Wednesday, November 14, 2007

WHAT TEXTILES MEAN


I know nothing about textiles but the subject still interests me, maybe because it's so philosophical. The texture on textiles seem to activate and energize the colors on the surface and push them into telling a dramatic story. Without texture color sometimes seems oddly flat and lifeless.

The pictures above don't illustrate what I just said, I just like the way they look.


When I was a kid I hated lace and couldn't understand what adults saw in it. Now it strikes me as snow crystals frozen in time. The plain white sheet in the middle of the lace seems oddly out of sync with the snow pattern, and yet when you see lace without the blank part it doesn't look right. Maybe lace represents order struggling against bland nothingness.

Lace is reputed to be an old lady's art form but it's hard to imagine old people having the dexterity to make delicate thread do what they want it to. Maybe the ropey stuff you used to see on the arms of chairs is the old lady's art form. It's hard to imagine that real lace would be wasted on a chair. Real lace needs to be worn but only on special occassions. It has to be kept snow white and somewhat crispy. Like diamonds it sets off the wearer but most women don't have the poise to look good in it. It's tempting to think that a woman who looks good in it is probably herself a work of art.



Wow! here's (above) a few things going on at once. A cool red manages to dominate the brilliant starfish and amoebas that erupt on the color's surface then sink back. Life seems to flourish on top of the red for a brief but glorious moment before it's killed off.
The black string and pom poms activate the space around the textile and remind us that the whole saga of life and death on the fabric is framed by a frightening void.



Here (above) color fights with design for dominance. The color seems to ooze and expand but a design pattern seems to be fighting to contain it. You can feel the tension. One or the other will win, but which one?
The white dots shimmer and glow like snow, distracting us from the battle underneath. It's like life: we battle each other furiously while time passes and gives a context to everything we do. It seems to render our battles insignificant, but we still have to fight. The pattern makes us aware that we're all involved in a beautiful unfolding tragedy.




This (above) is an amazing piece of work. Burning mouths from some mysterious void line themselves up to make what appears to be a musical statement. The checkered pattern makes a musical counterpoint. Surrounding it all is the wild, ghostly fringe. The pattern fights to stay together but the fringe tragically seems to be leaking its essence to the ether.



I hate to say it but I don't really like linear African patterns like the one above. The colors are depressing and seem like they're trapped behind obsessive geometry. Of course Africa's a big place and a lot of Africans are probably as indifferent to this pattern as I am.


13 comments:

  1. I like this post... I'd not thought about textiles quite like this before. I like your textiles enlivening brain.

    Maybe there is some kind of hidden esoteric power in the geometry sometimes. And wonky geometry is even more exciting.

    And I love those looney tunes stills... inspiration there for hypnotic sort of paintings balancing the weird secretive patterns with some kind of pictorial picture.

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  2. Oh Eddie. I love how excited you get about things! I would never have thought of describing those textile examples so passionatly!

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  3. Poetic insights in this post. Haunted by mortality today?

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  4. Anonymous10:57 AM

    We are all trapped by obsessive geometry.

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  5. i love this post

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  6. lemme get some o dem pencils you be smokin

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  7. I wonder why proper textiles and patterns not just stimulate us but enchant us. I'm guessing because it's so very unnatural it sort of disrupts our environment, and I guess as humans do we've taken that disruption to concretize our abstracts...Great post!

    btw, this is fun. I got NC-17.
    http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/blog_rating

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  8. Anonymous9:18 AM

    As an African, I can say that the "african inspired" pattern is verging on offensive. It's the kind of thing you'd find in a curio store, and not in an african house. Well, at least not in my tiny corner of Africa. It is, as you say, an awfully big place.

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  9. William: Thanks for the link! I typed in my URL and got a "G" rating, based on my infrequent use of words like zombie, hurt and punch. The rating is apparently based on words, not images.

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  10. Ha! My blog received a G rating. Obviously the progran=m isn't looking at the pictures.


    I think having them design textiles is an excellent way to make use of Schizophrenics and their wonder filled view of the world.

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  11. I re-read this post at lunch 3 times! What a revelation! You show us the universe in a dish towel.

    Congratulations on your "G" rating. This means you go out unfiltered & litle kids will avoid it like it was broccoli. DW was so anxious to get a PG for "Sinbad" as to include a cel-vinyl representation of Brad Pitt's butt.

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  12. Pappy: I'm glad for the "G." I've always thought of this as being something for the whole family.

    Vincent: What you said about schizos is interesting. Maybe the best fabric designers really are schizos. Maybe to be good at something you have to personalize it, talk to it, believe it's alive somehow.

    Come to think of it, I touched on this a year ago when I did a blog about Reid, the watercolorist, and how he argued with his pictures.

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  13. Andrew: You live in Africa? No kidding? What does the artwork look like where you live?

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