Can snow be transmuted into fabric? How do you express with textiles the look and feel of snow in all its various forms?

This is the challenge Carole Baillargeon set herself.

She is one of four textile artists in Holding by a Thread, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Burlington. The exhibition also showcases the work of Kelly Bruton, Line Dufour and Lorraine Roy.

Baillargeon, 58, is an award-winning sculptor, installation and performance artist. For about 15 years starting in 2000, she worked on Clothing Landscapes (Paysage-Vêtements), four textile-based installations that capture the textures of each season.

The installation at the AGB, Winter Garment Landscapes, explores winter and comprises 24 hats and 24 blankets evoking the texture of snow. The blankets are hung along two parallel lines several metres apart, creating a space for the hats to hang in. The hats cast crisp shadows.

Baillargeon came up with many ways of recreating snow. She used a variety of fabrics made and embellished by knitting, weaving, quilting, felting, embroidery, patchwork and appliqué. These techniques, associated with traditional women's work, are most suited for long winter evenings.

Baillargeon says she has a stash of materials at home, friends give her fabric, and she shops at second-hand stores.

"Sometimes, I can almost hear an object or a material calling me, 'Take me, I will eventually be useful!'" she tells me. "For the woven and knitted blankets, I first explored and made samples. Working on the samples, I looked for different evocations of snow textures. Then, I hired a skilled weaver and a knitter to realize the pieces.

"I used the samples I made for the hats. Most of the hats were done after the blankets."

She titled each hat and corresponding blanket with suggestive words. She matched her materials to the titles.

A narrow-brimmed hat called "Thaw" supports small balls of yarn that are unravelling and hanging down like snowballs melting. For "Scattered Snow" Baillargeon layered and rolled small pieces of knitted fabric to suggest an uneven snowfall.

For "Lightness," she used feathers. "That one was easy," she says.

"Sparkling Snow" incorporates beads and glittery stuff. But it's not just the fabric that is important. The way it is made, or manipulated, matters, too.

"'Sparkling Snow,' I remember I found a table mat while I was in New York, and ribbons, those were integrated in the hat. The blanket is a composition of pieces of fabric with sparkle, but I wanted to fade it. That's why it is in between two layers of fabric. When snow is sparkling, it is rather discreet."

"Slush" droops and looks dingy. "I used organic dye on silk. I used lemon and orange that rotted on the fabric. It gives fabulous colours. I'm fascinated by this result, at once attractive and disgusting. I feel the same with slush."

Baillargeon's installation invites you to enter and walk around. The hats and blankets move when you move. Most hats hang at about the top of your head, so you can stand under a hat and imagine yourself wearing it.

Baillargeon once invited 24 performers to don her hats and wrap themselves in the blankets. They stood still while viewers walked among them. She says they represented "a forest of snowbound conifers."

They also looked like people bundled up on a winter's day.

The performance, which included the bundled performers singing, ended with them removing their blankets and walking away from the hats.

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.Read more at:http://www.sheindressau.com/red-coral-bridesmaid-dresses-australia | http://www.sheindressau.com/plus-size-bridesmaid-dresses-australia