Exhibition: In Her Garden at the Peel Art Gallery
One Sentence Summary: My installation Floating Garden is paired with Jannick Deslauriers’ Phasmes to explore humanity’s journey from botanical abundance to environmental devastation. Date: September 2023 This fall, I had the privilege of exhibiting at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA) in Brampton, Ontario as part of In Her Garden, a dual exhibition that explores humanity’s complex relationship with the natural world. Running from September 30, 2023 through February 20, 2024, the show pairs my work with that of Montreal-based artist Jannick Deslauriers, creating a powerful narrative contrast between flourishing beauty and environmental devastation. The Exhibition In Her Garden presented two radically different visions, each filtered through a feminine lens that imagined hybrid realms between reality and fantasy. My contribution, Floating Garden, filled the gallery with a romantic, vibrant garden suspended from above. Using only thread, I created stitched drawings of flowers that sprouted mid-air—each bloom soft and slight, swaying gently as visitors moved through the space. The flowers responded to the disturbance of bodies passing by, gracefully shifting in unison with their neighboring blooms, creating the illusion of a living garden complete with an imagined fresh scent permeating the space. In stark contrast, Jannick Deslauriers created Phasmes (Phasmids), a world drained of colour and life. Her mixed media installation evoked an abandoned amusement park, a nuclear disaster zone reminiscent of Chernobyl, or a war-torn landscape. Visitors entered this “contained space” through a plastic curtain, confronting the sad conclusion of environmental tragedy—whether caused by human neglect, error, or explosive aggression. Where my work celebrated botanical abundance, hers mourned its absence. Together, our installations created a narrative arc...
Group Exhibition: Held. Together at Nickle Galleries
In September 2026, I travelled to Calgary, Alberta, to install Ode to a Prairie at the Nickle Galleries on the University of Calgary’s campus. It was exciting to reinstall this work in the gallery space, which has towering ceilings and large concrete walls. We were able to install the work so that you can walk through what feels like a field of flowers. Many thanks to Jenelle M. Pasiechnik for curating this exhibition, which features work by Glenna Cardinal, seth cardinal dodginghorse and Dwayne Martineau. This exhibition runs from September 18, 2026 to December 12, 2026. Held. Together. is a group exhibition featuring Glenna Cardinal, seth cardinal dodginghorse, Dwayne Martineau and Amanda McCavour. Plants provide the curatorial point of departure for Held. Together. From this starting point, the exhibition brings together artists whose practices engage differently with questions of relationship, place and belonging. Attending to the ecological intelligence of grassland species, the exhibition considers reciprocity and care as forces that sustain human and more-than-human life. Situated where the Foothills Fescue and Foothills Parkland ecosystems meet, Guts-ists’i, Wîchîspa Oyade, Moh’kinstsis provides the ecological context for the exhibition. These grasslands and waters have known, held and sustained the Tsuut’ina, Stoney Nakoda Nations and the Blackfoot Confederacy since time immemorial. Their enduring relationships with these lands and waters continue to shape understandings of place and community. Beneath the prairie, grasses form intricate networks of roots and relationships that stabilize soil, retain nutrients and create conditions for other forms of life to flourish. Much of this work is unseen, yet it is fundamental to the health and continuity of the ecosystem. Held. Together....
Exhibition: Double Shadow at Museum London
Double Shadow is now on view at Museum London, and this exhibition runs from May 23, 2026 to March 14, 2027. Double Shadow brings together over 500 stitched elements from my Black and White Studies series. Botanical motifs mix with bold geometry across the wall, shifting with the light as you move through the space. Planning Installing a piece like this comes with a little bit of uncertainty and excitement. The Atrium wall at Museum London is so much larger than my studio, so before anything went up in the gallery, I installed part of the work on my living room wall to work out how many pieces I’d need to cover that amount of square footage. My home became a temporary test site, with stitched elements mapped across the space. But no matter how carefully you plan, the first time you actually see the finished installation is when you’re installing it. There’s no way to fully preview 500+ pieces coming together on a wall of that size. The Install The process started with a diagram — mapping out the general arrangement of circles, then scaling that to the dimensions of the Atrium wall so every circle had precise measurements. That diagram was projected directly onto the wall surface, and each circle was marked out with blue tape and labelled with a letter. From there, I divided the 500+ pieces proportionally across each circle. This step mattered a lot — I wanted the botanical motifs, the abstract patterns, the different techniques, and the balance of black and white distributed thoughtfully across the whole wall. Once the pieces were sorted...
