Oxygen Art Centre is delighted to present the West Kootenay Fibreshed (Danielle Soucie + Tracy Fillion) in the newest exhibition in the artist-run centre’s off-site window exhibition space.
The exhibition is entitled “Ecology of Cloth” and features three linen textile pieces demonstrating the materiality, labour, and variation in style throughout the growing, processing, and weaving processes in the progression from flax seed to linen cloth.
The exhibition is on view from June 11, 2026, to August 22, 2026, at O2, along Stanley Avenue and Baker Street in downtown Nelson, B.C.
In writing about the exhibition, the artists state:
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.
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 in Oxygen Art Centre’s O2 window exhibition space from June 11, 2026, to August 22, 2026.