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Art exhibition explores the spiritual life

Burnaby weaver is one of 30 Canadian artists featured in new exhibition at Christ Church Cathedral

Centuries-old art forms find contemporary interpretations in an exhibition opening next week at Christ Church Cathedral.

(in)finite: spiritual conversations in cloth, an exhibition hosted by the Anglican Foundation of Canada, is on at Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver from May 25 to June 4. The free exhibition, which marks the 60th anniversary of the Anglican Foundation, features 30 textile artists from across the country, all exploring the realm of the sacred.

Among them is Robb Schinnour, a Burnaby textile artist whose tapestry Tobias and the Archangel Raphael is part of the exhibition.

Schinnour’s subject matter was inspired by a mid-14th-century painting by Paolo Veneziano illustrating the story from the apocryphal Old Testament Book of Tobit, in which the reluctant Tobias is helped by the Archangel Raphael to set out on a journey and find a cure for his father’s blindness. The gesture of the angelic figure reaching for the boy’s hand sparked Schinnour’s artistic curiosity and inspired him to try his hand at creating their figures in a tapestry – his first ever tapestry to feature a human figure.

Schinnour is no newcomer to the world of textile art – in various forms, it has been the focus of his artistic life for the past 40 years, and he’s spent most of the past decade exploring tapestry weaving.

He notes that there are many techniques for creating a woven tapestry, but he chose to use the knotting approach. The work can be tedious, to the tune of some 400 hand-tied double-half-hitch knots per square inch, but it’s a technique that gives Schinnour the kind of freedom he values as an artist.

“Once you master the techniques, it’s all in how you can mix the colours,” he says. “I can mix colour in a way that wasn’t possible before.”

His goal, he says, was both to define areas to give depth to the work and also to lend light to certain areas – such as the figure of the archangel, for which he strove for transparency to indicate that it is a spiritual and not merely a physical being.

The Tobias story intrigues Schinnour on a larger theological plane as well. The existence and hierarchy of the angels is one of the aspects of Christianity that interests the artist, who identifies with the new Christian Community – an independent worldwide movement devoted to the renewal of Christianity in non-dogmatic form, one that is not necessarily either Catholic or Protestant.

“That would be the closest to my Christian belief,” he says, noting that he considers himself a Christian but is not a real churchgoer.

He’s intrigued now to see how other artists have taken up the challenge of responding to the exhibition’s theme, which is described as exploring “the finite limitations of humanity and the ineffable, infinite nature of the Divine.”

“What I bring is onesmall element of how you might look at that theme,” Schinnour says. “In one sense, it leaves you very open.”

He’s hoping that his work, along with the other pieces in the show, will move people to think and to ponder the issues of faith and spirituality that the exhibition raises.

Other local artists – including Elma Harder of Burnaby and Judy Villett, Trish Graham and Terry Aske of New Westminster – are also part of the show.

Anyone interested in viewing the exhibition is welcome to an opening reception on Saturday, May 27 from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition itself is open Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Christ Church Cathedral is at 690 Burrard St. (at Georgia) in downtown Vancouver.

For more details, see www.anglicanfoundation.org.