Linda Jules, Printmaker

I am inspired and fascinated by the natural world and the human culture that inhabits it. The environment without and the individual within, (the container and the contained), I seek to illuminate the natural world, the human condition that exists within our world, and how the two are connected. My art practice is founded on printmaking and sculpture, and my series of printed-paper baskets present a way to combine the two art mediums. I base my basket forms on the traditional birch bark baskets that first nations women across North America have made and used for millennia to store and cook food and to carry water. I use screen-print and collagraph images of trees found near my home in Kamloops to simulate bark patterns on the outsides of the baskets. Trees are a recurring subject in my work; they symbolize my sense of place and are a metaphor for many things – shelter, the family, the natural world, and the individual in society. Within each basket, I place an element of self-portraiture that also acknowledges the powerful draw of the mythological: a magpie nest symbolizing the home; water patterns symbolizing the female element, a wood nymph symbolizing my childhood.