The bringing together of photo-based inkjet prints, strips of text from Rachel Carson, E.O. Wilson and various philosophers, and the collection of historic weaving drafts so generously made available on Handweaving.net has resulted in a way of working and thinking that is familiar terrain, but also has me thinking about how text shifts the way a viewer responds to an image, and act of transforming book pages into continuous lines of text, threaded into a paper textile image, where the strips of text become fragments of ideas, thoughts, and subjects. The Mandala, or circle motif in more recent work serves as a pictorial device, allowing the woven piece to be both a textile and a pictorial composition. It is also a nod to the weaver and artist Lenore Tawney.
Mandala 5. 2022. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, found text. 12x12."
Weaving draft by Ralph Griswold, United States, 2005, #41459, from Handweaving.net. Book pages are from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The photos were taken in Brimson, MN.
Mandala 4. 2022. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, found text. 12x12."
Weaving draft by Ralph Griswold, United States, 2005, #41459, from Handweaving.net. Book pages are from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The photos were taken on the north shore of Lake Superior, and in Brimson, MN.
Mandala 3. 2022. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, found text. 12x12."
Weaving draft by Ralph Griswold, United States, 2005, #41477, from Handweaving.net. Book pages are from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and Next Time by Henry James. The photo of balsam and spruce trees killed by a spruce budworm infestation was taken in Brimson, MN.
Mandala 2. 2022. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, found text. 12x12."
Weaving draft by Ralph Griswold, United States, 2005, #41506, from Handweaving.net. Book pages are from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and Next Time by Henry James. The photo was taken on the Cloquet River in Brimson, MN.
Ocean Ellipse. 2022. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, found text. 12x16." Text is from Rachel Carson and Rabindranath Tagore. Photos taken near Newburyport, MA.
The Last Drop: Rocks and Water. 2021. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, book page. 11x13." Weaving draft by Ivo Kastanak, Austria, 1903, from Handweaving.net. Book pages from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Photos taken near Two Harbors, MN.
Tree Mazes 1 and 2. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, found text. Weaving draft by Eva Stoffel, 2014. Text is from J.B.S. Haldane's "Possible Worlds," published in 1927. Photos taken on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, MN.
Alter Experiment 1. 2021. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, book pages. 9x7." Weaving draft by Franz Donat, Germany, 1907, from Handweaving.net. Book pages from Alter of the Dead by Henry James, . Photos taken near Two Harbors, MN.
Log Cabin Experiment, Alter 2. 2021. Inkjet prints on Japanese paper, book pages. 9x7." Book pages from Alter of the Dead by Henry James, . Photos taken near Two Harbors, MN.
Experiments on various papers with found text. 2021. Each piece approximately 6x6."