A wall is covered with a grid of framed artworks, each featuring a diagram of guitar chords. The diagrams consist of a series of horizontal lines and dots, arranged in a uniform pattern across a bright white background. The frames are simple and light-colored, and the overall presentation emphasizes a minimalist aesthetic.

Kathy Slade, Chart, 2006, embroidery on canvas. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the Artist, 2021. 

Scott Massey
A wall is covered with a grid of framed artworks, each featuring a diagram of guitar chords. The diagrams consist of a series of horizontal lines and dots, arranged in a uniform pattern across a bright white background. The frames are simple and light-colored, and the overall presentation emphasizes a minimalist aesthetic.

Title

Chart

Artist

Kathy Slade

Year

2006

Medium

Embroidery on canvas

Collection

SFU Art Collection

Donor

Gift of the Artist

Year Acquired

2021

Chart is a gridded display of 105 guitar chords—depicted through tablature notation, or instrument fingering—that are machine-embroidered on canvas. For Slade, the guitar tab represents a utilitarian device for do-it-yourself learning and is connected toembroidery because, as the artist states, both are "about strings, the hand, and where to put one’s fingers.” Chart presents a minimalist grid display of an overwhelming number of chords, particularly less commonly used minor, augmented and diminished cords, in a kind of “gluttonous tab sampler.” 

Artists

Kathy Slade is a Vancouver-based artist, writer, curator, editor, and publisher. Slade’s solo exhibitions include Famille Rose, Cabinet Gallery, London (2026); As the sun disappears and the shadows descend from the mountaintops, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2023); Wherever You Go, Monica Reyes Gallery, Vancouver (2020); and This is a Chord. This is Another., Surrey Art Gallery (2018). Her work has recently been exhibited in group exhibitions at institutions and galleries such as The Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver (2026); Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, IE (2020); and Kunstverein Braunschweig, DE (2020). Slade was the curator of the 2019 Vancouver Art Book Fair and was the Founding Editor of the Emily Carr University Press (2005-2018). Together with Kay Higgins, Slade runs Publication Studio Vancouver. In 2009, Slade was awarded the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts. She currently teaches at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.