Bereavement: a state of intense grief, as after the loss of a loved one: desolation. Loss is an inevitable part of life, with loss comes grief. The process of grief has an affect on both the mind and body. I see these works as an investigation of how the mind and body unite to process grief over time. The underlying conceptual system engages my mind and body in the creation of a physical object manifested through hand manipulation of materials.
In all of the pieces only two materials are used, monofilament and steel wire. I chose to stick with a defined palette of color and texture because to me these materials represent the two aspects that make up life, thought and physicality. The clear monofilament representing thought and the unseen world and the steel wire representing the physical world, what we can see and touch.
Three of the four pieces were constructed on the loom in a balance of steel and monofilament. In using the process of tubular double weave, the weft travels in a sort of spiral, passing on the front of the form and then to the back and around again continuously. While sitting at the loom I am immersed in the repetitive accumulation of line projected from my center. Certain numbers were consistently used to direct decisions about the weaving. In particular, 12, 22 and 66 were used to determine the width and length of each woven piece. These numbers relate to an aspect of my reality, 12 inches is the width of my head, 22 the age I currently am and 66 inches is my height. In two of the woven pieces I repeated my height 5 times to commemorate my passage through time in the last five years since the passing of my brother.
Once off the loom the pieces took shape through freeform manipulations such as twisting, knotting and bending. Through these manipulations I was searching for forms where the beginning and end are obscure, not at all expansive, but enclosed and withdrawn. This contrasts directly with the process of weaving which defines a linear progression of shape. My perspective is that grief is never that straight forward. The large wire tangle sculpture came from bending wire to repeatedly spell out the word “here”. Bending the wire into words began as a conscious activity of writing with wire, but has evolved into an accumulation of a repetitive distracting task.
rowe 