| #6. Prairie Rug Series. Seven kilim/medieval style woven tapestries.
1970 |
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| #6. Prairie Rug Series. Seven kilim/medieval style woven tapestries.
1970 |
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| With a BFA in painting and printmaking, and having just got over a prolonged illness following the pains of relocation, I needed a restorative, ritualistic process for making images, and I chose tapestry-making. But training facilities did not exist in art schools and so I set out to teach myself by doing a series of seven “Prairie Rugs” based on the shape of the grain elevator, the most prominent feature in the Prairie landscape. Each piece was about 2 1/2 ft. x 4 ft, and, with the visual concept established, I built up the shape using different construction approaches. “Lazy Oxen” (or Prairie Rug #6) starting at the bottom, and like the other pieces, being composed as it went along, is a written work that began at the end without my knowing in advance which word I would build on the next line. Thus: “Dreaming and living shadows in the pioneers quick and oxen lazy”. Unconsciously I had started to draw on the typing excerises from my life as a stenographer (The "Tikster" in South Africa), in addition to the textile samplers that were a part of the feminising of young European girls. |
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