Studio Visit
This week, photographer Christine Lim visited my new Toronto studio. She captured a few images of what I’ve been working on. I pulled out some current projects for the shoot: black and white embroidery and nuno felted pieces in progress for an upcoming show at Museum London, plus the watercolours that served as source material for the patterns. I also brought out wire pieces from an upcoming commission, along with a few finished, powder-coated examples. Here’s a peek into the studio space, some works in progress, and a few samples. Take a look at more of Christine’s photography...Contact Amanda
Window Display: Hermès New York City
One Sentence Summary: My embroidered installation at Hermès Madison Avenue features Pegasus in Bloom, where the mythical winged horse emerges from a stitched Hermès scarf into a field of flowers. Date: August 2025 I’m excited to share that in June 2025, I installed two new embroidered works at the Hermès Madison Avenue location in New York City. The window installation, Pegasus in Bloom, will be on display through the end of September 2025, alongside an interior piece, Floating Garden, installed in the store’s historic staircase area. Pegasus in Bloom: The Window Installation Pegasus in Bloom is a window installation that tells a story of emergence and lightness—the transition from night to day, winter to spring. At its center, I have enlarged and rendered the Libre Comme Pégase scarf with its bold blues and painterly design entirely in stitch, suspending it mid-air in the Hermès window space. The scarf unfurls like a portal from which the mythical Pegasus emerges, appearing to leap forward in flight. The winged creature arcs through the space in a quiet transition from twilight into daylight, suggesting motion and freedom. Pegasus emerges into a field of embroidered flowers that shift from deep midnight tones to soft spring pastels. The florals—rendered in rich reds, purples, and blues—create a vibrant ground that evokes early spring. Leather bags echo the flowers’ hues in colors that hint at spring’s arrival. Floating Garden: The Interior Installation Within the historic staircase area, Floating Garden creates an idealized space—an imaginary and dreamlike environment. This installation addresses the history of botanical themes in stock embroidery, taking flowers out of the context of embroidery ‘kits’ and moving these images into an installation to create...
Public Art: Ode to a Prairie at The University of Wisconsin Madison
This summer, I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, to install two large-scale works in the new CDIS (Computer, Data & Information Sciences) building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Working alongside an amazing team of students and staff from the CDIS School, I spent several days transforming interior spaces with embroidered botanical forms inspired by Wisconsin’s native prairie plants. We were even able to squeeze in a visit to the Herbarium.I am delighted that the pieces have found a home on the University’s campus. These installations build on work I originally created in 2019, which previously hung in the Chazen Museum of Art. That project began with research visits to two campus collections: the Wisconsin State Herbarium, where I studied preserved botanical specimens, and the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. I’ve long been interested in how botanical forms migrate between scientific documentation and decorative traditions—how the same flowers appear on herbarium sheets, in textile patterns, and on wallpaper designs. These collections allowed me to trace those connections through Wisconsin’s indigenous plant species. For the CDIS building, I adapted these two pieces: Prairie Plant Studies is a 25-foot wide installation located near the Orchard Street entrance of Morgridge Hall, across from Hello World Auditorium. This wall of embroideries recreates pressed flowers indigenous to the Wisconsin prairie—goldenrod, milkweed, and other native species I studied at the State Herbarium. Each piece is made using my water-soluble fabric technique: I sew into fabric that dissolves in water, building up stitched lines and crossing threads. When the fabric dissolves, the thread drawings interlock together without any backing, held together purely through their accumulated connections. I love...
