Marianne van Silfhout Gallery Winter Exhibitions

Brockville – The Marianne van Silfhout Gallery at the St. Lawrence College Brockville Campus hosts two winter exhibits.

Go Figure “Poses Exposed” and Text and Textiles: Artist’s Books by Lise Melhorn-Boe run from January 25th to March 21st, 2025 with a joint reception held on Saturday, February 15th from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.

Go Figure “Poses Exposed”:

In the main gallery Go Figure “Poses Exposed”, through the challenge of working with the human figure, ten artists express their thoughts about our place in the world and the human condition: of beauty, of horror, of joy, and sadness.

Established in 2004, the Go Figure art group have been meeting monthly in the Burritts Rapid Community Hall for 20 years. With artist members coming from Perth, Almonte, Ottawa, Orleans, Gatineau, Brockville, Cardinal, and Morrisburg, the group hires professional life models for full-day life drawing sessions. Members are welcome to work in the medium of their choice and get to enjoy the experience of creating and sharing with a diverse group of practicing artists.

The group has mounted two exhibitions at the Burritts Rapid Hall and has participated in the Merrickville Artist’s Studio Tour in 2018 and 2019.

The duties of the group are shared and rotated.

Long-time core members are:

Arlene Hare of Prescott
Dirk Meitzker of Smiths Falls
Leslie Hogg of Mountain
Joyce Morris of Cardinal
Robin Baker of Ottawa

Later members are Tom SLoc and Chris Seymore of Perth, Denise Lachance of Orleans, Danielle Doucette of Gatineau, and Dorothy Adlington of Morrisburg.

Drop-in artists include Jim Weller, Johanna Jensen, Ed and Eda vander Barren, Lara Charelbois, Anne Gruchy, Gregoire Robinson, Marge Fletcher, Sheila Dixon, Wayne Williams, and Jim Jordan.

For more information see or contact them through their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068661302127

Text and Textiles: Artist’s Books by Lise Melhorn-Boe:

In the foyer gallery is Text and Textiles: Artist’s Books by Lise Melhorn-Boe, a series of artist’s books in fabric with poems about textiles, tools and makers, exploring book structures and textile techniques.

In her work, Lise Melhorn-Boe has generally worked thematically, exploring issues like women’s body image, the socialization of children, women’s roles in our society, and how what we do to our environment affects our collective health—all from a feminist perspective.

Often her artist’s books have been made of paper, but because of her background in textiles, she has also incorporated fabric or clothing in her work. Generally, the shape of the book reflects its content; she uses a variety of materials appropriate to the content.

This current body of work focuses on textiles themselves. Melhorn-Boe has searched for poetry about needlework or the tools that are used, creating fabric books which explore book structures usually only created in paper, as well as developing new structures.

She is challenging herself to explore a variety of textile techniques—some of which she is familiar, and others, like needlepoint and how to create pleats, which were new to her. Next up is an exploration of e-textiles!

Lise Melhorn-Boe has been making and exhibiting books and sculptural bookworks for over forty years. She studied at Carleton University and the University of Guelph and received M.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Melhorn-Boe has exhibited widely across Canada and the United States as well as Europe and South America. She has had solo exhibitions at many galleries in Ontario, as well as in Alberta and British Columbia.

Her work is in public and university collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank, Library and Archives Canada, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate London.

Melhorn-Boe now lives in Kingston, Ontario. Website: https://lisemelhornboe.ca/