June 8, 2013

A New Textile: "Blue/Green Angles"



Blue/Green Angles, hand dyed wool on linen; 4 pieces, each 8 x 8 in. 


It's wonderful when an art work opens a path to another, ideas flowing like water from one fountain basin to another. After finishing my last textile piece, Sixteen Circles (which you can see here), I wanted to continue using the quality of low relief that comes from cutting some of the loops of wool. At the same time I wanted to do a simple composition. While thinking about this project, I had also been thinking about new cardboard prints, also simple. I did a series of studies of one shape floating on an 8 x8 inch square, with the lines of cardboard as background. That got me thinking about doing a mult-panel piece. I don't know where the idea of angled lines came from, but my first sketch had two lines, some intersecting. I was more attracted to the sketch close to this final result: two straight lines angled across the plane, and two angled lines leading to a point, arranged to move the eye from one to another. 




As for color, in order to unify the four part piece, I used two colors of my Cushing acid dyes––Bright Green and Copenhagen Blue––and mixed different amounts of the colors for each panel. For the first, I used mostly green with a little bit of blue added.




For the second panel I mixed more blue with the green, keeping the green predominant.




That flipped with the third panel, in which the blue took a stronger part.




And finally, the blue with just a bit of green added. In this way I tried to keep the work unified although of different colors. A work of simple elements, yet adding up to something a little more complex.


4 comments:

  1. Beautiful, Altoon!
    With multi-part pieces, I find the space between to be, often, a very sensitive decision; not necessarily a particular ratio related to the size of the components, but somehow having a sense of scale and proportion, as much as the elements that are more "made" within. I find myself conjuring images in my mind of the pieces here floating a little closer, a little further - (maybe the colors too are conducive to that sense of floating, drifting).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Ravenna. I agree about the spaces between. Of course they look different in person than on a screen, but I settled fairly quickly on this spacing, of about an inch, as looking optimal. Once I put them on the wall, I might change that. I like that you see them as floating.

      Delete
  2. The colors - and textures - bring to mind the various moods of the sea - and the lines the feel of a littoral zone, and a view from above. Beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks so much, Anne, for the compliment, and the lovely metaphor.

      Delete