Art Installation: Gladstone House in Toronto
In June 2025, I installed Sunset Canopy, a permanent artwork in the Tower Suite at Gladstone House in Toronto. This site-specific installation transforms the air above the bed into a floating constellation of leaves, branches, and circular forms—a dreamy canopy rendered in powder-coated steel wire that shifts gently with the room’s ambient airflow. Sunset Canopy is conceived as both drawing and sculpture—an installation that occupies the vertical space above the bed, creating an intimate relationship between the viewer at rest and the work suspended overhead. Composed of gestural wire forms in warm sunset tones of orange, pink, and purple, the piece arranges leaves, branches, and circular shapes into a floating garden that hovers in the air. I’m drawn to wire for its structural clarity and responsiveness—its capacity to define space through line alone. Unlike dense, solid forms, wire creates presence while maintaining transparency. It suggests volume and mass without obscuring what lies beyond it. In the Tower Suite, this quality allows the architecture of the space to remain visible while introducing a new layer of delicate, organic form. The wire elements shift subtly with the room’s ambient airflow—not dramatically, but enough to keep the installation feeling alive. This quiet sense of movement introduces a temporal quality to the work. It’s never quite static, never quite the same from one moment to the next. As guests lie in bed looking up, they experience the canopy as something that breathes with the space. I’m grateful to Gladstone House for commissioning this work and for their commitment to integrating art throughout their spaces. Their vision of creating environments where art and hospitality...
Exhibition: Of Wonders Wild and New at The Burlington Botanical Gardens
Short Statement: My installation Ode to a Prairie at Royal Botanical Gardens creates an immersive pathway through floor-to-ceiling panels. Date: January 2025 My work is currently on view at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington as part of Of Wonders Wild and New, a fibre art exhibition curated by Cobalt Connects that runs through the end of the month. The exhibition brings together nine contemporary fibre artists from around the world, with works that explore the broad themes of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—playing with scale, movement, wonder, dream states, otherworldly beings, and the sense of being fully immersed in an experience. For this exhibition, I installed part of my work Ode to a Prairie, which consists of large panels featuring printed embroideries. What made this installation unique was the approach: rather than suspending the panels overhead as I typically do, the pieces were hung to extend almost to the floor, creating a pathway down the middle that allows visitors to walk through the work itself. Instead of looking up at a field hovering above, visitors find themselves surrounded—immersed within the piece. The panels create walls of flora on either side of the path, enveloping viewers in embroidered prairie plants. You don’t just observe the work from outside; you enter it, move through it, and experience it from within. This installation method speaks directly to the Wonderland themes the exhibition explores. Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole or stepping through the looking glass into a world where familiar things become strange and scale becomes fluid, walking between the panels creates a sense of being transported into another...
Exhibition: Rewilding at The Canadian Museum of Nature
I’m honored to share that my work is currently featured in Rewilding – the David Suzuki Foundation Arts Prize, a new exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. The show opened on October 11, 2024, and will remain on view through October 20, 2025. The exhibition brings together 13 Canadian artists—winners of the inaugural David Suzuki Foundation Rewilding Arts Prize—who have created work exploring the concept of rewilding. Rewilding is the practice of restoring natural environments, helping them return to their original, self-sustaining states. The goal is to boost biodiversity, strengthen ecosystems, and create thriving and resilient landscapes. Through artistic interpretation, we’ve reimagined what rewilding could look like in our yards, neighborhoods, and communities, offering fresh perspectives on nature and biodiversity. My installation, Poppies, explores the fleeting nature of this delicate flower by rendering and preserving the moment of the poppy in bloom in thread. Shifting the perspective of a traditional garden, viewers are invited to walk underneath the poppy field. I invite the multiple associations of the poppy and its symbolism—from sleep, to remembrance, to death. This surreal moment suspended in time looks to garden spaces while also suggesting the repeat patterning on floral fabrics or wallpapers. The selected artists come from diverse backgrounds—some are professional artists, while others are trained as scientists, environmentalists, and educators. This interdisciplinary approach reflects the exhibition’s core belief that passionate and innovative thinkers from across disciplines are needed to find creative solutions to environmental challenges. The artworks were selected by a jury of esteemed Canadian artists and curated by Dr. Helen Gregory, Curator at the McIntosh Gallery at the University...
