Rendering Vancouver's rapid growth in a tapestry of wool

Share

Do Make Say Think is the name of a Canadian rock band, but we also thought the title was a good one for a weekly summer series introducing readers to British Columbians out of the public eye who are doing things, making things, saying things and thinking things. This week, for Think, we talk to Vancouver artist Sola Fiedler, whose knitted tapestries have taken her from Altanta to Sydney to Las Vegas – with canvasses priced at over six figures.

Sola Fiedler wanted to capture her adopted city before huge change overtook Vancouver. She ended up changing her own life.

She was in the dentist's chair having a root canal in 1983 and noticed all the construction happening in the city in preparation for Expo '86 (her dentist's office happens to have a great view of the city). She felt a strong desire to create a work of art that would reflect Vancouver as it was before the World's Fair came to town.

"I can't paint and I don't know how to draw, and I don't have a camera, but I can knit," she thought. "So I decided to paint a picture with wool."

She happened to walk into tapestry artist Barbara Heller's Granville Island studio, saw a large work on the wall, and asked her how she did it – and received a "like, 40-second lesson."

Ms. Fiedler's first Vancouver tapestry has helped her stitch a new life path. She has since made several large-scale, ultra-detailed tapestries of cities, focusing mostly on urban landscapes that are on the cusp of change – in particular, cities hosting an Olympic Games.

"The beauty of these tapestries – they are historical documents of that moment in time," she says.

Last year, she came full circle, completing a new Vancouver Tapestry – an enormous aerial view (11-feet-6-inches by 5-feet-3-inches) of a city that has exploded since her pre-Expo work – and details even the number of floors in each meticulously recreated condo and office tower.

Ms. Fiedler does not use assistants, nor does she work from a photograph or sketch. She works freehand, based on daily walks. She heads, on foot, to the real-life spot she is about to tackle next on her canvas, and looks at it.

Home for Ms. Fiedler, who turned 79 this summer, is an 800-square-foot, live-work studio space in East Vancouver which is far more work than live – racks of wool sweaters, bolts of fabric and other materials and tools surround the single domestic item in evidence, a magenta sofa piled with sequined pillows.

"I live on my couch," says Ms. Fiedler, who is petite, even without comparing her to one of her giant canvases.

"That's my tiny little living portion," she says. "I love living like that because the only thing that matters to me is creativity."

Ms. Fiedler was born in London in 1936, and moved to Toronto in 1959. She had six dollars when she arrived, she says, and quickly got a job as a lab technician. Later, with her then-husband, she was active in Yorkville's coffee-house scene, owning the storied Riverboat as well as the Mousehole, and putting up performers at their five-bedroom Rosedale home.

"My house was always a cross between Woodstock and The Last Waltz," she says. "Joni [Mitchell] would stay for weeks, writing songs."

After Ms. Fiedler's marriage ended, she turned the Mousehole into a discotheque, the Bod Pod. In 1971, she moved to Vancouver, where she operated the Soft Rock Café, a 500-seat venue in Kitsilano.

After doing the Expo piece, Ms. Fiedler moved from place to place, spending years in each city as she painstakingly wove its details onto large-scale canvases. She started in Key West, Fla. Then on the day Atlanta was awarded the 1996 Olympics, she hopped a plane and settled there, sight unseen. Next up was Sydney, where she completed her tapestry two hours before the 2000 opening ceremonies. Then she "raced" to Utah to create the Salt Lake City Tapestry (where the city is nestled in intricately recreated mountains). Beijing was going to be next, but when Ms. Fiedler read about plans to replace some old hotels on the Las Vegas strip with condos, she headed there instead, where she spent three years creating a nighttime Vegas scene – again detailed right down to the colourful neon and glittery streetlights of the urban grid.

Beyond the artistic result, there is method to this walking madness: Ms. Fiedler is very health-conscious. She works out for two hours a day – weights and cardio early every morning – in addition to the big walk, which can sometimes take hours.

"I want to live to be 100, so that's a really important part of my game plan," she explains.

Selling these pieces – which aren't commissioned – is a bit of a gamble. The works are priced at more than six figures. (With all the hours Ms. Fiedler puts into them – more than 5,000, for instance, for the Vancouver Tapestry – it's barely a living. Beyond her rent and expenses such as utilities, Ms. Fiedler manages to live on about $5 a day, she says.)

The original Vancouver Tapestry was purchased and given to businessman and Expo '86 CEO Jim Pattison as a thank-you gift. The more recent Vancouver Tapestry was bought by a philanthropist who donated it to Canuck Place – a children's hospice in Abbotsford, where it now hangs.

The Sydney Tapestry was purchased by Australian-born Peter Farrell, founder of the sleep apnea giant ResMed, and hangs in the foyer of the company's San Diego headquarters. The Key West Tapestry was purchased by a philanthropist who donated it to a local museum.

But others remain unsold. Ms. Fiedler is currently repurposing her Atlanta Tapestry, turning it into a giant, colourful vase with 3-D flowers. In July, she brought her Salt Lake City and Las Vegas tapestries to the Santa Fe International Contemporary Art Fair. They failed to sell, despite all the attention they attracted, especially the Vegas work.

"I would watch the people coming towards me and this huge grin would appear on their face as they remembered what they did last time they were in Las Vegas," she says.

Adding to the pressure is Ms. Fiedler's desire to keep the works in the communities they portray. Sale of the Las Vegas Tapestry, which she was sure would be fairly easy given all the money in that town, did not happen; she was nearing the end of the project when the economy collapsed. She still hopes to see it end up there – perhaps in some palatial hotel lobby.

The artist has her sights set on her next project – the Grand Canyon, something she has wanted to do for 30 years, she says. After that, she's thinking Dubai. She would also like to squeeze in a Granville Island Tapestry. She likes to work in public.

"It enables me to talk to young people about following their dreams. 'If you want to be a photographer or a writer, don't become a dentist because your parents want you to,'" she tells them. "It's almost bizarre to see someone creating a giant tapestry in public. So they do see that if you follow your dreams, you'll find a way of actually surviving – and being extraordinarily happy."