, and all the coffee they wanted was an added bonus!

In the end it was about the workers, the guys in the five point harnesses, in the skyjacks which were about as high as they could possibly go.  Darryl, Carl, Murray and Jeff were an amazing team that hung the fish with efficiency, and accuracy.  With each fish they asked me were it should be, how high, how low, what direction etc…  And for each fish they patiently waited for my response.  There was nothing quick about the process.  After twenty four hours of doing this they still maintained a professional, careful  approach.  In the end I was so filled with gratitude for their patience and respect.  By the time they got to fish number 95 I had about had it and began talking about leaving some of the fish out.  The remaining crew, the one that did the overtime, Darryl and Carl  encouraged me to get them all hung and their enthusiasm for the last fish was even greater than they had shown for the first one.  They gently kept humouring  me to make the decisions, so keen were they to see this job perfectly completed.  I was so thankful for that enthusiasm and energy!  In the end the job was completed perfectly!

The fish,  all the materials, and work, and hand stitching had all become so familiar.  After spending months on the fish I knew each fish by detail.  It was quite something to see all the work displayed, so publicly.   People were looking at the display and appreciating the array of colour and textures.  But in the end it was gratifying to see the work completed.  Here are some of the pictures of opening night.

One element that was especially exciting was the different angles that one can view the installation.  Here are some images taken from the arena.  At any point from within the arena one can see the fish.

Friends and family play a huge role in any creative project.  Here is a broach that my friend, Pili Palm-Leis made.  It is the exact replica of one of the fish.  Presented to me at a party celebrating the opening which coincided with my birthday, it was a fitting end to a labour of love.