Fellowships 2015

Honorable Mention

My art practice is deeply rooted in my scholarly research. For the last two decades, I have been exploring the hand-jacquard woven form using computer technology. Learning about jacquard weaving and computer design capabilities as tools has become a direction for my research and creativity since 1995. This exploration first began at Fondazione Arte Della Seta Lisio, Florence, Italy, and has continued at the Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles. In 2002, as curator of the exhibition An Academic Celebration of Idaho Artists, a collection of art by faculty of Idaho’s public colleges and universities, I traveled through Idaho to pick up work from participating artists at Boise State University, College of Southern Idaho, Lewis and Clark State College, North Idaho College, Idaho State University and the University of Idaho. These travels became the impetus for my research project entitled: Idaho Markings as Narrative: the Woven Form. The aim of my research project was to develop both natural and fabricated markings into a narrative; consequently, I photographed marks in the Idaho landscape, producing jacquard-woven forms using materials made of cotton and paper thread. These woven forms were developed from my aesthetic interest in markings on the Idaho landscape, which is part of my heritage now, since I have been living in Idaho for thirty-three years.

Photographing the places that I have been and seen, documenting myself; combining those images with computer design and weaving allows me to be involved with cultural cross­ fertilization and trying to understand the visualization of my thought process. My travel to the Spiral Jetty became the impetus for my research project, Homage to the Spiral Jetty: Woven Forms. The combination of exploring ancient materials of a cotton warp and a two color weft threads (shifu) of linen and linen paper thread or only a linen paper thread creates the cultural cross-fertilization of disciplines of textile and paper. The result in the series is a different dialogue among other woven forms creating a presence, in particular on historical, sociological and environmental aspects of the body of work.

2014