More about Identity Tapestry here: http://marymarch.com/Identity_Tapestry.html

It seemed like whatever could go wrong did, but now that it’s going it’s looking just as I hoped, even better in some ways.  The textures are fantastic.  Sadly the LEDs have not arrived (one month late!) so while the piece itself will make it into the at the Diego Gallery Sunday (Interwoven Connections- Contemporary Fibers) it is unlikely that it will have the lighting element aspect of it operating yet.  For this show it will hang free the way Binary Girl does, creating a shadow.  Soon, though It will have a glow through the fiber optic parts of the warp, giving a glow to all the white in the image.

I am really looking forward to that show.  The reception will be Tuesday 5-7 with an artist talk at 5:30.

It’s funny, when I’m actually close enough to weave I can’t really see the image, but in a photo it’s incredibly clear.

These are the backs of the embroidered “postcard” parts of the piece that came out of my Aurora-hunting trip to Norway and Sweden.  Something about the cadence of writing, the gesture without the meaning is very attractive to me.  There are a number of artists working in imaginary text in this way.  I recently saw Gu Wenda’s united nations — babel of the millennium at SF MOMA that really struck me and stayed with me.  I saw another piece by an Asian artist- I think Korean, but I’m not sure that consisted of a room full of open texts which were in a generically Asian-looking text that was also nonsense characters.  I need to track that artist and his work down!  *

For some reason as soon as I start to get interested in text I became interested in text failing to reveal the sort of meaning we expect from text and retaining only the visual language of gesture.

*later note, thanks to Melinda I have the name I was searching for- Xu Bing and the piece is “Tianshu” (book from the sky)

The first layer of warp (the up and down bit you weave the weft/across bit through) is mostly in place now.  New yarn arriving Wednesday to finish that.  The optical fiber comes next, then some near-invisible mono-filament for structure.  Then some loo/warp setup-stuff, THEN I can start weaving.  I don’t think I can really hook up the LEDs to the optical fibers to get them to glow until the whole thing is woven.

I was testing the optical fibers again the other night.  They are meant to only pass light from one end to the other without you seeing it out the sides.  By abrading the surface you get a side-glow.  If I abrade any single fiber evenly the whole way the light won’t make it- it will go dark in the middle, so what I’m going to go for is an almost rainfall-like effect- individual fibers abraded differently.  The tricky thing here will be that I will have to apply all the abrasion before actually seeing any of it lit or woven, so I will only see a slightly more opaque bit to tell me where the light will be.

I have mountains of concept behind this work, but as usual I’m reluctant to talk publicly about it while the work is in-progress.  I want to hear people’s experience of the work before telling them what I think is important or what my intentions are.  A lot of it in this piece is about the meanings within the materials and their history, and the methods employed to produce the piece- drawing from a painting, digitization, cropping, weaving.  The image itself is around the 6th version of same.  Days and days of work and artistic decision-making have gone into a deceptively simple derivative image.

In other news tomorrow I’ll be meeting with the other artists in the show I organized for the Diego Gallery at SFAI (selected by an outside jury).  Interwoven Connections- contemporary fiber (April 28th-May 4th).  So far so good.  Four awesome women (Dara Rosenwasser, Jacqueline Buttice, Heather Jones and myself) working at the intersection of fiber, photography, chemistry and technology.

April 20, 12:00–5:00 pm

Map (you want to take the entrance on 22nd St, not 3rd St.)  It’s on the Second floor and includes all bays with orange doors.  I am in studio C7.  It’s in bay C (one of the nearer bays on the left, studio is in the back right corner).

If you come visit you may well find yourself incorporated into an artwork.  I usually use Open Studios events for their steady stream of people who can feed into my work, so I am often alternating between hosting my studio and actually working.  Also, I can’t stand being in my workspace looking at anything unfinished without working on something!

The project I took with me to Norway and Sweden this trip was an effort to shake some of this off.  It was an impulse project.  I started not knowing what I would do more than a few steps ahead and deliberately not trying to figure that out too hard.

It’s still unfolding, and it is a relief to have something unscripted, though deadlines are putting more pressure on me to resolve it quickly now that I’m back.  Maybe that’s all it is for, maybe it turns into something I’m really happy with- we shall see.  It looks like it will be the first project that involves sound for me.

Travel generally helps to shake out the rigid bit’s of one’s thinking a bit.  I didn’t get in as much drawing as I would like, but I did get in a lot of walking and looking and just the movement of travel- planes, trains, buses… even reindeer.   My brain feels flexible and open again where it had felt a bit squeezed a couple weeks ago.

On another note, I did see auroras on my aurora-hunting journey.  A series of pale green and lavender ones, and one huge serpent of a thing arcing across the entire sky- pulsing and blazing.  It was incredible.  Riding back down from the sky station to the lights of the nature center below in the silence while pale auroras bloomed overhead was somehow even more precious.  Silence that huge is a beautiful thing.

Exhibition Dates: May 11 – June 16, 2013 weekends 1-6PM.

