Episode #17 Beverley Daniels: Blue City

Beverley Daniels is a multi-disciplinary Artist that found her passion light up when she finds materials while going about her day in Toronto, Canada. Finding them incidentally, and rather intrusively, she is given these nuanced prints as brightly coloured advertisements; and stumbles onto interesting finds that people put outside their homes to give away. 

Being intrigued to discover and combine these objects into woven and fused plastics, Using materials destined for landfills: ribbons, lawn signs, scrap vinyl upholstery, old film. Cutting, weaving, and gluing or fusing them. This was originally an Ecological anxiety, now Daniels prefers them. In summary Daniels loves garbage.

Dabbling in collages as her medium when she attended Ontario College of Art and Design, now she has been working in multi-disciplinary as her primary medium for the last decade. When she feels the nudge to go in a certain direction she goes there. Feeling deeply satisfied in recognizing the beauty in discarded objects, the plethora is overwhelming, and the unpredictability confounds.

To Connect with Beverley Daniels: https://www.instagram.com/beverleydaniels5/

Podcast Credits:

Beverley Daniels/Carolyn Botelho

Audio Links from: Adobe Podcast
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

Transcript

00:00:08 Carolyn Botelho: So, hi. Beverly Daniels!
 
 00:00:10 Beverley Daniels: Hi. I'm so glad to be here talking to you.
 
 00:00:13 Carolyn Botelho: How are you? I am so happy to have you on the show. This is an exciting moment. We are standing in your grids, your art exhibition at Propeller Art Gallery in downtown Toronto. You have been making art for a number of years. You have admitted to pivoting in the last few years to focus on grids, and how they are all consuming in our city streets, infrastructure and map systems. I like to ask all artists what led them to decide on this career path. Was it loving what you can make with your hands, your emotional insights, the feel of the mediums or something else?
 
 00:01:04 Beverley Daniels: I guess an answer to that. I would say that I kept trying not to do art because it scared me and it made me miserable not to do it. So I just gave in and did it, and now I can't stop. So that's how I guess a lot of people would say it chose them rather than they choosing it.
 
 00:01:32 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah.
 
 00:01:33 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:01:35 Carolyn Botelho: That's a good answer. Speaking of mediums, you are a multidisciplinary artist. What would you say has been your most challenging or rewarding choice of mediums since you have been working with multimedia?
 
 00:01:56 Beverley Daniels: Well, um, plastic fusing is pretty damn challenging. Um, it continues to challenge me quite a bit. It's when you take plastic bags that have lettering on them, and you use the lettering as the glue, and you use a low temperature iron to iron the plastic bags together and you get some great effects. I get all excited about it. But the problem is that it's very shiny at the end, like obnoxiously shiny. And I don't know what to do about that. I'm still working on it. Um, so that's one of the very, very challenging one. Also, um, I guess at one point I was liberating old cassette tapes from their cassettes, and that was a challenge for me and for my partner who said, oh, maybe we should get you a studio. As we had these, well, videotapes and audiotapes just all over the place and me trying to do things. It was probably very, very toxic.
 
 00:03:10 Carolyn Botelho: Now that's what I was thinking. The first one you're talking about, I'm like, that's got to be toxic. It's got to be all the plastic.
 
 00:03:15 Beverley Daniels: Ha! I'm okay so far. Uh, um, so those have been two big challenges. It's all challenging anyway, because it's about composition and making elements in the piece talk nicely to each other, but not too nicely. You don't want them, you know, to be too peaceful together. That's really what it comes down to it.
 
 00:03:41 Carolyn Botelho: So it's a conflict between the.
 
 00:03:44 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:03:45 Carolyn Botelho: The elements that go into the piece.
 
 00:03:47 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, yeah. And I don't know how it's going to end. It's like an argument. It could be an argument. Some of them turn out to be arguments, and then you just put them away for a while and go back.
 
 00:04:00 Carolyn Botelho: It's like a discussion there.
 
 00:04:01 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Discussion. That's right. Yeah.
 
