Green Ribbon, hand dyed wool on linen, 7 3/4 x 21 1/2 in.
Here is my third piece in an illusionistic series of works, shaped pieces using value shifts to give a sense of form, of curving in and out, of twisting. It's fun for me to be using using thin strips of cloth, via the rug hooking technique, to represent a piece of whole cloth. The representation is a bit clunky and crude, as opposed, say, to painting it, but I believe it still has some presence.
Green Ribbon detail
This detail shows more clearly the shift in values; even here the illusion is strong, arguing against flatness, though the piece is perfectly flat. I get these colors by dipping a long piece of cloth in the dyepot, in and out, with the end of the cloth most often in the pot getting darker than the end dipped lightly into it. A range of values from light to dark can be achieved that way.
Here are two "ribbon" textiles hanging in the studio, along with a painting, and another textile with volumetric forms. It's amazing to me how much more illusionistic the shaped pieces are; without the surrounding rectangle they seem to be what they portray.
These are fascinating in the way they flip around visually and conceptually! I love the last photo, but I'm still a little unsure what those "ribbon" pieces are really like - it's like the feeling when I am on land right after a long spell on a boat, my sense of how to stand confused.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ravenna. It is strange, isn't it, how the mind tells you it's flat but the eye says different.
DeleteVery nice, I'm seeing lovely spatial and shape parallels between this ruglet series and your current egg tempera series. I've painted ribbons in egg tempera, and they are so confounding in paint that I can't imagine trying to pull this off with hooking, and yet you've handled it and the depth in a fun and convincing way.
ReplyDeleteThanks. It is interesting to me how my various endeavors overlap in some ways; I'm glad you see that.
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