This project pays tribute to my female forebears who often built, designed, and decorated the floors of their homes within the religious and economic restrictions of their time.

In 2001, during my involvement in the restoration and presentation of nineteenth-and twentieth-century housebarns in and around Neubergthal, Manitoba, I uncovered wooden floors that women had hand-painted in bright, regular patterns, geometric and floral. These wonders were preserved under layers of carpet and linoleum in remaining Mennonite homes. I have found layers of hand-painted patterns on floor boards and even on linoleum.

Over the years I’ve researched, documented, and restored many of these floors and patterns, and learned about the lives of the women who created them. In addition to presenting their work through the research elements of the project, I have been inspired to re-imagine and re-work these women’s visions and patterns on heavy cotton canvases, creating floor-cloths that are both functional and bring life and beauty to a home. This is my way of continuing their story and exploring the pleasure humans find in beauty, as observed in and inspired by this feminine element of early Mennonite culture.

Thanks in part to funding from the D. F. Plett Historical Research Foundation and the Manitoba Heritage Grants Program, my project has grown to include exhibition panels that feature the personal stories of women who decorated their floors. I have also demonstrated the practice of making patterns of sawdust and sand on earthen floors, and mixed the original yellow ochre paint recipe created by Johann Cornies in 1846 in South Russia – the traditional base paint of pre-1920s design in southern Manitoba.

“Resurfacing: Mennonite Floor Patterns” exhibited at Gallery in the Park in the summer of 2020. There are plans to bring the exhibit to the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach and to other locations in Canada and the United States.