Title

Associate Professor of Art + Design

Education

Master of Fine Art, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Diploma, Sheridan College School of Craft and Design, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Biography

Vita Plume has exhibited her woven work throughout Canada and the U.S., as well as in Japan, Poland, Latvia and Finland. She holds a Masters of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Plume is currently Associate Professor in Art & Design at the College of Design, North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina (2001 – 2008). She was the Head of the Textiles Studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, Fredericton, N.B. (1999 – 2001) and Coordinator and Assistant Professor in the Fibres Program of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec (1995-1998). She currently shares her time between her home in Jemseg, New Brunswick, Canada and teaching in North Carolina.

Statement

In making my work, I look through the eyes of a second generation Canadian/Latvian and consider the issues of shifting identities and living in divided cultures. Themes such as problems of loss of culture and tradition and the instability of identity have been major preoccupations. I have felt the effects of displacement from family and culture, as well as experienced the duality of existing in multiple cultures simultaneously: Latvian // Canadian // U.S American. In my work I use image and pattern in an attempt to express the transformations and instability of memory, identity, and culture.

I weave shibori threads into the cloth portraits to resist ‘cultural patterns’ and text, both holders of specific cultural information. I hope the resulting dyed ghostly distortions in the portraits, patterns and text reveal a sense of instability of identity, culture, and tradition.

Focus Area

Fibers, weaving

Departments

Art + Design, Faculty, Fibers & Surface Design