 00:04:08 Carolyn Botelho: How do you start your creative process? Do you begin with an idea or an image, or do you let the mediums dictate how you work? And with this, I mean, do the mediums lead your hands while you explore what they are saying to you?
 
 00:04:24 Beverley Daniels: Ah nice question. I do think that a lot of what I do is medium driven, because I will see a piece of cardboard that has an interesting edge to it and I'll think, okay, looks like architecture. And then I start messing with it and putting water on it and peeling it apart like corrugated cardboard and getting all these repetitions of the same edge and making like it's it's the medium. It's that piece of cardboard that got me started on that piece. And then I just keep going. So I guess, I guess really that's it. And it because of that, it doesn't start when you stand in front of your work table or your easel. It starts when you're walking down the street and you see something and someone has put at the end of their driveway or their, you know, at the curb, and they're giving it away and it's in good condition and it's a, a banner, a vinyl banner. It's got great color and they don't want to throw it out. And you can think of something to do with it. So it's all it's all that process. Go for a walk. It's part of art, you know, go um, sort through the recycling. That becomes part of art. It just doesn't go away. Hmm.
 
 00:05:40 Carolyn Botelho: That sounds awesome. How you're how you're finding the work that speaks to you, that you then transform into into what I'm seeing around me. Right?
 
 00:05:52 Speaker 3: Well, that's the that's the, um, plan.
 
 00:05:55 Beverley Daniels: That's the plan.
 
 00:05:56 Carolyn Botelho: How often do you go out to to find a kind of search for.
 
 00:06:00 Beverley Daniels: Well, I don't even go out to search. They find me, I'm walking to the streetcar and I see stuff. So it's really. It's effortless in that way, you know?
 
 00:06:09 Carolyn Botelho: Oh, so that's good.
 
 00:06:10 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Or you get those real estate postcards in the mail. Yeah. And you go, hey, wait a second. I could do something with that or or a newspaper or a flyer or anything. You know, there's so much color and shape around that just comes to you. You don't have to go looking.
 
 00:06:28 Carolyn Botelho: Oh, yeah. That's true. Yeah. The stuff, just the free advertising that gets put in your mailbox.
 
 00:06:34 Beverley Daniels: Right, exactly. You didn't ask for it, but now you can use it.
 
 00:06:40 Carolyn Botelho: What is the most bizarre medium you have used in your paintings? Does anyone know about it? or is this part of a secret I am revealing?
 
 00:06:50 Beverley Daniels: Well, I think I kind of revealed the most bizarre one, which was the videotape and audio tape.
 
 00:06:57 Carolyn Botelho: Are there any of those?
 
 00:06:59 Beverley Daniels: I haven't used those yet. In fact, I think I put those away and tried to forget about them. But sometimes I see them and I think I still could use these, but I guess I'm using I use old film, you know, from like still cameras and those are nice because they have the, the rows of square perforations that go into the sprockets. And they are very urban looking to me. And they're very emphatic because they're very dark. Um, milk cartons, maybe they're kind of odd And oh, strapping. You know, when you get a cardboard box full of something. To your door. And it's got strapping on it? Yeah. Yeah. Or or zip ties. Those are very useful. One time I found a red zip tie on the sidewalk. I was so happy.
 
 00:07:58 Carolyn Botelho: And I just like to say to the listeners that Beverly is looking around at her artwork, I guess, figuring out what what's what's in there.
 
 00:08:06 Beverley Daniels: That what's really strange in there? Yeah.
 
 00:08:09 Carolyn Botelho: Like, you're you're just looking like, oh, I know there's something in here that. What did I use? Exactly. That's that's going to stand out in your practice kind of thing. Yeah.
 
 00:08:18 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Like on things that go technologically, go out of date like earphones with the with the, the cords. And some of them are really nice colors, and those are great to put in a weave or something. You could make baskets out of those. You know, you could do. You could do a lot with that stuff.
 
 00:08:40 Carolyn Botelho: When I was chatting with you at your opening. Uh, I guess it was last Saturday. Yeah. We discussed how you were a teacher earlier in your career. Can you share with our audience how you feel this influenced your creativity, or vice versa?
 