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 11, 2013 from 1-6 PM.

I had Identity Tapestry’s 3rd iteration at BWAC’s Wide Open2, where it won best installation when Nat Trotman (curator at the Guggenheim) was the juror.  This time there were 1747 submissions and this was one of the 100 chosen.

I have to say it is a relief to have a small piece in a show for once.  No crazy packing, no huge shipping fees, no me getting on a plane with bags of materials to install on site… just a non-fragile item in a small package!

I took 5 minutes the other day and made myself a rough little fabric embroidery floss roll that fits in my pack and I’m ready to go!

I love working while in motion, especially detailed things like this.  So yes, there will be embroidery, layers of printed fabric… and I’m thinking about other elements too… like sound.  The piece will be an installation of many smaller parts gathered around the primary map.  One thing I’m enjoying – I don’t know what will happen to the piece on the journey.  It will be a surprise, coming out of the travel.  We’ll see.  Pleased and ready to go to the Arctic Circle!

Here she is as she should be.  I went through and stripped the wires at the ends.  It’s a little surprise for people who don’t realize at first that she’s made of computer cable.
I really like her hanging like this.  Originally I had her confined to a laser-cut acrylic frame-thing, but this is better.  In the right light the shadows will be great.  I’m also happy with the ragged edges- more organic vs/ digital play there.

If you haven’t seen this before, she’s the first of a new series taken from a previous series of “Binary Drawings”.  I sketched old master’s paintings in tiny 2-inch spaces, roughly, scanned them into the computer and worked them through a rather long process until I got a binary image that I was pleased with.  I was exploring how humanity still comes through layers of interpretation.  This new series takes a selection from those portraits (and new ones) and is woven.  As a fiber artist it made so much sense to me to translate them into weaving, but the surprising thing for non-weavers is that the loom was the first binary computer.  The old punch cards of old computers are based on the punch cards that created patterns on Jacquard looms.  In this case I’m extending the exploration of translating humanity into the digital world as it is now- bite-sized selections of subject matter.  I also love the art/craft/tech juxtaposition- methods of communication and expression, utility and beyond utility.  There is also the play against what is “woman’s work/art” versus a “man’s work/art”.

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In completely other news I am doing what I’ve wanted to do for years and going to see the northern lights.  I’m headed for the Arctic Circle, first Norway and then Sweden this Thursday.

At first I had planned on continuing this series while on the road (plane, train, bus…), but the wire wasn’t going to ship in time.  In the midst of travel preparations I came across a new idea coming out of two or three long term back-burner ideas.  It will come out of the journey and is something I can pack easily into a small bag.

The tech part of it I’m scrambling on though- it involves printing on Belgian linen and possibly organza, which I ordered immediately.  Thankfully the manufacture is very nearby and very helpful.  I should be able to print it in the SFAI lab on Tuesday morning and have Wednesday to adjust things as needed.  I LOVE the printing lab at SFAI!  I can’t wait to print on this fabric!  I will be stitching through it…  more I won’t say… the piece is very lightly in my brain and nailing it down now will kill it.  I’m so glad I have real art to work on during the trip!

There were patterns I had never seen before happening.  Some things I expected (that the “learning was never important to me” statement would remain blank for example).  Other things were unusual and I wouldn’t have thought of.  The statement “I have never left this country” was the only other blank.  “I enjoy my own company” was mobbed, where in all other cases it has been nearly empty.  Some other popular ones were “I like to lead” “I like to follow a good leader”, “I make time to play”, “I love to travel” and “I am spiritual”.  People in this setting also did a lot more reading ahead and watching others before they began to do it for themselves.

It went well and had all the effects I have come to expect- joy, tears, people loving it, people thinking about their connection to others, evaluating their own lives and relationships, discovering new things about their friends and lovers… it was all there.  Some lovely moments happened too- a newly engaged couple learning new things about each other, for example.

The new thing for me was the number of people who did it who  were connected to nonprofits or large corporations.  ….so now I have new things to consider.  To what extent do I reproduce the piece, and how and for whom?  I have more people asking for it than I can handle unless this single piece was all I did full time.  Where is the line between Art and business?  How much can it be reproduced before it loses it’s effect, or would it?  What about my other artwork?  What about digital versions?  Other versions?  There is a running joke that you aren’t a real contemporary artist until you have a team of assistants helping you make your work. There are a lot of questions I need to carefully consider.   I need to decide how I feel about all of it.

I will be posting more images to my website when things settle down a little.  It occurs to me that there is so much new work that’s in progress that isn’t there on the website yet.  I work out concepts and processes slowly, over months, and then work the physical part like a maniac when I have everything right.  The interactive works need a lot of testing and re-testing on friends and strangers before I’m ready to create the real version.  I am currently working through two new interactive pieces, two binary drawing/weavings and one painting. The paintings and weaving you’ve seen bits of here, but the interactive work will stay closeted until it’s ready to interact.

On a side note there are two finished Identity Tapestries languishing in storage.  I can’t wait until they all have good homes where people are able to see them daily.