Secret Garden by Madeline LeBlanc
Madeline LeBlanc
Secret Garden
Site #1
Churchill Square
11:00am-9:30pm
Secret Garden is a dreamy installation by Madeline LeBlanc, combining painted bedsheets with photographs by Emily Welz. It follows a woman’s journey through a vibrant garden, where she encounters various creatures and begins to transform. Made from second-hand fabric, the work brings new life to old materials—turning bedsheets into a garden where personal change quietly unfolds.
Exhibit Facilitation with Madeline LeBlanc
June 21, June 28, July 1
12:00-8:00pm
ARTIST STATEMENT
“At its heart, Secret Garden is about transformation—of materials, meaning, and memory. ”
Secret Garden is a body of work by Madeline LeBlanc, created slowly over the course of three years using paint, drawing tools, and second-hand bedsheets as the foundation. The process began with tie-dye, allowing color to move freely across the fabric. The resulting shapes became the starting point for each piece. LeBlanc followed these forms like a map, letting them guide the images that emerged on top.
Hidden within the painted layers, nestled among flora and swirling textures, are small creatures: a butterfly, a bumblebee, a caterpillar, a praying mantis. Each one adds to the quiet, dreamlike ecosystem unfolding across the fabric. The bedsheets themselves carry stories. Once wrapped around strangers in the most intimate and unguarded parts of their lives—while they slept, wept, dreamed, healed—these fabrics now hold something new. They’re no longer static, no longer silent. In LeBlanc’s hands, they become surfaces for memory, myth, and reimagining.
At its heart, Secret Garden is about transformation—of materials, meaning, and memory. The softness of the fabric, the slowness of the process, and the complexity of the surfaces all speak to the quiet beauty found in things that are often overlooked. What was once discarded becomes a space full of life.
A photographic component, created in collaboration with photographer Emily Welz, brings narrative to the visual world. In the photos, a woman in a white dress—a symbol of purity and the cultural ideal of femininity—steps into the garden. Along her journey, she encounters the same creatures hidden in the paintings. Eventually, she is gifted a tie-dyed dress, representing the depth, contradiction, and richness of womanhood. The photographs extend the installation into a modern fable—blending painting, performance, and storytelling into a space where transformation unfolds.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Madeline LeBlanc is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist who transforms second-hand bedsheets and curtains into large-scale, expressive works of art. Her creative journey began in a youth homeless shelter, where she first began drawing with crayons and scrap materials. This early experience of making art out of what was available shaped a practice rooted in resourcefulness, honesty, and a rejection of elitism in fine art.
Since 2016, Madeline has developed a unique process that combines tie-dye, drawing, and painting on domestic fabric, often leaving her pieces unstretched and raw. She challenges traditional ideas of what art should be made from, choosing to work with materials that carry history—bedsheets that were once part of strangers’ everyday lives. Her work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta, and her story has been featured nationally and internationally through CBC News and other media outlets.