 00:08:55 Beverley Daniels: Oh, yeah. Teaching. You know, if you can't use your creativity, if you can't think on your feet, you're going to die. So you have to learn. And it just ripped open my creativity. Like I never had that level of creativity before. Even though I was doing art, I did a lot of drawing and a lot of drawing. And I felt like I couldn't bust out of something, but I couldn't even I couldn't even figure out what it was I was trying to bust out of. And then teaching came along. And because I taught French and you're not supposed to, you've got a class of kids who don't have any friends, maybe they can count to ten. That's it. And you're not supposed to speak to them in English. So how do you teach them? Entirely in French. And that was such a challenge that it woke up my creative brain, that problem solving. And it just kept rolling and it kept going. It goes into my art also.
 
 00:09:58 Carolyn Botelho: Wow. Yeah. I just presumed you taught art, but you taught.
 
 00:10:01 Beverley Daniels: I taught French. Yeah, I taught sometimes. I taught art, too. I wasn't a very good art teacher. I realized because I would think I didn't realize the leaps I was making in my thinking that you have to take it step by step. And I wouldn't even know there were steps. And the kids would try to do what I asked them to do. And I think, oh no, no, not that. So I had to go back and teach them more methodically. I guess you have to be methodical.
 
 00:10:31 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah.
 
 00:10:32 Beverley Daniels: In teaching.
 
 00:10:36 Carolyn Botelho: Being from Toronto, Canada, how have you seen that this geographical location growing up, has impacted your creative practice?
 
 00:10:45 Beverley Daniels: Well, living in the city, it's all about the grid pattern. Cities, especially North American cities, particularly. And Toronto. Toronto was laid down by Simcoe in that that strict street grid and the lots of land were apportioned to the people he knew or who were thought worthy. So it was all very gridded, and it continues to be. And I actually quite like that because it sounds severe and it can be. But there's, when an architect, or architect as as a whole, as a number, when they're, they're restricted to a grid because that's what the windows have to be like. There's so much you can find within that constraint. It's quite amazing to see the variety. Whereas if you see five or ten buildings all made the same, that's kind of horrifying. but there's variation and so it's very entertaining. And just like all the print that you see when you're walking down the street in a big city, there's so much print and, and color trying to get your attention. And I think that really affects me. You know, walking in a city, I think walking in a city does that to your brain. Driving in the city doesn't. I don't think because you're just trying not to get hit. You're trying to make that left turn.
 
 00:12:20 Carolyn Botelho: Trying to stay alive.
 
 00:12:21 Beverley Daniels: Trying to stay alive and on time.
 
 00:12:26 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. Toronto. Toronto has such a history to, to everything about it. That is just so much vibrancy of, just like you said, the grids. But on top of that, there's, you know, so much more that people themselves have brought here and then.
 
 00:12:45 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, you're right. Like the grid is only part of it. And there's all, there's the other, the cultural layers and the natural parts, I mean the trees and plantings of various kinds. And then, then I could get off on a tangent thinking about how grids might be part of nature, because they're made by people, and people are part of nature. So maybe grids are naturally occurring. Okay. Maybe not.
 
 00:13:14 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah, that's a long discussion.
 
 00:13:16 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:13:18 Carolyn Botelho: You are inspired by how light affects your subjects, whether that be landscapes, grids or coastlines. Can you describe for our audience how you folded this idea into your multimedia grids show, and why it fascinates you?
 
 00:13:35 Beverley Daniels: Okay.
 
 00:13:36 Carolyn Botelho: And colour.
 
