in conjunction with her CCBC installation, we asked artist Joanna Rogers to share with us a bit about herself, her inspiration, her audience and her other projects. .
installation will be on view in our gallery from april 01 – 30 | 2026.
This piece began in the early fall of 2024. There were lobster mushrooms everywhere on Pender Island, where I live; in my yard, along the trails. I’d never seen so many! I collected some to make a dye vat and discovered that the best results were on wool rather than on silk, cotton or linen. I made subsequent vats and varied the pH of the dye bath to give different shades of orange, red and fuschia. This gave me a pile of beautiful wool yarn just waiting to be made into something.
“By using knitting as my medium for this monumental piece, I wanted to recognize the value of knitting as an art form“
I had woven morse code in my series The Chorus and I’m knotting morse code in my series of war belts called Still Fighting. I wanted to try knitting morse code. So, first I needed to relearn how to knit. It had been over 50 years since I last knitted. It took a couple of tries to figure out how to create the dots and dashes. Ozymandias by Shelley seemed the perfect poem; I’d always liked the story behind this poem’s creation and thought that its subject matter was strangely topical.
I soon realized that my stack of wool yarn dyed with lobster mushrooms was going to run out quickly. I turned to my yard for more plant matter to dye with. I had a stash of dried zinnia and marigold flowers which I had grown that summer and St John’s Wort flowers which were planted by the previous owners and well established. I collected the bright red leaves from my Japanese maple tree as they fell to the ground and made dye baths out of each of these in turn to produce vibrant oranges and yellows with some pinks and greens thrown in for good measure.
I started knitting at the end of October 2024 as the US Elections were gearing up. I knitted through the US election in November and through December as we wondered how things would play out in the new year. I knitted through January and February as we watched in disbelief as the Republicans started implementing their policies. I knitted through Trump’s 51st State threats and the resulting Elbows Up movement in Canada. I knitted through the Canadian election in April and through May as parallels between the US government and the fascist governments of the 1930’s became obvious. I took a break for the summer and resumed knitting in October 2025. By December I had finally finished. I had 87 feet of knitted morse code!
Shelley began writing the poem “Ozymandias” in 1817, upon anticipation of the arrival in Britain of the Younger Memnon, a head-and-torso fragment of a statue of Ramesses II acquired from his mortuary temple at Thebes. Although the Younger Memnon did not arrive in London until 1821 the reputation of the statue fragment had preceded its arrival in Western Europe. Ozymandias is the Greek name for the pharoah.
The poem was the result of a friendly competition between Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith. Both Shelley’s poem and Smith’s “Ozymandias” explore the ravages of time to which the legacies of even the greatest are subject, while alluding to the lasting power of art. My Ozymandias is also a meditation on power, tyranny, hubris, the rise and fall of empires and states, and the lasting legacy of art but adds an additional layer by referencing the longevity of Shelley’s still-popular sonnet.
By using knitting as my medium for this monumental piece, I wanted to recognize the value of knitting as an art form. So often overlooked and looked down upon, talented, skilful knitters have been creating beautiful, intricate work for hundreds of years. It seems we’re still fighting to have traditional fibre art techniques taken seriously.
