My work encompasses Jacquard weaving, sculpture, and warp-painted tapestry—modes of expression that share a common visual language despite technical differences. It isn’t difficult to see the connections between tall marsh grasses in the large hand-woven tapestries, fibrous materials in the sculptures and environmental installations, and the linear imagery of my computer-controlled weavings.
Curvilinear forms and mysterious shadows in some of the digital weavings make ambiguous reference to hemp fibers, reed, slender shavings of wood, human hair, or other elements particular to living things. But in other weavings, similarly cursive lines represent the delicate, glistening coils of a transparent oxygen tube. Their shapes echo those of the natural forms, but they also have a deeper, subtler relationship to nature than is readily apparent on the surface. Pointing to the fragility of life and inevitability of death, these abstract images of a human lifeline express the way we might feel in a vast, open landscape that appears to “breathe” as the grasses rhythmically dip and wave in the wind—and suddenly we find ourselves face to face with the ineffable. At such times we often experience a sense of stillness, an acute awareness of the present moment suspended in that tiny instant between breaths, neither breathing in nor breathing out; between being alive and ceasing to breathe altogether; between ordinary reality and a shadowy memory or fleeting impression.
I began my art career as a painter, but now my medium consists of threads and other fibrous materials, not pigment on a brush. At the loom, I can construct the “canvas” simultaneously with the image embedded in its woven structure. The technique I have developed for dyeing and weaving colorful, textured tapestries entirely by hand is linked to my earlier art training, and this means of expression continues to be important to me as I also explore computerized Jacquard technology.
In a sense, all weaving is “digital.” A binary system with two groups of elements—consisting of the warp, or lengthwise group of threads, and the weft, or crosswise threads—the weaving process allows each thread to be either “up” (visible on the surface of the textile) or “down” (hidden by a thread that crosses it). A conventional loom allows the weaver to raise and lower warp threads in groups, creating weave patterns, whereas a Jacquard-type loom permits control of each individual thread independently, an advantage in rendering a complex image without patterns that repeat. The two methods of weaving are simply different approaches to art making, each providing its own kind of technical and aesthetic control.
The most recent addition to my studio practice—sculpture—has allowed me to manipulate materials instinctively and without specialized tools or technology. This contrasts sharply with the meticulous process of weaving an image entirely by hand, thread by thread, or painstakingly specifying every image pixel (and thread) that will be woven by hand on a computerized loom. However, there is a rich cross-fertilization of visual content continually flowing back and forth between the weavings and the three-dimensional work.
Curvilinear forms and mysterious shadows in some of the digital weavings make ambiguous reference to hemp fibers, reed, slender shavings of wood, human hair, or other elements particular to living things. But in other weavings, similarly cursive lines represent the delicate, glistening coils of a transparent oxygen tube. Their shapes echo those of the natural forms, but they also have a deeper, subtler relationship to nature than is readily apparent on the surface. Pointing to the fragility of life and inevitability of death, these abstract images of a human lifeline express the way we might feel in a vast, open landscape that appears to “breathe” as the grasses rhythmically dip and wave in the wind—and suddenly we find ourselves face to face with the ineffable. At such times we often experience a sense of stillness, an acute awareness of the present moment suspended in that tiny instant between breaths, neither breathing in nor breathing out; between being alive and ceasing to breathe altogether; between ordinary reality and a shadowy memory or fleeting impression.
I began my art career as a painter, but now my medium consists of threads and other fibrous materials, not pigment on a brush. At the loom, I can construct the “canvas” simultaneously with the image embedded in its woven structure. The technique I have developed for dyeing and weaving colorful, textured tapestries entirely by hand is linked to my earlier art training, and this means of expression continues to be important to me as I also explore computerized Jacquard technology.
In a sense, all weaving is “digital.” A binary system with two groups of elements—consisting of the warp, or lengthwise group of threads, and the weft, or crosswise threads—the weaving process allows each thread to be either “up” (visible on the surface of the textile) or “down” (hidden by a thread that crosses it). A conventional loom allows the weaver to raise and lower warp threads in groups, creating weave patterns, whereas a Jacquard-type loom permits control of each individual thread independently, an advantage in rendering a complex image without patterns that repeat. The two methods of weaving are simply different approaches to art making, each providing its own kind of technical and aesthetic control.
The most recent addition to my studio practice—sculpture—has allowed me to manipulate materials instinctively and without specialized tools or technology. This contrasts sharply with the meticulous process of weaving an image entirely by hand, thread by thread, or painstakingly specifying every image pixel (and thread) that will be woven by hand on a computerized loom. However, there is a rich cross-fertilization of visual content continually flowing back and forth between the weavings and the three-dimensional work.
Statement