 00:13:37 Beverley Daniels: Its well, because color is so much affected by light. You buy a can of off white paint and at four in the morning under the artificial light, it's one colour. And then at four o'clock in the afternoon it's a different colour. So, colour responds to light. And I have to be careful sometimes when I'm in the studio that I look at what I'm doing in a variety of lights because I don't know where it's going to be displayed, where it's going to be looked at. I have to get an idea of that. so the way light, you know what I would say, the way that light and dark interact in a composition is at the base of what I'm trying to do, and probably a lot of artists have to do, even though they might be trying to paint. Oh, there's a lovely painter, Allison Galley, who does beautiful paintings of simple domestic things like pears in a bowl. And the way she handles light is amazing. But even she even though she knows that she's doing these pears, she also has to be aware of how the light and shadow work. Just as an abstract composition, you know, like, all compositions are abstract as well as being if they're representational, they're also abstract. They have to follow some kind of inner compositional logic, not rules, but logic. Yeah, I don't know if I'm making it very hard to talk about art. It sometimes sounds like gobbledygook.
 
 00:15:24 Carolyn Botelho: No, but I understand what you mean. That. That even if it's abstract, it's. It still has not rules, but guidelines of how the composition is supposed to make sense and to the viewer. It doesn't matter if it's real or representational.
 
 00:15:43 Beverley Daniels: No. It just it has to coalesce somehow. And and there might be there might be broad lessons about how that should work generally. But I think also each piece has its own logic that has to be followed. If you have a blank surface of any kind, it has no rules. You put something down, you're starting a rule, you put something else down. It's a it's a tighter rule, and it gets tighter and tighter and tighter as you add things. Mhm. Exactly. So I don't know how we got there from light but light has to do with that light and dark you know.
 
 00:16:20 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. Light dark and line and form and.
 
 00:16:23 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:16:23 Carolyn Botelho: It all there's there's so many, so many pieces to make. Make a a picture or an image makes sense.
 
 00:16:34 Beverley Daniels: Yes, yes. And you don't always know where you're going with it. At least I don't.
 
 00:16:41 Carolyn Botelho: And it's the process like you have shown with this show that. That as you're working with these mediums, you're, you're figuring out what these sort of found objects you're finding are trying to say to you with that specific piece and how you're incorporating all of them together to, to speak to you to, to say what they're going to say.
 
 00:17:09 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, yeah. And they, they.
 
 00:17:11 Carolyn Botelho: All, you know, when, when you, when you get to the point where it's, it's complete.
 
 00:17:16 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. No. Sometimes the question of abandoning it. Yeah. And then going back to it and sometimes abandoning it again, but sometimes bringing it to some kind of point. I think it's flexible. I think you can you can bring it to a point and you'll say, yeah, it's done. But what if I just do this? And then you do this and then it's not done anymore, and you have to take it to another kind of completion and it goes on like that. Yeah. So I figure.
 
 00:17:47 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah, I'm looking at some of these and I'm like, well, how did you know they were done? Like. But I'm guessing all of them have sort of a a finish over them like a.
 
 00:17:56 Beverley Daniels: Varnish.
 
 00:17:56 Carolyn Botelho: Varnish.
 
 00:17:57 Beverley Daniels: Varnish. Yeah.
 
 00:17:58 Carolyn Botelho: So I mean, just before that point, I mean, like what made you decide that they were complete? I mean, I guess you just said though.
 
 00:18:07 Speaker 3: Yeah.
 
 00:18:08 Carolyn Botelho: You just, you know, I guess I don't know.
 
 00:18:11 Beverley Daniels: Well, I know that it's at a point where if you.
 
 00:18:15 Carolyn Botelho: Took it further.
 
 00:18:15 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, yeah, the elements are speaking nicely to each other, but not too nicely.
 
 00:18:21 Carolyn Botelho: There's  that that conflicting moment.
 
 00:18:24 Beverley Daniels: But, but having an interesting discussion.
 
 00:18:27 Carolyn Botelho: Yes.
 
 00:18:27 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Like the kind of dinner party you really want to be at. It's like that. Yeah.
 
 00:18:33 Carolyn Botelho: That's a good way to look.
 
 00:18:34 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. Yeah.
 
 00:18:42 Carolyn Botelho: How have you seen, reading has impacted your creative practice? Has it given you new content or has it transformed in context by incorporating text into your paintings? Is there a deeper meaning in what words you choose to use?
 
