…in the studio
photo: Audrey Derell
Compositions are, simply put, the organization of space into ideas.
As a girl, I organized rocks and buttons into patterns, and I drew. In university, I hand-built ceramic vessels. Afterward, I constructed layered abstract paintings, and now I work primarily in textiles adapting and combining the techniques learned before.
All techniques previously practiced coalesced: I started to "hand-build" (as in ceramic sculpture) with "slabs" of quilted material, "painted" with thread, and, ultimately, constructed sculpture with textiles.
My artwork is a mosaic of fragments, collected experiences, information, and images. This mosaic is both ideological and visual. I like to begin with an idea that I allow to develop unhindered to encompass anything from the serious to the absurd. No thought is isolated and the simplest can build upon itself. Layers of connected thoughts revealed in a succession of images link and multiply in evolving variations. I sometimes begin with just a word, but already this word comes with many meanings and connotations. Then I make a connection, a thin bridge, between each word and its images, and other perhaps abstract and veiled yet related ideas. My artworks are often labyrinths of intricate wordplay. I want the words to be read as fleeting and visual impressions that interact with the other stitched images.
The first composition I saw was framed by a window and the bars of my crib. I saw the black silhouettes of trees against the darkening sky, the tiny lights of stars above them and, incongruously, the large colorful spokes of a star-shaped neon Holiday Inn sign off to the left. The second composition was off to the right inside the same rose-colored room as the crib: three women singing framed by the box of a TV set.
As a toddler I was into details. I would sit with legs akimbo in the dirt of our driveway arranging rocks into patterns, search for exoskeletons of cicadas in the mossy shade of a large tree, and wander around the yard and into the woods examining every insect, flower, and leaf.
This is where it all began.
"Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one." - Denise Levertov
photo: Marlene Krantz