What started as an activity with Grade 8 students has turned into an art installation that can be seen in basketball courts across Guelph.
Mallory Tolcher is the artist behind Nothing But Net, a collection of 15 basketball nets made of different materials including lace, pearls, beads and more.
“I think a lot of my work focuses on play and movement and community,” says Tolcher about the project.
“The original idea was supposed to be for me to see the destruction of the materials over time, and what ended up happening, that I didn’t expect, was that the nets held up.”
Last year, Tolcher went to different parks to hang up a net, encourage people to interact with them and take photos of the results. Through these interactions, she noticed the nets were very playable and the focus of the project began to change.
“It was powerful to me because although I wanted to bring this softness to the court, it actually held up pretty strong.”
One time, Tolcher says she hung up a crystal beaded net with the idea to film what happens when someone makes a basket. Expecting the nets to break with use, she says she didn’t expect what happened instead.
“In my imagination, I was like, ‘Okay, a kid is going to throw a ball into it and it’s going to explode like fireworks, and it’s going to be so cool,’” she recalls thinking at the time.
When the nets didn’t break like she thought they would, Tolcher said she became fascinated with their movement and started to experiment with more materials that were perceived as feminine, to push and celebrate that aspect.
“I love the idea that they actually still had a life, and they were really playable,” says Tolcher, “Now I still have them, I can put them up in another community and have them play on them, and that’s a really beautiful aspect of the project.”
Tolcher became inspired to work with this medium while she was a middle school art teacher working in Etobicoke. As someone who loves sports, she says she used them to engage her students who didn’t fit the mould of sitting in a classroom.
“When I was first at this school, I realized they had four basketball rims outside that didn’t have nets, and I thought like, ‘Hey, let’s make them to put up,’” Tolcher explains.
She reached out to multiple people while doing research on making nets before finding a group called New Craft Artists and Artisan and sent her a book.
“It showed me a bunch of designs that I could finger knit,” she continues, “Through, I called them ‘Mesh Mondays,’ I would work with my students and we would make different basketball meshes and they would finger knit these nets for me, and then the grade eights would go around hanging them up.”
“It was funny for me to see these tough, Grade 8 boys showing up to my class being like, ‘Miss can I have some more yarn please?’”
Tolcher thought it would be cool to expand the project and make a 10 foot long basketball net, which is now a part of the series.
After, the project was put on the back burner until 2019, when Tolcher decided to submit a proposal to the Ontario Arts Council to create the series.
“Once I got it, I took two years to just experiment,” she recalls, “I was also Guelph's Artist In Residence in 2019, so I was juggling both at the same time, and then I was also pregnant too.”
“So they actually, the production of them came out of my maternity and taking the free time that I had as a mom to do these works.”
When the pandemic happened in early 2020 and everything closed down, it did cause Tolcher to pivot from her original plan to hang the basketball nets in different cities, including a few spots in Toronto, to hanging them all up in Guelph instead.
“It just became something that was in the immediate community, and I think it was nice for me because I was able to check up on them a lot,” she explains about the decision, “I was also able to see my own community respond to it and who was coming out to play on them and who was interested in them.”
Her nets also received positive responses online, but Tolcher mentions she noticed many guys were addressing her as a man when commenting on pictures.
“Although everyone loved them, it was still put into this very masculine world, as if I couldn’t be a female making these.” she said, recalling being shocked by the comments.
“It even pushes me more to continue that dialogue and that conversation, like I always correct people being like, ‘No, no, I’m a female’” she continues, “But, I definitely think those conversations need to be made and those dialogues need to happen and space needs to be made.”
Now planning to do an exhibition of her series in September at 10C Carden Street, Tolcher says it will feature photo prints of current nets and will showcase some new ones.
“If the show has to be online, it will be online,” she said, “But I’m excited for that opportunity to bring out some new work for that too.”
To see more of Tolcher’s work, check out her website here.