TEXTILE EXHIBITION
@ Cannon Beach Gallery
STATEMENT
The collection of work I created for the Textiles Exhibition is six handwoven tapestries of moments I have experienced from living on the north coast of Oregon. In September, the rain starts, the days grow shorter, mushrooms pop up, and the ocean howls with life. I cherish this time because I can quiet myself and take in the beauty of this place I call home.
VISIONING
This project started with two concepts, spore print, and my coastal flax-to-linen project, and then flowed to other aspects that captivated my interest. The spore print pieces P. Cyans and Glitch are iterations of a spore print captured on paper from a mushroom growing in my yard. I enlarged the spore print and slowly studied it by weaving it pixel by pixel on my loom. These two works were a study on this species.
From the spore print, I had been simultaneously working with local yarn spinners to spin the flax I grew in Seaside, Oregon. Flax to linen was a multi-year project that was ending, and I wanted to honor this work by weaving it alongside indigo-dyed wool. You can read more about the process here.
Last, images of bull kelp washed into this collection of weavings and an iconic winter sunset off Neahkanie Mountain. Together, these pieces form an exterior presentation of a fraction of the awe experienced on Oregon's north coast.
PROCESS
This collection of work started in the fall of 2022. The first piece, P. Cyans, began with a walk on a path in my yard. In the fall, I am inspired by mushrooms that emerge as fruiting bodies of mycelium channels that feed and nourish the soil below my feet. I love to identify them and make spore prints of them. P. Cyans is a species that popped up in my yard. I took spore prints of them and wanted to weave a study of the spore print. I photographed the spore print, blew it up, and incorporated a cropped composition. While weaving it, I accidentally came across the idea for Glitch. Glitch is also a play on P. Cyans.
Fall is when big storms roll in and bring tangles of bull kelp to the shore. Bull Kelp, aka Nereocystis luetkeana, is a beautiful brown algae that creates curvaceous shapes and delicious smells. I sketched an image of bull kelp last fall and wove it, creating N. luetkeana.
Drift + Seep and Salty Indigo Flax Sea were woven simultaneously and are related to each other. Both are woven with linen yarn and indigo-dyed wool in dripped shapes. However, both have different material origins. Salty Indigo Flax Sea is the culmination of my multi-year project, Flax to Linen. Flax to Linen started in 2017 and explored growing and processing flax on Oregon's North Coast. By the summer of 2022, I had finally produced yarn from this plant (with help from area yarn spinners), and I wanted to honor this process by weaving it into a tapestry. I often think of flax as golden yarn, so I embellished Salty Indigo Flax Sea with metallic thread "dripping" from the flax yarn. Drift + Seep has a similar shape but is woven with commercial-grown and spun linen yarn. I wove these pieces side by side to visually compare the difference between "homegrown" and commercial linen yarn.
Neahkahnie Sunset was the last piece of this body of work. It is a smaller sketch of a larger tapestry I hope to weave one day. It is often iconic when the winter sun sets on the North Coast. One evening, I was lucky to catch this on the way home from work. I wanted to play with the gradients of orange and blue in yarn while honoring another breathtaking image of a place I love dearly.
OUTCOME
This collection of six tapestries and nine archival prints is in the Textile Exhibition show at the Cannon Beach Gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon. This show includes other artists: Jan Priddy, Becky deVries-Wong, Nguyen Le, and Alysia Love. All tapestries are mounted on a bar and can be framed upon request. The show is on Friday, Oct 6, and Sunday, Oct 29, 2023. Gallery hours are Wed-Sun 11:00 am - 4:00 pm.