Exhibition: Bloom at The Lake of the Woods Museum
One Sentence Summary: My wire installation at Lake of the Woods Museum creates a floating cloudscape from Spirograph-inspired patterns in vibrant blues, pinks, and purples. Date: September 2024 I’m thrilled to share that my new wire installation is currently on view at the Lake of the Woods Museum in Kenora, Ontario, running from September 28 through December 21, 2024. This exhibition represents an exciting continuation of my exploration into the intersection of mathematical patterns, textile structures, and sculptural form. The Work The centerpiece of this exhibition is a large-scale hanging installation composed of circular wire shapes inspired by mathematical roulette curves—the same geometric patterns found in those beloved Spirograph toys many of us played with as children. I’ve always been drawn to the gestural, playful quality of working with wire. There’s something magical about how it creates delicate lines in space, casts intricate shadows, and maintains an incredible sense of lightness despite being a physical material. These spirographic patterns combine my longstanding fascination with drawing toys and the radial structures found in textile practices like crochet rings and tatting. By embedding mathematical patterning into what becomes a textile-like structure, I’ve created a dense collection of sewn lines that suspend from the gallery ceiling, arranged to evoke a floating cloud of colour. The palette is deliberately vibrant—bright blues, pinks, and purples fill the space, creating a saturated atmosphere that suggests multiple readings: a distant galaxy, an abundant bouquet of flowers, or simply a surreal, colourful cloudscape hovering overhead. The work is designed to be experienced from multiple vantage points. Visitors can move around and beneath the installation, and are even...
Exhibition: AgriCULTURE at the Longmont Museum
In June 2024, I participated in agriCULTURE: Art Inspired by the Land, an innovative exhibition that paired 18 artists with Boulder County farmers to create new work inspired by farming and the natural world. My installation was sited in a historic barn at the Agricultural Heritage Center just outside of Longmont, Colorado. The exhibition spanned five locations—Longmont Museum, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Ollin Farms, Milk and Honey Farm, and the Agricultural Heritage Center—inviting visitors to travel from site to site and experience how each artist responded to their specific environment. As Joan Harrold of the Longmont Museum noted, “There is so much about farming that is approached like an art form in order for it to be successful.” For this project, I created new work based on Colorado plants, with particular focus on Blue Gramma grass—a native prairie species. During my time in Colorado, I visited the herbarium at the Denver Botanic Gardens to study preserved botanical specimens and source authentic reference images for my embroidered interpretations. The installation included primarily native Colorado plants and grasses, but also incorporated crested wheatgrass—a non-native species historically planted for agriculture in the area. This combination acknowledged the complex agricultural history of the region and how human intervention has shaped the landscape. The barn’s soaring vertical space and open structure became integral to the work. I created a field of floating, embroidered plants suspended from the ceiling, inverting traditional landscape perspective and rendering the grasses monumental. Long fabric panels emphasized the barn’s verticality and responded to air moving through the structure, twisting and turning like flowers swaying in a summer breeze. Creating...
Exhibition: The Blue Afar at the Thames Art Gallery
Short Summary: My latest exhibition at Thames Art Gallery explores the longing of distance through two immersive blue embroidered installations. Date: January 2024 The Blue Afar opened at Thames Art Gallery on January 26, 2024. Running through March 24, 2024, this solo exhibition featured two major installations that explored the physiological, cultural, and metaphorical meanings of the colour blue through my embroidered sculptural practice. The exhibition, curated by guest curator Matthew Ryan Smith, opened during Chatham’s Winter ARTcrawl. Creating The Blue Afar was an exploration of how embroidered environments can express the infinitesimal breadth of human emotions and shape our relationship to earth and sky. The exhibition takes its name from Rebecca Solnit’s observation in A Field Guide to Getting Lost: “The world is blue at its edges and in its depths.” She writes of being moved by “the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away.” Blue exists in the most distant places: where the horizon meets the sky, in ocean depths, at the edges of our vision. Solnit suggests that blue is not just a colour but an emotion—”the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in.” This concept became the foundation for the work: How do we materialize the beauty of distance while maintaining its essential quality of being forever beyond our grasp? Far Away Blue Fields The largest installation attempts to materialize the blue of distance itself. A constellation of powder blue orbs resembling cumulus clouds floated above a vista of azure flowers suspended from the gallery ceiling by...
