WOVEN SCREENS

My thread installations, and in particular, the Woven Screens series, draw upon textiles’ historical use as a means to divide and control space. Hand-strung in a fashion mimicking the warping of a loom, these diaphanous walls of tension confront the viewer with an unexpected strength and create a divide or portal between two worlds – the one the viewer occupies, and one imagined and seen through the “Screen.”

While the works are not literally woven – not a matrix of interlocking threads – the overlapping threads appear like a textile surface. Each work is strung according to a system of mathematical permutations. As I cross each thread over the center of the frame to its next hook, the center of each color band builds in saturation and intensity, and a dimensional structure and texture starts to emerge. Like the act of weaving cloth on a loom, these Woven Screens make apparent the evolution of a “one-dimensional” line of thread to a taut, two-dimensional rectangular plane, to an undulating three-dimensional woven surface. Each thread strung across the surface functions like a drawn line; together these lines form a complete object and image.