Clifford's Education FundHooked Mat: assorted recycled fabrics, spruce, small branches of alder and other local shrubbery, burlap
Janet Davis 2006
$25,000.00 +HST
My age works against me at times. I grew up in outport Newfoundland, yet I have witnessed little of traditional outport life. People in the Wesleyville area lived off the seal hunt and the Labrador cod fishery. Each and every one of my grandparents, and even my parents, have had dealings with the catching, splitting, salting and drying of cod. So here I am at 34 years of age, feeling like a fish out of water, for I have never seen a fish flake with my own eyes.
What I do have are photographs, written descriptions, and the Internet with amazing video clips and photographs of the real thing. Even better though, are local people to question, and an interest to compel me to do so.
Clifford Andrews of Wesleyville introduced a photo of a fish flake as “my college education fund”. His family’s flakes full of salt cod made them the money to send Clifford off to Acadia University in an era where most men were sent to sea, not out of the country to college.
Clifford has also taught me about the way flakes were made, why all the photographs I could see always displayed the white side of the fish up, what lungars are, why flakes were made with boughs at times, how there were boards placed in specific areas so that there would be just enough space to walk bearing hand-bars full of fish over the flakes without disturbing the already laid out fish.
I have finally figured out an old question of mine: why did people want so much land back then? My own answer: Not only the gardens and the animals and outbuildings took up lots of room, but the flakes took a lot of land space. Of course you needed lots of land back then! How blind we are to the past before really thinking of all the differences in everyday life.
We have reached an era where most school-aged children, and even their parents, are no longer familiar with traditional fish flakes and the sights and smells which accompanied them. I have taken a personal interest in fish flakes: their construction, use, and visual presence in a community.
A common entity in Bonavista Bay for about 130years, the Labrador fishery brought huge expanses of drying fish along the shores. While an inshore fishing family would have smaller flakes going all summer long, with one trap boat full of fish at a time, the Labrador fishermen brought in a schooner full at once. These flakes were very large with thousands of fish, not to be symbolized by a small traditional mat, but a large mat, measuring about eight by ten feet. The mat is to serve as a reminder of our not-so-distant history which I am proud to be a descendant of.
The hooked mat is to be made up of one large assembled piece of burlap with the images of salt fish hooked into the rough cloth. Burlap is sewn together to make the desired size of the mat. Edges were rolled and hemmed using a sewing machine. The fish are hooked into the mat using second-hand clothing, as my grandmothers would have done, wools and other fabrics as available in the appropriate colours. The fish are laid heads (although headless!) and tails along a flake, mostly white flesh up, and one fish with the skin and dorsal fins showing. When a fish was starting to get sun burnt but was still damp, it would be flipped over to the skin side so that the meat of the fish would not further decrease in value.
While working on this mat, I have felt the similarities of the lives of my female ancestors as compared to my own. Back breaking at times, long hours of physical labour on the flakes while having to continue on with daily chores: the house cleaning, preparing meals, and caring for children. Although I am sure that my life is one of leisure in comparison to the tasks that my grandmothers tackled each and every day, I feel a sisterhood with them in the work load that is expected of women in general, with the number of roles we are required to fill. This idea is reflected in our daily lives: my mother feels guilty every time she relaxes, because she feels obligated to be cooking or cleaning or caring for her family. This expectation has been carried with us women for many generations, and does not seem to be dying out in our modern lives.
As I completed the hooking of each fish, I noticed that they have character. Each fish has been hooked with different fabrics, in different patterns, some with a few fly spits, some are round tails, some are split just perfectly. We all have a purpose in life. Regardless of how we are made, what we look like, and how long we walk the earth. Upper and lower class people represented by these fish: all play their part in society and history. Clifford Andrews, with physical imperfections, may have been unable to continue the family’s fishing tradition, but contributes greatly to society in other ways as a scholar, educator, a loving father and husband, and community leader. He was destined to become a mentor, teacher, and a hero among today’s youth as a contributor to the preservation of local history.
To bring alive the texture of the fish laying on flakes, I have woven small pieces of wood, twigs with bark, into the burlap in the negative space areas between the salt fish, symbolizing the branches, lungars, and boughs comprising the traditional flakes.
The complete mat is displayed on a hand built flake which elevates the codfish from the ground, as codfish was thought of as elevated in value to a Newfoundland fisherman and his family. This flake is slightly larger than the mat, to ‘frame’ the image of the codfish.
This mat has been shown in a three exhibits:
Traditions in Transition
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Gallery, Corner Brook; June 29th-August 19, 2006;
The Rooms, St. John's; November 2nd, 2006-January 21st, 2007
F I S H
printmaking and textiles by janet davis;
March 18th-April 27th, 2007;
Craft Council Gallery; 59 Duckworth Street, St. John's
and
The Clifford Andrews Collection
Photos and artifacts donated by Clifford Andrews surrounding the mat 'Clifford's Education Fund' by Janet Davis
August 2007
Gallery of the Bonavista North Regional Museum; Wesleyville
