Place

The dress is from my grandparents; the image is from my childhood in Northern British Columbia

Date

Dress: unknown; embroidery: 2015

Materials & techniques

Cotton, embroidery thread; hand embroidered

Credit

Hand embroidery by Diana Weymar; Dress: unknown

This dress is from my grandparents who were from Darien, Connecticut and lived a very "civilized" lifestyle. My parents left the States in 1970 and moved to the remote community of Telegraph Creek on the Stikine River in northern British Columbia where they lived off the land for seven years.

The source of the embroidered image is a photo of my father tanning a moose hide — a skill he learned from the Tahltans. I am standing beside him with my wooden wagon and handmade doll.

It is a Canadian — and to some degree American — story about intergenerational change, survivalist and sustainable living, and narratives told through art and objects. As my father would say, "every moose has enough brains to tan its own hide."