Public Art: Garden of Clouds in Taipei
In 2024, I completed Garden of Clouds, a large-scale embroidered installation for Tok Eats café in Taipei City, Taiwan. This 25′ x 20′ x 6′ suspended work hovers above visitors, transforming the interior space into an imagined cloud made of flowers. The project presented a unique challenge: the installation was mapped out and installed by a team in Taipei while I remained in Toronto, consulting daily over Zoom and phone calls to guide the process from thousands of miles away. Working with Foison Art, I created Garden of Clouds through an unusual collaborative process. While I developed the concept, created all the embroidered elements, and designed the overall composition in my Toronto studio, the actual installation happened half a world away. Each day during the installation period, I joined the team via video call, watching as they positioned pieces, discussing adjustments, and problem-solving together across time zones. This long-distance collaboration required trust, clear communication, and meticulous planning. Process drawings and installation tests became essential tools for ensuring the final work would match my vision. Looking at those initial drawings now alongside the completed installation, I’m pleased with how closely the piece corresponds to what I imagined. After the installation was complete, I flew to Taipei for the opening event—my first opportunity to see the work in person and experience it as visitors would. Standing beneath Garden of Clouds in the café, watching how it transformed the space and how people moved underneath it, was deeply rewarding after months of viewing it only through screens. During the opening, I discussed how the work was made and gave a small demonstration...
Public Art: Floral Canopy at Albee Square NYC
Short Summary: My new installation Floral Canopy transforms native New York plants into hundreds of suspended wire sculptures that create a floating wildflower meadow. In August 2023, just as students and staff prepared to enter their new building for the first time, Floral Canopy was installed in the lobby ceiling of the Albee Square Campus in Brooklyn. This site-specific public artwork represents the culmination of a four-year journey that began in 2019—a project that deepened my understanding of how art can honor place, celebrate local ecology, and create a sense of belonging for the communities that encounter it daily. Floral Canopy is composed of hundreds of hand-shaped, powder-coated steel sculptures painted in vibrant greens, yellows, and oranges that form a floating field of native plants above viewers’ heads. Like three-dimensional drawings, these intricately crafted and gestural wire forms accumulate into a suspended wildflower meadow—shifting perspective and inviting students, teachers, and visitors to look up and discover a garden where they might least expect it. The foundation of this work lies in botanical research and careful observation. I spent considerable time at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Native Flora Garden and the New York Botanical Garden’s Steere Herbarium, examining plant specimens that call New York home. I made dozens of drawing studies of local species including May Apple, Button Bush, Milkweed, and many others—plants that have adapted to this specific climate and soil, plants that have their own stories within this ecosystem. This process of documentation became integral to the artwork itself. By translating scientific observation into artistic interpretation, Floral Canopy demonstrates how different ways of knowing—the scientist’s careful cataloging and the artist’s imaginative rendering—can work in harmony....
Online Course: Embroidery with a sewing machine with Domestika
Short Statement: My new Domestika course is now available online! Date: August 2023 In November 2022, I traveled to Madrid, Spain, to film an online course with Domestika. Over the course of a week, I worked with their production team to create a comprehensive guide to starting free-motion embroidery. The course was released in August 2023, and it’s been exciting to see students from around the world discover these techniques. Filming an online course is a different kind of creative challenge than making artwork. Instead of working alone in my studio, I spent the week explaining every step of my process to cameras, breaking down techniques I’ve developed over years into clear, accessible lessons. The Domestika team in Madrid was incredible—professional, supportive, and genuinely interested in understanding the work so they could help communicate it effectively. We filmed everything from setup to finished pieces, capturing close-ups of stitching techniques and wider shots that show how individual elements come together into the larger project. It was an intense week of demonstrating, explaining, and occasionally re-filming to make sure every detail was clear. The course guides students through the entire process of creating embroidered designs using free-motion embroidery techniques on a sewing machine. I start with the fundamentals: gathering materials, creating mood boards, and developing designs inspired by natural elements. Then we move into the technical aspects—setting up the sewing machine for free-motion work, understanding essential stitch patterns, and learning to shade, accent, fill, and outline designs. The beauty of this approach is that it’s accessible to beginners while offering techniques that more experienced sewists might not have explored. I also...