 00:18:59 Speaker 3: Oh.
 
 00:19:00 Beverley Daniels: Okay. I'm glad you asked that, because actually I try to obstruct the meaning of the print that I use. I try to turn it upside down or cut through it or something, just so it will say text and suggest content, but not be explicit. Okay, because that's so much part of walking down the street and we don't stop and read everything. In fact, we probably don't read much of it at all. It just kind of gets in our head. So that's one of the things because text is so potent, right? It would take away from the art in the piece if there's a lot of readability. Yes. like somewhere I heard that literacy and art ability are not at war, but can be in conflict in your brain. And that literacy, because we, in the school system and in our culture generally, we we prioritize it. It squishes art over to the side. And that's why you hear so many people say, I love art and I don't do it. I know I can't do it. I'll bet you they can, you know. Anyway, yeah, I don't know if I answered. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Also about reading. Also about reading, I think I try when I try to make completely non-representational pieces, I always want to put a little something in there that represents something because that's like reading. That's the story. Mhm. Whereas the other is more like music. And then you put a little bit of story in there. You put a person with a shopping bag and then you know, they're, they're in there on the way home and they change the piece because of that.
 
 00:20:53 Carolyn Botelho: Okay. So you put that little person in there as a symbol for you or as a symbol for the, audience or the observer?
 
 00:21:01 Beverley Daniels: Maybe both. I just want it to be there sometimes. Sometimes I want a person like that big piece has a person in it, but it's not prominent. But there's a guy in there. A lot of them have little people in them. That's from reading stories, you know.
 
 00:21:19 Carolyn Botelho: So it's like you're giving a another, deeper meaning to each piece about something else that you're trying to.
 
 00:21:26 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. But I don't even think in those terms. I'm just kind of maybe it's kind of playful.
 
 00:21:32 Carolyn Botelho: It's intuitive.
 
 00:21:32 Beverley Daniels: Right? Yeah. I just want to put that little person in there because why not?
 
 00:21:38 Carolyn Botelho: It's putting the human element in.
 
 00:21:39 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, yeah, we're human after all.
 
 00:21:42 Carolyn Botelho: Yes. And so what were you what were you meaning by? one is art and one is music. I heard you say.
 
 00:21:49 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah? Yeah. Well, when you have.
 
 00:21:51 Beverley Daniels: Something, say you did a grid. Totally non-representational. And that's like music without lyrics, right? Lyrics, uh, make it into. Bring in a possible vestiges of stories. And it's the same thing in visual art. If it's just if it's just, non-representational, that's one kind of art. But if you bring in representational elements, it's, it brings in a kind of because it, it's anchored in our experience, even if it's just flowers, you start your brain starts to make up a story about what those are doing in there. I don't know, it may.
 
 00:22:35 Carolyn Botelho: It makes sense. It brings in language, language, language.
 
 00:22:37 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, yeah. Images, language. You know, recognizable images make you think of language. And language is about relating things to each other. Yeah.
 
 00:22:53 Carolyn Botelho: Your love of garbage. Yeah. Sorry I discovered this on you online. I just kind of jumped in there, but. But, yeah, your love of garbage and seeing the beauty in random stuff goes back to originally being connected to preventing things from going to landfills. Have you been able to transfer this technique to other aspects of your life, say, repurposing a room in your home or re-appropriating traits of your personality, for example?
 
 00:23:21 Beverley Daniels: Oh, oh, like self-improvement is upcycling. Yeah. Um, I hadn't thought of it that way. I think of it, I my approach to using a kitchen has a lot of the same procedures where I'm trying to reuse things, and, but I think, yeah, maybe, maybe thinking is a way of reusing, reusing and upcycling Line and, being able to know what ideas to get rid of because they're not useful to you anymore, and which ones to hold on to, which ones to adopt. I tend to hold on to things longer than they need to be held on to, but I do like novelty, so I also acquire new ideas. Yeah, I don't know if I've answered your question properly.
 
 00:24:28 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah, no, it sounds like you're you're recycling just your your thought processes in a way.
 
