Ellipse 1: Creeping Thistle with Native Plants and Sky

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Artist: Therese Zemlin

Title: Ellipse 1: Creeping Thistle with Native Plants and Sky

Attribution: 2024, Ellipse 1: Creeping Thistle with Native Plants and Sky, Therese Zemlin

Year: 2024

Materials: Inkjet prints of digitally altered text and photographs on Japanese and western papers, hand-cut into strips, hand weaving.

Dimensions: 13 x 22:

Image Statement: Weaving draft from Posselt’s Textile Journal, 1908: A variation on draft #53100, from Handweaving.net. Text is quoted from The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, and Our National Parks by John Muir. The photos were taken by the artist in Brimson, MN. My inspiration has always been rooted in the natural environment, the tactile, the language of materials and process, and finding my way to something compelling through trial, error, and investigation. Weaving strips of photo-based inkjet prints with excerpts of texts from naturalists, poets, environmental advocates, and philosophers has resulted in ways of thinking, responding, and assembling that generate chance juxtapositions and relationships between pattern, text, subject, and image. On the one hand, the text is visual texture and contrast, and on the other, it is content and message. The ellipse and mandala imply objects in space, metaphors for the earth, moon, or a microcosm.