Spring 08 SDJ Editorial

Looking Forward

After we determined the theme for this issue, I wondered how to get “On the Floor” off the ground. There would, of course, be rugs, but devoting the issue solely to rugs seemed the easy way out. For months I walked around looking downward, searching in every direction for floor-related objcts that might inspire the imaginations of our readers. Finally, like crocuses sprung from early spring's resistant earth, a cluster of articles surfaced to fill the blank pages.

      The sense of devotion embedded in structure is a subliminal text that is frequently visible in artworks of fibrous materials. The incremental, repetitive gestures that accumulate into woven, knotted, looped, wrapped, or pieced-together surfaces leave evidence of quiet, and quieting, time dedicated to making. Whether the fabrics resulting are fine or coarse, smooth or rough, pliable or stiff, their surfaces embody a distinctive “textile sensibility.”

        While textile structures are phenomenal in themselves, for many artists they've become stimuli for ideas. This issue focuses not so much on ways that textile surfaces can be constructed, but on new kinds of visual expression that artists are creating with structured surfaces.

          Some artists represented herein have worked for decades and are globally known, but keep pushing forward toward unprecedented bodies of work. Lia Cook, for example, is endlessly inventive at weaving representational imagery with hi-tech equipment. Her latest works, with elusive hints of multiple layers, bring a poetic dimension to jacquard production.

         Sherri Smith's recent work with specific scientific references startlingly departs from the pure abstraction of the plaited strip pieces   she worked with for years. And Joan Livingstone, while still creating large enigmatic felt forms, recently produced a series of installations made from salvaged segments of urban environments.

While in Livingstone's patchwork of throwaway relics, the combination of units echoes the colorful clatter and clutter, the raw energy of street life.

        In contrast, Lissa Hunter's intimate environments, housing multiple basketry forms, pull one into their contemplative spaces.

       A common assumption regarding textile construction is that it starts with linear elements—e.g., thread, filament, fabric or paper strips, sticks. This is most literally manifested in Kim Kamens's extraordinary images of stretched twine, suggesting an original take on the notion of “string theory.”

        Reflections on the recent SDA conference, along with reviews of selected exhibitions held in conjunction with the conference, occupy several pages in the middle of the issue. If these prompt you to wish you'd been there, don't overlook the announcement for “Off the Grid,” the 2009 conference, on the back cover.