 00:24:35 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, yeah.
 
 00:24:36 Carolyn Botelho: Reusing, reusing and just upcycling, like you said. Just just in the way you're thinking too. It's just.
 
 00:24:45 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, it's probably it carries over. Yeah, yeah.
 
 00:24:52 Carolyn Botelho: In your earlier work, I could sense you were searching for your style. Where do you see your style today? Do you see it as continuing to evolve in multimedia, or does the fluidity of the mixed media prevent it from having a distinct style? Is your fascination with color and the light your central focus beyond collage?
 
 00:25:18 Beverley Daniels: Okay, there's a bunch of questions in there. Yeah. Uh.
 
 00:25:21 Carolyn Botelho: I like to jam pack.
 
 00:25:22 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:25:23 Carolyn Botelho: Give you lots to think about.
 
 00:25:25 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um. I don't, I think, I mean, I'm inside the work and I'm inside the process of doing it, so I don't see it objectively, but I think I have a kind of color tendency that continues through, has continued through years. I think all the drawing I did back in the day is a pretty good underpinning for what I'm doing now. Um, so maybe there maybe there's a style there that I don't see. Um, but I think there's probably you can probably see commonalities if you did. If you put all my work on a timeline, you'd see commonalities. See, these are all really recent. So if you see something similar in all of them, that's not surprising. But, uh, the older stuff, you could probably still see the same choice of color, maybe more color now. Um, maybe lots of curves and diagonals against, uh, uprights and horizontals. Always. Maybe, maybe that would be a commonality. Um.
 
 00:26:48 Carolyn Botelho: Would you think that or do you think that, see, with these works that they're grids or. That's what the the exhibition is called. But would you say that with these pieces, you're kind of like creating your own maps with these sort of, uh, recycled materials?
 
 00:27:07 Beverley Daniels: Like a like a mental map?
 
 00:27:10 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. It could be a mental map of that moment that you found the pieces or. Or what you were thinking that day, where you were going. I mean, there could be.
 
 00:27:21 Beverley Daniels: Probably all of that. And it may not be evident, but I think we really bring everything that's in our head to everything we do. Really. There's no there's no getting around it. Um, maybe that's part of the the risk of art. I don't know. You may not want to bring certain things up and they come up anyway because they're stirred up by what you're doing. Mhm. Mhm.
 
 00:27:54 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. Like you've got with these pieces. There is a definite, uh, consistency with your palette choices, which is which is good. Right? For just sort of being able to have the show just work all together. Right?
 
 00:28:14 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Yeah. They, they kind of go together. Yeah yeah, yeah. That's true.
 
 00:28:23 Carolyn Botelho: While your style was developing, you wanted to capture the fleeting moments when nature is at its most awe inspiring. Also part of the garbage, um, fascination as well.
 
 00:28:38 Beverley Daniels: I'm with you. I'm with you. You know, because I think it's regrettable. The garbage is absolutely lamentable. But somehow I wonder if humans weren't supposed to happen at all. When you think of walking is one long, controlled fall, right? That's, that's and that's essentially human to be able to walk upright. And we're just falling until we fall down. Um, so that has to do with the way we think and the way we think brought us to a lot of good things, but also this kind of ecological mess we've gotten ourselves into. So it's almost as if there's a kind of natural inevitability, inevitability to it. That's pretty dark, isn't it? We had to mess up like this.
 
 00:29:31 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah.
 
 00:29:32 Beverley Daniels: Um, so it almost is a natural. Maybe. Maybe it's also natural for human beings to make things. It is? Yes. Um. Out of what? Whatever's around. And so that's what we're doing. That's what I'm doing here. Um. It's a tangled mess. I know my answer is kind of a tangled mess.
 
 00:29:53 Carolyn Botelho: Well, because I wasn't even finished the question. But that's alright. I'm glad. You know, if you if you want, if what I'm saying inspires you to just.
 
 00:30:02 Beverley Daniels: Jump in.
 
 00:30:02 Carolyn Botelho: Jump in.
 
