American artist Emily Jan is based in Canada and her magical sculptures and installations are so lifelike they have been mistaken for taxidermy. Created with a range of techniques including freeform basketry, wet and needle felting, piecing and hand stitching her “hyper-realistic sculptural installations combine natural history with both mythological and contemporary concerns.”

Firstly where did you grow up and where do you live now? 

I was born and raised in California (born in LA, raised in San Francisco), and lived a number of places before settling in Canada eleven years ago, including Providence, RI; Moab, UT; Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa; and periodic stints in Oaxaca, Mexico. I now live in Edmonton, Alberta. I only recently moved here though – for the last decade, I lived and worked in Montreal, which is in Quebec. 

What is your background in textiles?

I completed my MFA at Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec) in 2014, in the Fibres & Material Practices programme. Prior to that, I did a BFA in 2 years at California College of the Arts (CCA, San Francisco/Oakland). Though I graduated from CCA with a degree in Painting and Drawing, I spent a lot of time in their Textiles studio, which is where I made the transition into working in fine arts with textile as my primary medium. And prior to that, I studied at Brown University in the late 1990’s, where I was in the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance in scenography – designing sets, costumes, puppets and props. In the years following, I worked both freelance and in the costume craft departments of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the California Shakespeare Festival…so the theatre is where my relationship with textiles really began.

What is it about textiles as an art form that appeals to you? 

I like that textiles are a part of our everyday lives – though often people are not actively conscious of that. I work primarily with natural substances – wool, reed, gut, and natural dyes and inks. They are, for the most part, renewable resources or waste products of other industries. For me, textiles are inextricable from the landscapes that produced them, though those relationships are often convoluted. 

I also often work with found and/or reclaimed materials, which introduces the element of chance into my practice (if I’m not in the studio or out in the field, you can probably find me at the local thrift store). And given that the textile industry, primarily in the form of fast fashion, is one of the most wasteful modern industries, the tension between all of these threads are interesting to me.

Then there are of course the tacit relationships to labour, particularly women’s labour, and the fact that the realm of “textiles” encompasses a truly enormous array of materials, techniques, and a history that literally spans the globe and the entire human timescale. There’s a lot to work with. 

How do you describe your work?

I would describe my primary practice as hyper-realistic sculptural installations that combine natural history with both mythological and contemporary concerns. The installations are composed of a combination of found objects and materials as well as meticulously hand-made pieces that depict flora and fauna – sometimes fantastical, sometimes real, sometimes a hybrid of the two.

I also have parallel practices of writing, illustrating, and bookmaking, as well as a habit of foraging (for the table, and for the dye pot and inkwell). 

What techniques do you use? 

I’ve used a lot of different textile techniques in my work over the years, but the ones which remain most consistent in my sculpture practice are felting (wet felting and needle felting), piecing and hand-stitching, and the creation of sculptural forms through a loose kind of freeform basketry using grown linear elements such as rattan, willow, and dogwood. I also do a lot of foraging, both in life and in art, and have a side practice of natural dyeing and making handmade foraged inks.

How do you create a piece?  

I do a lot of sketching when I am travelling or chewing on new ideas, but for my sculptural work, I’m at the point where once I know what I want I usually just jump in. Working with rattan is kind of like making a drawing in three dimensions; and I have enough experience with the material by now that I can work with its properties on the fly. When I am experimenting with new wools or new natural dyes, yes, I do a lot of sampling and swatching and labelling of things, but when working directly on a piece, I usually just go for it and see where it takes me.

Where do you work? 

For many years, I ran a studio in the Mile-Ex district of Montreal, with my good friend and former Concordia classmate Maude Bernier-Chabot, who is also a sculptor. We ran the studio, which waxed and waned from six at the fewest to eleven at the largest, for eight and a half years. Now that I have relocated to Alberta, I live in a house with a semi-basement large and bright enough to work in. After being in one place for so long and then experiencing the massive upheaval of a mid-pandemic, mid-winter move, I have yet to get the studio fully up and running again. But given the current reality of the world, I am grateful to have my home and my work life under one roof. I have my eye on rebuilding the falling-down shed in the backyard as a woodshop/greenhouse/dye-lab, but…one step at a time!

I know this is a hard question but how long does a bigger piece take?

It does vary! A large or complex single sculpture may take me anywhere from one to four months. A massive installation such as After the Hunt – which was my first very large-scale installation as a textile artist (vs as a theatre designer) and also my thesis work for my MFA –took a solid two years, pretty much full time. I do not work with assistants except at the installation stage, so everything that is made is generally made by me. I also wrote a book that went along with it, so I guess that added to the time count… (the link to the digital version is below)

You also teach, how do you work your practice into your busy schedule?

By not sleeping that much! Haha no, just kidding, that’s how I used to do it, when I was much younger. Now in my 40’s, I try for better balance. What’s that metaphor about riding a bike…? Something about it only working when you are in motion, right? I feel my working life is rather like that. Sometimes it’s just the momentum itself that carries me.

I currently teach remotely and part-time, so it’s manageable to maintain a classroom alongside my art practice. But a lot of my work revolves around travel and being embedded in location, often in remote places – a fair amount of the material I have worked with lately, both metaphorically and literally, came from the wilds or rural fringes of places like Newfoundland, Alaska, and the Peruvian Amazon. So, when we are back to moving around the world, and teaching in person, I’ll have to see! Zoom lectures from the rainforest…?

What are you most proud of in your art career so far?

That’s a hard question…! I guess rather than any one piece or installation, I’m proud of the fact that in the decade since I first arrived in Canada, my work has taken me across this vast nation and introduced me to all kinds of people and communities I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to engage with. Not to speak of the places further afield that it has taken me before that. Sights, stories, and collected materials from travels have then returned to inform future work. 

Within Canada, I’ve travelled with exhibitions from Dawson City to Newfoundland and many points between, which has given me a whole different perspective on what it means to be Canadian (especially as a relatively recent immigrant), and it has created a truly national network of explorers, scientists, farmers, and fellow artists, writers, curators, arts administrators and educators whom I am very lucky to call friends and co-conspirators. 

Do you have any advice for aspiring textile artists?

I would invite the rising generation of textile artists to jump in with both feet, and to continue the work of breaking down the historical western boundaries between “craft”, “art”, and “design.” Let’s leave that behind for good! I think then we can start having a more fruitful kind of conversation about material culture, and the way it can help us to understand and navigate our relationships to the natural world and to each other. 

Plus, whether you do it to show in a museum or to create something durable and warm for a loved one, the simple act of making something by hand is itself restorative, especially at this time.

www.emilyjan.com

https://www.instagram.com/emilyjanstudio

Recent collaborations and projects