Serious Play brings together textile-based works by four artists who each approach their materials with a sense of genuine curiosity. Charlotte Sigurdson, Candace Neumann, Maureen Winnicki Lyons, and Miriam Delos Santos’ work pushes against conventional expectations of fibre art through exploration of unexpected forms, playful gestures, and deliberate looseness. They reflect a world where slowness matters, where material holds memory, and where the connection between maker and object is not just technical, but intimate. Here, craft is not just a method of making, it’s a way of imagining new worlds into existence. 

All four artists embrace a spirit of play that is neither trivial nor naïve; the kind of play that comes from relaxing into yourself, knowing your tools intimately, and trusting your hands to lead the way. These are works that seem to move, speak, laugh, and whisper. In their presence, we’re invited to imagine: are these objects simply handmade, or have they been brought to life? 

Charlotte Sigurdson’s dolls personify the court cards from a standard deck of playing cards. Her work shifts these characters from their usual role as visual symbols in a structured game, where rules dictate play and outcomes are clearly defined, into the realm of imaginative and social play, where possibilities are open-ended and infinite. By personifying these familiar figures, Sigurdson breathes life into them, giving us all hints to their playful personalities and lives. In doing so, she invites viewers to imagine who these characters might be, encouraging us to participate in limitless imaginative play with these familiar icons.

Miriam Delos Santos embraces play as a form of survival and self-preservation. As a second-generation Filipino immigrant, her upbringing emphasized endurance and the pursuit of stability. Her creativity was shaped by the economic realities of making do with what was available and transforming everyday discarded materials into something new. Her work in Serious Play continues this story. Her dress, Scrappy Joy, is composed of hundreds of multicoloured ruffles made from fabric remnants from her fashion design business, Hello Darling Co. Through this process of reuse and transformation, Delos Santos has forged her own path, using creativity as both a vehicle for change and an anchor in the face of life’s challenges.

Maureen Winnicki Lyons is fascinated by the technique of her craft and continually explores new ways of manipulating wool. Her artwork Whimsy, the Woolly Mammoth presents a nearly life-size female mammoth created through a range of textile techniques including tufting, felting, hooking, weaving, and punch-needle embroidery. The work responds to Colossal Biosciences’ plan to genetically engineer a woolly mammoth calf by 2028, set against the reality of climate change and a looming sixth mass extinction. Winnicki Lyons’ mammoth becomes both an homage and quiet act of resistance, reflecting on the misplaced focus of technological intervention at a time when many living species remain on the brink of disappearance.

Candace Neumann is a Red River Métis doula and birth worker. Her work contrasts traditional Indigenous knowledge with playful motifs and wordplay, showing a living culture that has not forgotten their traditional practices. Neumann’s work in Serious Play explores the idea of self determination through play by bringing life to Spider Woman, an Indigenous figure representing the dark feminine and the matriarchy. Spider Woman is radiating pure love; above her, a web she’s crafted from silk she has created with her body. Neumann’s work gives us permission to embody our individual gifts as a step towards imagining new ways of being in community. 

Through humour, brightness, and sincerity, the artists in Serious Play remind us of the radical potential of joy. Their works challenge us to think about how play shapes our understanding of ourselves, our bodies, and our shared world. What can we learn from materials that ask us to touch, to feel, to wonder? What new futures might emerge from the serious act of playing? – Katrina Craig, Curatorial Essay

Candace Neumann
Spider Woman and the doorway to the Ancestors
Copper and brass wire, hockey tape, deer hide, thread, beads, beaver fur, wool, smoked deerhide, velvet and assorted beads, and threads, smoked hides, red willow, wire, dental floss, beads, ribbons, Herkimer diamonds
2026

Charlotte Sigurdson
13 Dolls
Wood, textiles, acrylic paint, 24k gold leaf, goldwork, doll clay, crystals
2026
Each doll is individually named based on the playing card it represents, 13 total including the joker

Maureen Winnicki Lyons
Whimsy the Woolly Mammoth
Yarn, rope, stone, glass, wire, reclaimed leather, acrylic, resin, unprocessed wool, redirected landfill waste, tulle, fabric, assorted beads, novelties and mixed media
2025-26

Mayhem the Woolly Mouse
Felted wool, aluminum armature, lampwork glass
2025-26

Whimsy & Mayhem
Rug-tufted, punch-needled and needle-felted from assorted yarns
2025-26

Miriam Delos Santos
Scrappy Joy
Textiles, monofilament, aluminium wire, pompoms, cotton stuffing
2026

Read the Winnipeg Free Press article ‘The Play’s the Thing”
Read Classical 107’s article ‘Fiber artists convene for ‘Serious Play’ at Manitoba Craft Council’
Listen to Katrina’s 2019 Pecha Kucha talk ‘Finding Creative Play in an Optimized World”