A New Textile: "Blue Arc"

Blue Arc, hand dyed wool on linen, 25 3/4 x 12 in.

This new piece is similar in its structure to Double Diamond, a work from a couple of months ago. In each, I stitched together two panels to make the complete work––here two long rectangles––with the design moving from one to the other. In Blue Arc there is just a simple curved line, beginning in the upper part of the left rectangle and ending at the bottom right. I did quite a bit of sketching to figure out a line that seemed balanced and comfortable where it was. For color, I used a muted yellow and red, with the line a bright turquoise blue.

Blue Arc detail

At first I was going to have the line separating red and yellow areas go straight across the two panels, but then I decided to have a slight jig: the line of red begins where the blue touches the edge, and it is higher on the right with the double line of hooking. This slight offset emphasizes the quality of the line, which you can see is a lot more irregular in close-up than when stepping back to see the entire work. It's a little like seeing a confusion of brushstrokes when stepping up to a painterly painting, which resolve into an image at a distance.