A small but mighty miniature show – Macleans.ca

Canada is crazy about everything micro. Carefully designed homes as small as shoe boxes sell for thousands of dollars, and you can fill them with inch-wide cooking pots and dollar-sized charcuterie boards. Variations of the #miniature hashtag have amassed more than 830,000 videos on TikTok. The trend of tiny everything has even received the Great British Bake Off treatment: the third season of CBC Gem’s The best in miniature It premiered in December 2023.

Minutiae, a new exhibition on display at the Alberta Craft Council in Edmonton, plays on our newfound mania for miniatures. The gallery of 54 tiny objects forces viewers to look at (and squint) everyday objects reduced to a fraction of their size and enjoy the meticulous work of artists from around the country.

The idea of ​​featuring small works of art came to Alberta Craft Council exhibition co-ordinator Jill Allan and her colleagues last spring while admiring a co-worker’s necklace, decorated with a small silver chair. “Miniatures draw you in,” says Allan. “They bring a lot of joy that reminds us of childhood.” In the fall of 2023, the Council launched a call for miniature art projects and received 120 proposals. Among them: a two-inch-high beach watchtower, a teenager’s bedroom shrunken down to nine cubic inches, and tiny plastic planters hung on macramé stands. Allan and her team spent much of February and March happily developing projects.

The exhibition, which will remain open until June 15, occupies the first floor of a century-old warehouse. Some pieces on display are whimsical: Stacy Burnett Party Ham Mold It is a small version of the aspic salad that is aesthetically pleasing but questionable from a gustatory point of view. Others point to harsher realities, such as Jenna Gal’s description of rodents finding refuge in a plastic bag. Some creations are even completely functional: Allan received a miniature pottery studio ready to assemble with a small wheel and chunks of clay to throw.

Artists of all disciplines were excited to work on a small scale. Tradesmen such as potters and carpenters minimized their daily trade. Milt Fischbein, a goldsmith, made small candelabras from silver wires that were typically used to create jewelry. Experienced miniature makers also answered the call, such as Indigenous artist Lance Cardinal, who built a majestic nine-by-five-foot residential schoolhouse. Projects took up to 200 hours to complete, and some artists even created their own marking tools because versions as small as they needed didn’t exist. The exhibit also serves as a sale for miniature collectors: nearly all crafts are up for grabs, with prices between $30 and $3,700; several have already been sold. Here, Allan tells us the stories behind some small masterpieces that are causing quite a stir.

Footnotes (Portrait of the Artist as a Wooden Box) by Caitlin Burrell
“Miniatures are usually made to sit on bookshelves, but this one is built inside a book. Caitlin built a small workshop that displays drafts and works in progress. I wanted to evoke the spirit of creation: trying things out, having moving parts that you can adapt: ​​a small stage for life. If you look closer, you can see that there are letters printed on pages the size of a thumb.”

Catalog of miniature home-cooked meals in Hong Kong Design by Bonnie Lai
“Bonnie drew on her childhood memories to create three small food menus, which have become a crowd pleaser. She used clay and watercolor to create three-dimensional details on each dish, making these eggs, fish and meat look as tasty as in real life.”

Amber Weasel-Head Mini Loafer
“Amber works a lot with beads. Her craftsmanship is precise here: she made these moccasins by shaping a small bed of melton and elk skin into a shoe, and then placing small beads on top of it to decorate.”

Great Horn by Glenda Rowley
“Inspired by Gulliver’s Travels, Glenda wanted to work on a Lilliputian scale and have viewers root for her work. This two-by-two-inch piece is meticulous. It is very difficult to manipulate fuzzy felt at that scale and make a large animal appear so small, but she worked carefully and simply using only wool and needle. It even makes it look three-dimensional.”

Basket 1 by Anna Burger-Martindale
“This copper wire basket carries a real raspberry, which gives us a clear idea of ​​scale. Anna was actually an inspiration for this exhibition; “Last year we had a full-size furniture show and she sent a small silver bench and chair.”

Refugee by Jenna Gal
“Jenna was thinking about the massive wildfires that destroyed so many forests in Western Canada. They led to all these little creatures being homeless and forced to urbanize and adapt to human structures and garbage. This piece depicts small mice taking refuge in a discarded plastic bag. It’s only a few centimeters from tip to tip, but it resonates with people. “It was the first piece in the exhibition to be sold.”

Stacy Burnett’s Party Ham Pan
“Jellied salads, a staple of family dinners in the ’60s and ’70s, are delicious in one sense, but disgusting at the same time. “It took Stacy almost 100 hours to model all of these tiny vegetables and eggs using polymer clay.”

Stephanie Elderfield Toolbox Jewelry Set
“This piece features small tools, such as a small padlock and screwdrivers that also function as earrings. Stephanie is a miniaturist who reduces the size of common objects but keeps them functional. She has made small gardening tools, such as tin cans, pitchforks and axes, and even fish hook earrings.”

San Martin Mission School by Lance Cardinal
“Lance’s grandparents attended the real-life Mission St. Martin’s Catholic school in Alberta. This is a giant miniature, nine feet by five feet, one of the largest works of art we feature. It’s also touching: first you think of a dollhouse, then you look closer and think of the children who went to residential schools. The details elevate its eerie character: the building is eroded and the trees in front and the leaves show that it is autumn, which is when the indigenous children were forced to return to school.