 00:30:03 Beverley Daniels: Jump in.
 
 00:30:03 Carolyn Botelho: That's good. Yes. I mean, because, I mean, what was I going to be saying anyway? Um, talking about you and your your the moment in your process of mixing the woven plastics and, and the brightly colored papers. And is this where you're able to capture that breathing sort of moment that fuses line and colour?
 
 00:30:28 Beverley Daniels: I love what you just said. You know what? Maybe that's true. I mean, maybe it can't not be true. Um, yeah. Just the color. The richness of it. Yes, yes. Um. Can be. You're putting it in, you're weaving it in. It's looking great, but it's like too much cream in your coffee or something. It's too rich and you need to tone it down so you bring something else in. Something quieter. And it's just that process of going back and forth, you know, and trying like that piece over there, this, this big weave one.
 
 00:31:13 Carolyn Botelho: Okay.
 
 00:31:13 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. It was so, so difficult.
 
 00:31:17 Carolyn Botelho: Okay. So what is this piece called? Just so our listeners.
 
 00:31:19 Beverley Daniels: It's called Big Weave two. Big weave two. Yeah, this big weave one is at home. Okay. Um, but they're both. They're two ends of a banner that I found somebody put to the curb. And I loved the color in the banner, so I kept it, and I started weaving through it, but it it was not it. It's complicated. It's complex. And so it's going to be difficult. But, um, I wrangled it, I wrangled it, and I think I'm okay with it now.
 
 00:31:53 Carolyn Botelho: So what were you? So you started with the banner? Yes. And then it was, was other sort of found elements that you.
 
 00:32:02 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. I mean, I have quite a collection at the studio. It's not chaos. I have them in boxes, but, um, I found the banner and it had some silly big slogan about teamwork on it. Some corporate thing. Right. And. But the colour was great. So I sliced it vertically, kept it together at both the top and the bottom. And then that allows you to weave other things through it. So I had a lot of like old paintings that I'd cut up and plastic strips and zip ties and all kinds of things, and I just kept adding to it. Um, and it gets heavier and heavier and heavier as you add to it. Um, then I put in wire and. Oh, sometimes I drew on it, I think. Um, let's have a look.
 
 00:33:02 Carolyn Botelho: Let's go over and look.
 
 00:33:03 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Yeah. So we started out with that, and then I had a collection of this bright pink. I put that in, but first I did the I did the vertical cuts and then I did the horizontal additions. But then that allows you to add other things vertically on top. And so I had a friend gave me a bunch of clippings from work that she'd been doing. She didn't want anymore. And oh, there's embroidery floss in there and fishing line and wire and. Oh, this is from a Christmas tree. That's my old my old chair. It had vinyl upholstery, and it kept it. I had it reupholstered.
 
 00:33:45 Carolyn Botelho: So there's some words there. Care instructions. See that? That's a little. Is that. Isn't that too much? Did you not? I thought you said you didn't want.
 
 00:33:53 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:33:54 Carolyn Botelho: Too much.
 
 00:33:55 Beverley Daniels: That. But that's so quiet you don't even notice it. Well, maybe you do. Maybe.
 
 00:34:00 Carolyn Botelho: Well, now that we're looking closely at it, I mean, the smaller ones you can't really see.
 
 00:34:04 Beverley Daniels: No, because they go that way. And that one you're not going to get like, all the care instructions. So you're not going to read it for very long.
 
 00:34:10 Carolyn Botelho: No. Just care instructions.
 
 00:34:12 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.
 
 00:34:13 Carolyn Botelho: It's not. But yeah like like you said you're you're weaving this piece with all these other elements. It's basically becoming like fabric.
 
 00:34:23 Beverley Daniels: Yes. That's right. It's like fabric. Yeah. I haven't looked at it for for a while. Yeah.
 
 00:34:35 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. And so there's this, that was, um. Where were we? And your questions. There's one more question, which I wasn't sure if I was going to ask you. Mhm.
 
 00:34:47 Beverley Daniels: Uh.
 
