Alter Egos, at the Chase Gallery, Public Archives, through October, is an intriguing, colourful two-person exhibit about costuming, textiles as fine art and the characters who artists create as portals for their visions.

The artists, Maria Valverde and Anna-Lisa Shandro, give a talk Wednesday, Oct. 25, 6 to 8 p.m., at the gallery.

Valverde specifically deals with alter egos; textile artist Shandro is both a fashion designer working in recycled materials and a visual artist creating organic, richly detailed mandala-like wall work. Both she and Valverde are adventurous in scale as well as media using textiles and costume jewelry and, in Valverde’s case, multiple forms of expression from an embroidered chair to a sculptural bust.

Valverde’s last show Celestial Hunger, exhibited at Zwicker’s Art Gallery earlier this year, was a cry for social change in a province experiencing plague, homelessness and environmental crisis. This time she explores the use of alter egos by Nova Scotia artists Alan Syliboy, Rebecca Fisk, Mollie Cronin, Laura Kenney and herself.

As a Spanish Canadian, she has for many years performed as, written about and painted images of herself as the “Maritime Senorita,” a character combining her identities and giving her a place in a complex world.

The Maritime Senorita’s dress, displayed in full-scale and as an exquisitely sewn doll’s dress, combines the flair and ruffles of a Spanish flamenco dress with Nova Scotia tartan. Valverde depicts this lively character in many ways, including as a portrait in mosaic on a table, a magnificent, richly detailed embroidered back on a painted chair, as a marionette and in a giant painting of cloth on paper.

Valverde creatres Alan Syliboy’s The Thundermaker in beautiful blue velvet with lightning bolts and paints hooked rug artist Laura Kenney’s fiery, feminist, red-headed, black-dressed Judy character. (Kenney is exhibiting in the show Judy to Nov. 18 at the St. F.X. Art Gallery, at Mulroney Hall, Antigonish.)

In hanging style, this is a guerrilla show with large rough letters on white paper for the artist’s statement of intent: “Alter Egos is an exploration of the alter ego, the echoes of the art world and its ability to make radical changes leading to community connection. To make is to leave and imprint and make a ripple.”

Shandro expresses herself in dense, dazzling wool surfaces of exploding strands and loops of wool and costume jewelry. Her surfaces burst with colour and energy and are a marvel to behold. Her edges are organic and her shapes unordered; the combustion of imagery is nature-based and largely abstract. However, meaning is deeply felt.

A 2020 BFA graduate from NSCAD University, Shandro works in knitting, crocheting, hand-tufting and embroidering. She recently did a residency at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia’s craft LAIR with a virtual reality component. She is interested in patterns in nature, in jazz music and in quantum physics.

There are no titles for any of the art works in this exhibit except for one of Shandro’s, a massive, rich textile canvas called Johns Cosmic Garden, R.I.P., A.L.S., with imagery that is sometimes representational, other times abstract.

Shandro’s clothing is visibly worked, playful and theatrical, and raises ideas about identity and costuming. Her recycled textile clothing includes a sweater of eye shapes, an adorable short skirt with a horizontal row of lively, mismatched buttons, and pants full of different colours and patches and visible stitches. The garments are fun, have a bit of an apocalyptic feel and celebrate clothing as holding history and meaning.

Shandro connects Valverde’s large, alter ego paintings with a sweeping, swerving bolt of hooked imagery. And Valverde ends her figures at their wrists with cutouts of hands pasted to the wall and linking each work. So there is a strong sense of community in this exhibit.

The gallery, 6016 University Ave., is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday, 10 to 3.

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