Brenda Mabel Reid: Lead Lines

Brenda Mabel Reid
Lead Lines

February 4 – March 30, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 8, 1 – 3pm
Homer Watson House & Gallery, Kitchener

Artist Talk: Wednesday, February 12, 7 – 9pm
Inter Arts Matrix, 141 Whitney Pl Studio 38, Kitchener, ON
Limited seating, registration required

Leadline (noun): a nautical surveying tool made of lead and rope, used to measure water depth and collect floor samples.

With the queer urge to know themself, Brenda Mabel Reid reached into the depths of familial memory to learn about their late grandmother, Marion Joy Reid. Lead Lines explores multigenerational family dynamics and intergenerational gifts, trauma, and memory, holding these complexities in queerness. Using the quilts that the artist’s grandmother made in her later life as familial leadlines, they interviewed her five children in their homes. This was an uncomfortable and, at times, devastating process of receiving oral histories within a family full of silence. It informed the artist as much about their late grandma as it did about who they are: a non-binary artist who unintentionally created an art practice with a quilted center.

A leadline produces a single-point data reading, and it is the cartographer’s job to interpret it and understand its relation to other data points. They ultimately strive to create a map of something they cannot experience. Lead Lines is an act of translation, transformation, and transfusion, and the installation echoes these three parts in audio, paper quilts, and furniture. The audio work explores the incomplete and sometimes contradictory memories tilled up within the family during the research of this project. The paper quilts are leadline manifestations, transforming the original quilts with memory into new understandings of the past. Three generations are present in the gallery, as represented by the furniture and paper quilts. Viewers are welcome to sit on the furniture to embody the work.

Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous financial support.

Brenda Mabel Reid is an emerging non-binary visual artist with a social practice. Their work explores friction within power dynamics in Canadian society, including our structures, systems, and beliefs. Their practice includes textile, print, sculpture, installation, audio, and animation. Brenda completed their Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Architectural Studies at the University of Waterloo. They have completed residencies in Kitchener, Hamilton, Guelph, and St. John’s. Brenda has received grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, and the City of Kitchener. They are based in the Haldimand Tract and reside in Kitchener.

Website: www.brendamabelreid.com
Instagram: @brendamabelreid

Homer Watson House & Gallery
1754 Old Mill Road
Kitchener, ON N2P 1H7
519-748-4377
www.homerwatson.on.ca

Instagram: @homerwatsonhouse
Facebook: @HomerRWatson

Hours
Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 4pm
Sunday: 12 – 4pm
Monday: Closed

Mobility
Fully Accessible – Main building and classroom studio
Partially Accessible – Garden studio and pottery studio
Please contact HWHG with any accessibility questions or concerns

Driving
Parking is in the small lot in front of the lawn, additional parking is available on the street.

Photos: Jo El-Deek