Color Jazz

2003
nine panels; each 23" width, 58" height
NOT FOR SALE

Color Jazz 1

Color Jazz 2

Color Jazz 3

cotton, tulle, metallic confetti, metallic, variegated rayon, and quilting threads, hand painted fabrics with fiber reactive dyes and textile paints, woven collage construction, machine stitching, machine quilting

COLOR JAZZ developed out of a need I had to explore color relationships once again, this time in vivid hues. I also wanted to work in a large format with the technique of weaving strips of my hand painted fabrics to create panels. I had recently completed a commission employing the weaving technique on very small panels and I always find it challenging and exciting to change scales of work. This is a very large piece, measuring close to five feet tall and eighteen feet across!

Once again, this work developed as a component system: nine smaller panels to be hung together to create the sense of one large piece. There is one panel for each color: red, yellow, blue, purple, green, orange, black, white, and brown. Within each of the panels, I inserted one piece of each of all the other colors into the woven structure. This makes all the panels interact with each other in a very lively and playful and colorful manner. It's like jazz! And, like jazz, these panels can be arranged and rearranged in any combination or sequence! That's the fun of it.

As with much of my work, I hope the viewer will be treated to two different experiences as he/she sees the work from afar and subsequently from up close. From a distance, one will see nine single color panels. The closer one gets to the work, the more details of line, pattern, varying colors, and movement become apparent, and the viewer will see that the painted panels are not just made up of solid colors, but are created with many variations of any color and even with blips and strips of contrasting colors here and there. My love of grid systems is very much in evidence here: the woven structure is a grid of sorts, then the tulle fabric overlaid on the weaving is another grid, and finally all of the machine stitching is another grid. Layers and layers!

EXHIBITIONS: 2003-04, 20/20 ENVISION, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine ; 20/20 ENVISION, University of New England Gallery, Portland, Maine