Daron Letts
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 02/05) - If Ann Timmins were to display all 31 of her large, hanging, dyed silk works at one time, there probably wouldn't be room for anything else in the Birchwood Gallery.

Two walls full of Ann Timmins' silk work and prints are now on display at the Birchwood Gallery. The collection also includes an 18" tall soft statue of an angel made of dyed silk.

Thanks to the giclee printing process, Timmins is able to showcase prints of her silk works at the gallery in an ongoing exhibition called Emergence.

Timmins uses the giclee process to convert her wall-sized dyed and painted silks into prints that are a fraction of the original size, without losing colour quality or detail. Even the fine weave of the silk shows up in the prints.

Giclee is the anglicized version of a French term meaning "to spray." It refers to the digital process of photographing or scanning a flat artwork, then using a computer to colour adjust the reproduction to match the original. The artistic application of the technology was developed in the early 1990s.

Timmins' colourful silks and their limited edition prints depict abstract landscapes, rich with symbolism. The theme of women and motherhood informs many of the pieces. All the works are vivid and colourful.

"What I love most about being an artist is working with colour," Timmins said.

One silk tapestry, Abandoned, shows an iceberg cast between the vitality of a burning orange sky and the cold, dark blue depths of the ocean void. Images of a young woman's face peering down into the abyss and another older woman with arms outstretched appear on closer inspection.

In another dye on silk called Dene Mother, a woman holds her baby, swaddled in a bundle of cozy hide, as she stands on the edge of her village. Her sharp red and yellow plaid skirt and kerchief contrast with the forested horizon as she ponders a future under colonialism.

Dual Persona is a dyed silk hanging that visualizes a performance Timmins saw in Whitehorse, in which a dancer transitioned between genders. The ribbon-like hair of Timmins' gender-bending character captures a sense of playful movement and spiritual flux.

Several of her pieces focus on flowers, birds, sunsets and angels. All of the prints are limited editions with no more than 50 reproductions each.

Over the winter, Timmins will create a collection of pieces exploring the lives of women in the North for an exhibition at the gallery in 2006.