Oxygen’s window project is entitled O2.
O2 is a window. O2 is Oxygen Art Centre’s off-site gallery.
CURRENT
Ecology of Cloth
11June – 22 August 2026
West Kootenay Fibreshed Artist Collective:
Danielle Soucie + Tracy Fillion
Raw Linen, Hand processed, Locally grown
2026
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This story begins in the soils of Argenta.
Flax seeds are pressed into the soil and wait. Through sun, rain, drought, and time, it grows into a slender plant. Months later, it is pulled from the earth by hand, bundled, retted, broken, scutched, and hackled using handmade tools. Slowly, the fibre hidden within the stalk is revealed.
The transformation from plant to thread unfolds through hundreds of small actions. Over many months, Danielle Soucie guides the flax from seed to spun thread, revealing the fibre hidden within the stalk and drawing it into yarn by hand. The work is repetitive, physical, and often unforgiving. The flax passes through hands again and again. It catches on skin. It leaves traces of itself behind. Days become weeks. Weeks become months. Gradually, fibre becomes thread.
From there, the material passes into Tracy Fillion’s hands, where the next chapter of its story begins.
At the loom, the linen reveals a character unlike commercially processed fibre. It tangles. It mats.
It resists. Rather than moving smoothly through the loom, it demands attention, adaptation, and care. The material meets the maker at every stage of the process.
In that resistance, something becomes visible.
Much of the cloth that surrounds us arrives disconnected from its origins. We encounter it only at the end of its journey, long after the labour, land, weather, and relationships that made it possible have been obscured. This linen carries those histories with it. The fibre retains the memory of the garden where it grew, the handmade tools that transformed it, the seasons that shaped it, and the hands that guided it from plant to cloth.
The three woven panels that make up this installation are the result of that journey. Their layered transparency reflects the many stages of transformation that occur between seed and textile. Each layer reveals and conceals the others, much like the processes that are often hidden within contemporary cloth production.
In a culture shaped by speed, convenience, and disposability, this work offers another way of understanding material. It asks us to slow down and consider the lives embedded within the things we use. It invites us to see cloth not as a product, but as an accumulation of relationships between soil, plant, weather, labour, knowledge, and time.
More than an aesthetic object, the installation celebrates the resilience and beauty of natural materials grown and processed within our bioregion. It reflects the connections between art, land stewardship, and sustainable fibre systems, offering a moment of quiet reflection. Through linen, the work asks us to reconsider the role of natural fibres in contemporary life and to recognize cloth not as something separate from land, labour, or ecology, but as an expression of relationship.
ABOUT THE WEST KOOTENAY FIBRESHED:
The West Kootenay Fibreshed is a not-for-profit organization working to strengthen regional fibre systems from soil to soil. By connecting growers, processors, artists, makers, and community members, the Fibreshed supports local fibre production, natural dyeing, textile education, and the revival of place-based skills.
Rooted in the belief that textiles can be grown, processed, created, used, and returned to the earth within a single bioregion, the West Kootenay Fibreshed fosters relationships between land, material, and community. Through workshops, mentorships, gatherings, and collaborative projects, it seeks to build a resilient regional fibre culture that honours both ecological stewardship and creative expression.
For this exhibition, artists Tracy Fillion and Danielle Soucie represent the collective, showcasing Ecology of Cloth.
Learn more about the West Kootenay Fibreshed.
Danielle Soucie is a fibre artist, community organizer, and the Director of the West Kootenay Fibreshed. Their work explores the relationship between land, material, and community through fibre arts, regenerative textile systems, and place-based education. Working with wool, locally grown fibres, natural dyes, and slow textile processes, Danielle is interested in how making can deepen our relationship to place and reveal the ecological, cultural, and relational stories held within materials.
Their practice is rooted in the soil-to-soil cycle of natural fibres and asks what it means to create in a way that is reciprocal, regionally grounded, and connected to the living systems that sustain us. Through both their artistic work and community organizing, Danielle supports opportunities for skill-sharing, material literacy, and rural creative networks across the West Kootenay bioregion.
Tracy Fillion is a textile artist whose practice integrates weaving, plant dyeing, and garment construction. Working with natural fibres and dyes, she creates textiles through slow, hands-on processes that foreground care for material and place. Her work intends to reflect on the social, political, and environmental conditions shaping the present moment, using textiles as a language to consider labour, care, and resilience while honouring traditions of making that connect people, land, and community.
In addition to her studio practice, Fillion teaches weaving at a local college and facilitates workshops in plant dyeing. An active community member, volunteering on the boards of the Slocan Valley Threads Guild and educator with the West Kootenay Fibreshed. Her work reflects an ongoing commitment to textiles as a site of resistance, ecological awareness, and thoughtful engagement with contemporary social and environmental realities.
Images: (1) Documentation of O2 window installation feat. three linen textiles hanging on brass rods by Danielle Soucie + Tracy Fillion, June 2026; (2-3) Documentation of linen processing, Danielle Soucie + Tracy Fillion, 2026; Courtesy the Artists
PAST
28 March – 3 June 2026
Tracy Fillion
Gentle Resistance
Textile installation
9 February – 25 March 2026
Rayya Liebich
ROSES OF REMEMBRANCE: Honouring 20,000+ children killed in Gaza
Paper flowers created from documented names of deceased children during the first six months of the genocide.
28 November 2025 – 16 January 2026
Bethany Pardoe
The Small Earth
Illustrations printed on paper
15 August – 21 October 2025
Michele Dupas
Alien Flora
Ceramics
26 June – 13 August 2025
Ojan Cromie, Michele Dupas, Craig Huff, Terry Huva, Martha Stokoe, Phaedra Urban
Facilitated by Emilie Leblanc-Kromberg
ArtSpeak
Group exhibition
13 April – 11 June 2025
Kalika Bowlby
Call and Response (2025)
Ceramics, natural materials installation
27 February – 16 April 2025
Anne Fromont
Life-Changing Love (2025)
Photograph prints
11 October – 13 November 2024
Jennifer Burke, Samonte Cruz, Bee Schroeder
Purple Pain (2021)
Felt, leather, mesh, paint, glass, brass, fine silver, gold, black onyx & found objects
“Purple Pain” music video – Outside the Box (Nelson & District Arts Council), 2022
9 August – 9 October 2024
Hannah DeBoer-Smith
Tubby Lady’s Terrarium
Clay, cardboard, polymer clay and a bunch of other junk
5 April – 3 June 2024
It Could Mean Everything
Artist: Tracy Fillion
Medium: Embroidery on linen
8 February – 3 April 2024
Why?
Artist: Marcus Dénommé
Medium: Mixed media (silkscreen print/collage) on stretched kitakata paper.
Dimensions: 25” X 30”
4 December 2023 – 8 February 2024
Ink & Moon Collective: Calendar Retrospective
Artists: Keiko Lee-Hem, Myra Rasmussen, Melissa Owen, Slava Doval, Carron Mulligan, Rayya Liebich, Gina Sanche, Katie Sawyer, Catherine McIntosh, Tammy Everts, Andrea Levin, Brandy Erin, Nikki Pelletier
17 November – 1 December 2023
WORM/HOLE: youth print exhibition
Artists: Lokina Comishin Kromberg, Gabby Asbell, Sylvie Thomas, Ella James, Seveyah Bilodeau, Katherine Wall, and Morgan Pesicka