Every once in a while you come across something or someone that’s so original, it’s hard to describe.

 

The someone is fibre artist Linda Brine. The something is what she makes and offers in her Stratford shop-slash-studio-slash-gallery called String Fever.

 

So here goes: exquisitely beautiful, hand-bound books and weaving – blankets, scarves – glittering woven paper pictures, deconstructed-reconstructed print images, creations of string, yarn and paper; spools of jewel-like threads; yarn, gorgeous yarn spun into a multitude of textures from animal and plant fibres like silk, linen, bamboo, alpaca, mohair, wool, some unspun like tresses of human hair all in luscious colourways.

 

String Fever – a very good name – is an open, spacious, white-washed space in York Lane right behind Pazzo. Linda envisioned String Fever as “a place to get some yarn, and see some art” but also where she could have a studio space of her own for the first time in her career, a place to do her artistic work and display it for the public. It’s nothing short of remarkable, even magical.

 

It takes guts and strength to be a working artist. Art – real art – isn’t safe. It questions, pushes boundaries, causes problems. The thing about any creative pursuit is that you don’t always know where it’s going to take you or what the end result will be. Says Linda simply: “Paper and string holds enormous fascination.”

 

A Stratford native, Linda studied intaglio – a form of printmaking – at the University of Windsor and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Returning to Stratford, she became a member of Gallery 96, “an important transition from student to working artist”. She also worked for a while painting sets for the National Ballet and the CBC and in 1989 made her way to the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton to teach. She became the head of the Fibre Arts Studio from 2001 to 2011, where her students earned many awards.

 

During this time Linda continued her exploration with paper. And then, as things will, a series of events occurred around the same time and conspired to bring her love of paper, books and yarn (Linda is a life-long knittter) together. These events were a paper making course that had a spinning component; a gift of a thin book on bookbinding; and the discovery of

The Paper Place in Toronto, the iconic Japanese paper store with over 1200 different papers. “It set my brain on fire”, Linda recalls.

 

The result? Hand-bound books which Linda still makes today. Books so beautiful I can’t imagine writing in them – a problem Linda solves by offering to deface the first page, so it can “fulfill its destiny”.

 

The weaving magic happened in Fredericton. Always looking to learn and expand, Linda connected with a weaver who talked her into taking a course. “Taking that weaving course changed my life,” Linda tells me over a cup of hot cider in her studio, amid the yarn and paper and looms. “It was more like remembering than learning. I had archetypal dreams about it.”  In one vivid dream Linda saw herself flying through the shed (the space created between the warp – north-south facing threads – and the weft – east-west facing threads – when they are separated for the shuttle to pass between).

 

The teacher had the student weavers start with huge blankets and scarves. Linda’s first projects were remarkably professional-looking. She still has her first woven blanket at the studio in York Lane. From weaving blankets, Linda began experimenting with weaving paper with thread. “I was still making books, so it was only a small step to weaving paper,” Linda explains.

 

There is a secret Japanese art of weaving paper called Saganishiki. In 1997 Linda was able to bring master Japanese weaver and one of the few teachers sharing this technique, Mihoko Karaki, to Fredericton for a nine-day workshop.

 

“The aesthetic of Japanese art has had a huge impact on my practice,”

Linda continues. “I really respond to the Japanese aesthetic approach to materials and the relationship with nature.”

 

Linda had been weaving traditionally and with paper for five years, experimenting and learning. The nine-day workshop was both exhausting and a breakthrough. “It solved all the problems I’d been having and since then my work has been more resolved,” Linda states.

 

The notion of problems and resolution are themes that Linda touches on repeatedly. She finds pleasure in working, pleasure in the problems and pleasure in working the problems out. In the end her work is further refined.

 

“Anytime you do something new, you encounter new problems. It’s about doing the work learning and solving problems That’s the fun part of pushing your own envelope.”

 

Handicrafts and weaving in particular have been traditionally women’s work since time immemorial. It has been both task and art form, practiced over countless hours, years and centuries. The art and craft itself is iconic.

 

There is something in Linda at her loom, within her whitewashed stone-walled studio, that connects to this ancient tradition – and to the feistiness and challenge of establishment that has been part of the weavers’ history.

 

Linda refers to her work as “a practice”. Her practice in a way is a metaphor encompassing both the meditative aspect and daily doing of the thing; a reference evoking all the weaving that has come before. And it is a daily practice of the artistic risk.

 

In Linda’s own words: “There is a rigor and challenge of doing this, and doing it well takes a number of years until it’s deemed worthy of being shown to the public.”

 

Linda’s current weaving experiments are weaving printed images on paper into each other. “My work is craft-based, but it’s conceptual craft,” she explains. “I appropriate the visual language of art but transform it though the language of craft.”

 

An art with a long tradition but ever so contemporary.

 

“There’s a certain irreverence to dismantling an image by Rembrandt.”

 

And so I offer you a challenge: Look for Linda’s handwritten sign board on Ontario Street, the one with arrows telling you where to find String Fever. See some art, get some yarn, dazzle your eyes, cozy up with a hand woven blanket, acquire a hand-bound journal. You don’t want to miss something wonderful.