It's not waste unless you waste it
- Year
- 2025
- Medium
- Reclaimed vintage frame (unknown origin); reused canvas with a painting of a house in nature signed "Shirley, 98"; experimental weaving with fabric-scrap waste from Fuhr Co. production (Sew Sew Good Show 1.0, Canada); yarn leftovers from student projects donated by the textile & weaving lab of Aalto University (Finland); plastic thread reused from the vintage painting’s hanging system; neon construction spray paint — Varvara’s artist mark
- Dimensions
- 25 × 21 × 2.5 in · 64 × 53 × 6 cm
- Category
- Textile Art
Series
Made from
Reserved for a collector.
Signed front and back. Installs on a classic painting-hook wire system, ready to hang on a nail. Pick-up in Vancouver or international delivery available upon request. An information sheet and Certificate of Authenticity are provided on pick-up; the collector agrees to make the work available for future exhibitions. Ships in a textile bag made from repurposed materials.
Story
Three layers of cycles of use, memory, and the layered histories held within each stage of this piece.
A reclaimed vintage frame, once ornate and gilded, now bears visible marks of time. A damaged corner — once seen as imperfection — is highlighted, not hidden, by neon spray paint (Varvara’s mark), acknowledging rather than erasing its past.
Within the frame, the original painting has already been replaced once, with a painting on white canvas: a hand-drawn house in nature, signed “Shirley, 98”.
The next layer is the weaving. Its warp is made of threads donated by the textile and weaving lab of Aalto University (Finland) — the leftovers of other artists’ and designers’ projects who took the weaving course alongside Varvara. The three-dimensional weave is created with leftover tulle from the retired Vancouver-based brand Fuhr Co., a weaving piece originally made for Sew Sew Good Show 1.0.
The plastic thread that connects the layers of the past with the new one is repurposed from the thrifted frame and painting — the second life of a hanging system that was already there when Varvara thrifted the painting at Nanaimo’s iconic thrift store.
This work extends beyond its physical layers and challenges the notion of disposability, asking us to reconsider value, permanence, and the stories that objects carry.
Questions to sit with
- What do we decide to discard?
- What do we decide to keep?
- And at what point does something truly become waste?
Exhibited at
- Sew Sew Good Show 1.0 · Vancouver, Canada
In Different Settings
