Jane Sartorelli
1924 - 2006
Fibre artist Jane Sartorelli was born in 1924 in Toronto, Ontario. She attended the University of Toronto, where she studied fine arts and archaeology before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1955, she moved to Alberta where she explored ceramics for a year and took classes in sketching and oil painting.
Jane Sartorelli's work could be said to have fit within the general category of “fibre art,” but to be more specific it should be noted that she worked in a variety media, including fibre, stone, porcelain, leather, oils, watercolour, charcoal, wood and fabric. In her early years in Edmonton, she collaborated with her father, I.W. MacKinnon, who was a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Creative Leathercraft, to create a series of award-winning leather carvings depicting early Canadian life. Later, she wrote, directed and produced several plays featuring marionettes that she had created herself. She was known in later life primarily for the wall hangings that she began making in 1971. These combined decorative, abstract elements with realistic depictions of human figures and animals and ranged from images of First Nations people to groups of musicians, such as the large-scale wall piece titled “String Quartet” which has hung for a number of years in the foyer of the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton.