 00:34:48 Carolyn Botelho: I'm not.
 
 00:34:48 Beverley Daniels: Sure. Yeah. Um, it doesn't really apply to me. I mean, of course I've had losses. Everybody does. Um, you know what? If I didn't do this? Speaking of loss, if I didn't do this kind of work, I would be in despair of the loss of what we've done to to this gorgeous planet. And when I stay away from doing art, I get really bummed out about it. Not that this fixes anything. It doesn't. But somehow it it counterbalances it. So that's that's a kind of grief, you know?
 
 00:35:32 Carolyn Botelho: Okay. So just just for. Yeah, the last question was while you were developing your style in the early two thousands.
 
 00:35:41 Beverley Daniels: Mhm.
 
 00:35:42 Carolyn Botelho: Uh, did did modern art or realism help your creativity to continue to explore or was were like, where were you when you got to the point where He said, no, I gotta just take this trash in and make it into something more beautiful.
 
 00:36:00 Beverley Daniels: I never even thought it. I just saw this stuff and thought, okay, well, this is so beautiful. Like, I can do something with this. Um, I had been using paper and acrylic paint and and canvas, pardon me.
 
 00:36:17 Carolyn Botelho: Which are expensive.
 
 00:36:18 Beverley Daniels: Expensive. And, you know, when you clean, when you paint with acrylic paint, you clean your brush, you're putting plastic into the water supply, which didn't hit me until one day I thought, wait a second, this is not good. We think of these things as benign because they're on the market. They must be okay. They're not okay. They're not. They're not okay. Not that I'm, you know, judging anybody for using acrylic medium and, you know, using acrylic paint, it's it's plastic put to good use. But still I wanted to do something different. I don't think I'm answering your question, but that's kind of how I got from drawing and painting to to this.
 
 00:37:01 Carolyn Botelho: It just kind of just.
 
 00:37:02 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, I mean, I was doing a lot of collage before that, using paper and using color that already exists instead of buying it because there's lots of color around.
 
 00:37:13 Carolyn Botelho: There is.
 
 00:37:14 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. Yeah.
 
 00:37:17 Carolyn Botelho: Well, this is this is a great show. It really is.
 
 00:37:19 Beverley Daniels: Oh, thanks. Thank you.
 
 00:37:21 Carolyn Botelho: Well, thank you so much for for having this interview with me.
 
 00:37:24 Beverley Daniels: And it was a pleasure.
 
 00:37:25 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. I will get this to you as soon as I can and enjoy your exhibit.
 
 00:37:31 Beverley Daniels: Thank you.
 
 00:37:32 Carolyn Botelho: Thank you. Very good one. Yes.
 
 00:37:34 Beverley Daniels: Thanks. I really enjoyed myself talking to you.
 
 00:37:37 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah, it's been fun.
 
 00:37:39 Beverley Daniels: Okay.
 
 00:37:39 Carolyn Botelho: It's always fun talking about art.
 
 00:37:41 Beverley Daniels: Yeah, it always is. It always is. And I will, um, if I can think of people who would like. If you want subjects for your podcast, I'll All.
 
 00:37:53 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I've been looking at propeller like there's a lot of, a lot of artists that are involved with the gallery.
 
 00:38:00 Beverley Daniels: Yeah. There are about I think there are about forty of us. Nice. Yeah. So there's, there's good stuff there. And there's also the artist network. You know it. It's in the East End. It's in Leslieville.
 
 00:38:13 Carolyn Botelho: Oh, yeah.
 
 00:38:13 Beverley Daniels: Leslie Grove Gallery and, uh. Oh, there's lots of stuff. There are a lot of people making art.
 
 00:38:19 Carolyn Botelho: Yeah. All right. Awesome.
 
 00:38:21 Beverley Daniels: Okay.
 
 00:38:21 Carolyn Botelho: All right.
 
 00:38:22 Beverley Daniels: Thanks for coming down.
 
 00:38:23 Carolyn Botelho: Yes. I'll talk to you again soon.
 
 00:38:34 Beverley Daniels: Yeah.