A New Textile: "Wave"

Wave, hand dyed wool on linen, 10 x 13 inches.

Most of my textile work has been inspired by the minimalist strain of modernist painting, so the images are usually made up of flat shapes. Recently though, I made a work that had illusionistic form, a piece I called Draped, which you can see here. I enjoyed working on it and liked the result, so did a few sketches for future projects using volumetric forms. Instead of focusing and refining my ideas in my textiles, I seem to be expanding them, which is fun for me. I have a varied stream of themes, little rivulets each adding their droplets: drawings, figure/ground explorations, pattern, shapes, multi-part work, and now form. In Wave, I wanted to emphasize the sinuous movement, so I used the dark blue of the background to "draw" a line along the top of the flowing form. I dip dyed the wool, which I explained in the link above, to get a range of color.



As you can see in this detail, the shift from one hue to another isn't smooth, but it is still effective, I think. If I was much fussier and more precise in the dyeing process I could have made smoother transitions; for instance, by dyeing small swatches of fabric in jars that have had gradated amounts of color added to each. But I like the rougher result; I hope it has a certain energy to it.