Just posting some various artwork done in the last 2 months. I'm prepping for my solo show at the Alpert JCC in Long Beach, CA, but I've completed the following pieces as well.
A close friend of 60+ years recently commissioned me to make a piece of art for her contemporary home. Her home’s bright primary colors, accented with lots of black, is not a palate I work in, so I was challenged. I made the work pictured here as a meditation on our friendship. I wove 82 hand-dyed and printed silk and cotton strips and added yellow “diamonds” to the piece to express our treasured relationship. Finally, I overlaid the piece with a black and metallic silver netting, an expression of the difficult and happy times we shared. The finished work measures 26” X 56” and is pictured here with a detail.
Working with a photographer can be a frustrating experience for me. I've put all the effort and momentum into the actual making, and more thinking is required when dealing with a photographer, at least, when it comes to photographing a sculpture. The photographer understands better than I what the camera sees, or can translate. This is the surprising story of a piece I had photographed ... (gulp) ... three times.
I had worked for months on the dyeing techniques of this piece, called "Before". Sidestepping logistics with mounting shaped this piece. An innocent comment early on began a cascade of rethinking. "No gallery will put 12 holes in their walls to mount a piece from one artist" I was told. I already had a carpenter cut wooden blocks, each with carved out spots for powerful magnets. I had completed 3 of the "pods" with appropriately sewn in magnets to mount as initially conceived when the comment came. Ouch. So, no more individual wall mounted pods. Well the benefit of being liberated from the wall-as-anchor was that now the "pods" inherited a "back". They were re-designed to be in space. "Not all galleries can offer a ceiling mount." Oh dear. I worked on different solutions, finally arriving at using an oval panel bolted to 2 wall mounted brackets (and from which the pods hang).
So here is the visual anchor, the "rug". The gray background seems so much nicer than the white: makes the gold rims glow. And pods are hanging lower to the "rug", relating to it better. However, something feels wrong though. It's all so ... constrained.
I dragged my poor art critique group through weeks (and weeks) of torture contemplating the making of the oval, done by weaving strips of rust and tea stained fabric through perforations, and the "rug" with hours and hours of work in its construction and thoughts about its color. Now, both these supposed assets were not helping. The pods seemed desperate for air.
