ARCHES
Inspired by weaving’s relationship to architecture, and its historical use as a means to divide, control, and gender space, the Arches works divide and harnesses architectural space. By inverting and softening the classical, Romanesque arch--a ubiquitous architectural feature throughout the centuries--the work both undermines its strength and seeks to further align textiles and architecture.
That the structure of these works builds upon the process of warping—the careful measuring and preparation of warp threads on the loom—is an example of one of the ways in which I employ processes I’ve developed from weaving to grapple with the boundaries between two and three-dimensional space, between opacity and porosity, strength and fragility. The result is a tapestry constructed from the criss-crossing of parallel ropes in air, a weaving that disappears as one passes through the space to view the objects as separate, non-overlapping entities. Dependent on the viewer to complete the experience, the Arches are volumetric one moment, and all surface the next: their curving lengths of parallel ropes create a vibratory moiré effect, such that they seem to move and shift as viewers move past them, evolving significantly at each of a multiplicity of views.