Originally I was going to title this "deforestation", but that seemed so harsh.The whole process of creating this installation "Into the Woods" with Joan Dreyer has been magical and it is more than a little sad to see it come to an end. So let me walk you through this one last time.
The original "Winter Foliage" was an outgrowth of a drawing exercise I had in a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell. Dorothy had us draw with brushes taped to very flexible dowels using India ink and paper. I couldn't wait to try it with dye on silk... but then thought better of the clean up and decided to do it vertically rather than on the floor.
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| Habotai silk with MX dyes... European drying rack | | |
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Joan and I worked through a whole series of concepts for our installation but once I took the orginal "Winter Foliage" down to test out how it could hold the space of the hallway my end of it was cemented. My studio assistant stepped back with me to check out the piece in the space and exclaimed "The woods are lovely dark and deep" and "Into the Woods" was born.
Joan had been working with dental x-rays and so the daisy and hydrangea sculptures continued the theme creating fabulous shadows and a similar palette.
The silk panels hid these from view until you entered the forest.
It was fun to see peoples feet exposed beneath the panels as they stopped to examined the sculpture. Kids of course had a good time running through it and making the trees drift in their breeze.
But the seasons change and so do installations and so it was time to pack it up. At least there were no leaves to rake up. I could stack all 5 panels roll them up and now they are resting under my print table.
The silk panels hid these from view until you entered the forest.