Exhibition: Wanderings and Traces at Cambridge Galleries
In the summer of 2023, I had the extraordinary opportunity to create Wanderings and Traces, a solo exhibition that wove itself through the city of Cambridge, Ontario. Running from June 23 to September 10, 2023, this multi-venue exhibition spanned three distinct locations—Queen’s Square Gallery in Galt, Cambridge Public Library in Hespeler, and Preston—creating a visual thread that connected Cambridge’s diverse communities. What made Wanderings and Traces particularly exciting for me was the chance to work across multiple spaces, each with its own distinct character and architecture. Curated by Karly Boileau, the exhibition was designed to bring art beyond traditional gallery walls and into community hubs where people already gather—places where they feel safe and a sense of belonging. As Karly explained, “McCavour’s work encourages mindfulness and slow-looking. Installed at multiple locations, it creates a visual tie between each of our city’s neighbourhoods.” This vision of creating connections—both physical and conceptual—between Cambridge communities became central to the exhibition’s identity. The main installation at Queen’s Square Gallery featured two significant bodies of work. Pink Field Blue Fog (2016 – ongoing) is an evolving piece that I’ve continued to develop over the years, exploring atmospheric colour and the illusion of depth through suspended thread. Alongside it, Sample Wall (2007 – 2023) presented a comprehensive view of my practice spanning sixteen years—a collection of embroidered samples, experiments, and studies that reveal the technical and conceptual evolution of my work. In the lobby of Cambridge Public Library at Queen’s Square, Bloom (2022) greeted visitors with an installation based on spirograph drawings and radial patterns that hover and move above. The installations at Hespeler and...
Exhibition: Bleu Ciel at La Sarre Art Gallery
My exhibition in La Sarre, Quebec explores the horizon line through large-scale installations of suspended embroidered pieces. My most recent exhibition opened on December 11th, 2022 in La Sarre, Quebec, and runs through February 2023. After traveling many hours from Toronto, we arrived to fresh snow and even got to experience the town’s Christmas parade. I’m incredibly grateful to the gallery team for hosting this exhibition and to all the wonderful people we met along the way. In this exhibition, I explore the blue world at the horizon line—that distant place where sky meets earth, always visible yet forever out of reach. Through three large-scale installations, I aim to materialize this space that exists both near and far. The show features a wall work and an embroidered installation composed of thousands of individual pieces suspended from the ceiling. Below are images from the installation process and documentation of the works as they were being made. Find out more information on the gallery’s website here. Here is a short video showcasing the...
Exhibition: Clouds of Colour at Harbourfront Centre
I’m excited to share images of my first permanent installation that’s up now in Toronto.
Exhibition: Columbia Museum of Art
Two of my pieces are up now in Columbia, SC.
Exhibition: Bleu Ciel at Centre MATERIA
Three of my new installation works are up now in Quebec City!
Exhibition: Suspended Landscapes at the Chazen Museum of Art
My biggest installation yet is up now in Madison, Wisconsin.
Studio: Prairie Plants
A look into my works in progress for an upcoming show at the Chazen Museum of Art.
Studio: Wire Sculptures
This summer, I’ve been working on a new installation using wire to create lines in space.
Exhibition: Spirals, Loops and Circles at Harbourfront Centre
I created a floor mural that will be up for the summer of 2021 in Toronto.
Project: Collaboration with Botanica Tinctoria
This fall, I designed an embroidered collar inspired by Prairie Smoke Plant leaves.
Exhibition: SKETCH, SAMPLE, SEW @ Harbourfront Centre
You can see my newest installation outside at Harbourfront Centre 24/7.
Studio Visit
Take a peak inside my studio space and works-in-progress!