Exhibition Statement
In recent decades, as artists have embraced an increasing array of materials and methods in their practices, fiber and fiber processes have emerged as central players. Textiles’ strong materiality – texture, color, physicality – and their associative power – personal, cultural and political – mean that they are a potent resource in the contemporary maker’s toolkit.
Within the wide and deep river of contemporary textiles, tapestry occupies a unique position. It possesses a robust physical materiality, a unique richness of color and a long history as a vehicle of communication in cultures throughout the world. A woven tapestry makes visible the time involved in its making. Each pass of yarn across the structural warp, each crossing of the horizontal and vertical threads, is a record of the artist’s decisions and physical labor.
In this context, the members of Tapestry Artists of Puget Sound (TAPS) are exploring the medium, each embracing an individual approach, all having developed a distinctive and mature body of work ranging in size from miniature to mural sized. The collection of tapestries exhibited in Tapestry Artists of Puget Sound at the Vashon Center for the Arts offers an overview of ten members’ work.
Cecilia Blomberg
Marion Cragg
Joyce Hayes
Succor River, 7.33” x 9” x 1.25,” linen warp, natural dyed silk weft, rayon thread soumak.
Wenatchee River, 6.75” x 9.25” x 1.25,” linen warp, natural dyed silk weft, rayon thread soumak.
Late Sky, 7.5”x9.75”x1.25,” linen warp, natural dyed silk & Indigo dyed cotton weft, rayon thread soumak. Turbulence, 5.5” x 12″’ x 1.25’,” linen warp, natural dyed silk & Indigo dyed cotton weft, rayon thread soumak
Suzanne Hubbard
Mary Lane
Margo Macdonald
Katia Paroczi
Liz Pulos
Ellen Ramsey
Julia Rapinoe
