"When the words "warm and fuzzy" can be used to describe an artist's work, you might expect portraits of glossy-eyed ducklings or Thomas Kinkade's wisteria-draped covered bridges.

But Canadian artist Kim Ouellette manages to make cuddly conceptual work. And she does it by using a distinctly warm and fuzzy medium that seems perfectly suited to her regional roots. If Southern artists seem obsessed with a patina of age and history expressed through vintage photos, worn linen and cottons, then Ouellette's material suggests she is equally drawn to the physical reality of the frigid climes of her native Winnipeg.

Ouellette (who now lives in Atlanta) crafts her artworks from vintage wool blankets in pleasing colors of seafoam and kelly greens, rich golden yellows and lipstick pinks. Onto these cozy backdrops she stitches both abstract and representational scenes of mountain ranges, clouds and trees created in cursory gestures. The stitches often dangle in wisps from the surface like the fuzzy dander given off by the blankets themselves. One pull of the thread and a piece of the landscape could uncoil. "

-Felicia Feaster, from the visual arts column in Atlanta's Creative Loafing, 01.29.200