Author: Jennifer Wiebe

Tog & þel is what makes the wool of Icelandic sheep unique.

The fibres of tog are long, relatively coarse and strong  — water repellent and protective.

& The fibres of þel are short, fine and soft — fluffy to trap lots of warm air within.

In the heart of the Kvennaskólinn, under the tutelage of history,

By the shores of the River Blanda’s estuary,

Infused with the sounds of the surf, the wind and the migrating birds,

An interdisciplinary group of Canadian students is woven together: wool, wonder and wild plants.

Sixteen artists translate impressions of local landscape and ecology, culture and tradition, in a call-and-response with the living land, sea and sky.

Blönduós has welcomed us.  We have walked and foraged her shores and hills with awe and gratitude. We have filmed, photographed and felted.  We have sewn, painted, swum and steamed.  

Our diverse disciplines — geography, anthropology, ceramics, fibre arts, film production and art education — have converged.  We have learned from one another, from our teachers at the Icelandic Textile Center, and from the contrasts contained within the materials unique to this place: tog and þel, black sand and white agate, fire and ice.

Thank you for having us

Takk fyrir okkur

Andre Bastian Ibarguengoitia, Lucy Carver-Brennan, Shan Collar, Elizabeth Dovolis, Annabel Durr, Melanie Garcia, Ariana G. Hipsagh, Hannah Jakob, Zoé Lapostolle, Keyiana Marques, Rowan McKellar, Shannon Pot, Genevieve Prefontaine, Émilie Valiquette, Ginger Weissdown, Jennifer Wiebe

Field School Leader: Dr. Kathleen Vaughan

Instructors in Iceland: 

Jóhanna Erla Pálmadóttir/Spinning

Ragnheiður Björk Þórsdóttir/Weaving and Tapestry

Þorgerður Hlöðversdóttir/Natural Dye Methods

Sarah Finkle and Alissa Estivariz/Bio Materials

tog & þel

Tog & þel er það sem gerir ull íslensku sauðkindarinnar einstaka. Þræðir torgsins eru langir, tiltölulega grófir og sterkir — hrinda frá sér vatni og eru verndandi & þræðir Þelsins  eru stuttir fíngerðir og mjúkir — dúnmjúkir til að fanga gnægð hlýs lofts.

Í hjarta Kvennaskólans, undir handleiðslu sögunnar, Við strendur óss Blöndu, undir áhrifum frá hljómum brimsins, vindsins og farfuglanna, fléttast saman þverfaglegur hópur kanadískra nemenda: ull, undur og villtar jurtir.

Sextán listamenn túlka hughrif af landslagi staðarins, vistkerfi, menningu og hefðir, í kalli sem bergmálar lifandi land, haf og himinn.

Blönduós hefur tekið vel á móti okkur. Við höfum gengið um strendur staðarins, hæðir og leitað fanga úr náttúrunni af lotningu og þakklæti. Við höfum kvikmyndað, ljósmyndað og þæft. Við höfum saumað, málað, synt og farið í gufu. Fjölbreyttar fræðigreinar okkar — landafræði, mannfræði, keramík, textíllist, kvikmyndagerð og listkennsla — hafa runnið saman í eitt. Við höfum lært hvert af öðru, af kennurum okkar hjá Textílmiðstöð Íslands, og af þeim andstæðum sem búa í efniviðnum sem er einstakur fyrir þennan stað: togi og þeli, svörtum sandi og hvítum agat steinum, eldi og ís.

Takk fyrir okkur

Andre Bastian Ibarguengoitia, Lucy Carver-Brennan, Shan Collar, Elizabeth Dovolis, Annabel Durr, Melanie Garcia, Ariana G. Hipsagh, Hannah Jakob, Zoé Lapostolle, Keyiana Marques, Rowan McKellar, Shannon Pot, Genevieve Prefontaine, Émilie Valiquette, Ginger Weissdown, Jennifer Wiebe

Námstjóri vettvangsnáms: Dr. Kathleen Vaughan

Leiðbeinendur á Íslandi: 

Jóhanna Erla Pálmadóttir/Spinning

Ragnheiður Björk Þórsdóttir/Weaving and Tapestry

Þorgerður Hlöðversdóttir/Natural Dye Methods

Sarah Finkle and Alissa Estivariz/Bio Materials

Curatorial Statement: Geneviève Préfontaine & Jennifer Wiebe, with Icelandic translation (Gemini) edited by Elsa Arnardóttir

Poster design: Hannah Jakob & Keyiana Marques

It is Saturday morning, June 27, 2026—stardate -296514.21588026395, our exhibition is today! The marking of this month of learning together in Blönduós cannot possibly be contained—our memories and photographs already refracting facets of crystal images (Deleuze, 1989) of this time. Installation preview here, with gratitude for this time, this place, these generous and creative souls.

References

Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The time-image (H. Tomlinson & R. Galeta, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

Signalling the Old World from the New (2023)

Gilles Deleuze describes the “crystal image” (Deleuze, 1985/1989) as moments in which past, present, and future refract through one another, each facet catching light from the others. Writing about “place” from Blönduós, in the present, my thoughts are nested in that shifting structure: memories, speculative imaginings of a family history of immigration from Västergötland, Sweden, to North America just before 1900. I am experiencing my time here — this absolute luxury of time — attempting to notice what I am noticing, watching for the flashings of synthesis that surface and sometimes settle in my awareness.

I visited Iceland for the first time forty-one years ago, in 1985. My first steps off North America were in Reykjavík, with a group of sixty American college students and our leaders, all of us spending our junior year abroad on a program called Scandinavian Seminar (https://scandinavianseminar.org/). We travelled together in Iceland for several days before orientation in Copenhagen, language courses in our respective countries, home stays, and then a school year within the Scandinavian adult education system known as folkhögskolor, or folk schools (https://folkbildningsradet.se/om-oss/translations/english/the-folk-high-schools/). My folkhögskola placement was at Hellidens (https://helliden.se/), in Västergötland. It is a school with a craft and design emphasis, and by chance, not thirty miles from my living Swedish relatives and the family farm.

The foundation of Scandinavian Seminar was/is language immersion. This formative experience for me became the touchstone for my curiosity as an artist, exploring the privilege of the English language as world lingua franca and adjacent rabbit holes of research that include a consideration of globalization, mapping and borders—coming more granularly into focus upon my own eventual immigration to Canada from the United States. Signalling the Old World from the New (2023) and #HEGEMONY (2022) are two examples of this thread running through my research.

Living now with my classmates at Kvennaskólinn, approaching midsommar in this uncanny and unlimited daylight, the present time is imbued with facets of memory of that year living in the castle at Hellidens — the Helliden slott — vignettes layered and refracted with what has transpired since those first baby steps, at the age of twenty-one, stepping off a plane from New York to Reykjavík.

Jen Wiebe

References

Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The time-image (H. Tomlinson & R. Galeta, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1985)

Folkbildningsrådet. (2026, March 10). The folk high schools. https://folkbildningsradet.se/om-oss/translations/english/the-folk-high-schools/

Hellidens folkhögskola. (n.d.). Hem. Retrieved June 19, 2026, from https://helliden.se/

Scandinavian Seminar. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved June 19, 2026, from https://scandinavianseminar.org/