The Art of Woven Paper Exhibition Proposal

It's child's play. We've all done it. Woven holiday placemats out of construction paper in "Autumnal colors" and then moved on. But some of us come back to it. For various reasons and in various ways. Here below are a handful or two of artists who weave paper to make their art.

JULIE WOLF

https://julieredwolf.com/

Artist's Statement

33 Bones

In 2016 Julie Wolf set out on a year break from NYC to volunteer teach and travel in India. Her travels took her further to Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Thailand. It was in Thailand that she underwent unplanned spinal surgery. While recovering in Hudson, NY, she contemplated the miraculous procedure that transformed her fragility, weakness and pain to strength and function. As she healed and meditated on her still very vulnerable body, she began to explore visual metaphors for a new series of work.

In 33 Bones, Julie applies the ancient process of weaving to her practice. By deconstructing her painted works on paper into small delicate strips, she recreates the “bones” of her once broken spine. Her subsequent “weaving” transforms those disparate pieces into newly whole sculptural works that explore color and pattern, form and function and ultimately, strength and vulnerability. Each piece is a variation on the human spine, which has 33 bones.

Julie received her BFA from Pratt Institute and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. 

Curator's Statement

I love how this body of work makes the concrete abstract. How it takes a specific object (the artist's spine), and a specific event (her spinal surgery) and represents them through this technique of cutting apart and weaving together. Plus, they're really just so very beautiful. 

ELLEN JOURET-EPSTEIN

https://www.ejestudioart.com/

Artist's Statement

These images are details of paper weavings I’ve been creating during Covid-19.   I began my art life years ago as a weaver and then put that aside.  For the past couple of years I’ve been working on abstract collage drawings, incorporating ink, acrylic, pastel, graphite and colored pencil.  When the home stay began, I needed a new approach to sustain me.  I looked at the 40 year-old tapestry on my studio wall and understood my next step. Incorporating woven paper effectively “doubles” the possibilities of working with color, imagery, layering and depth.  Two drawings become one.  Chance is always a big part of my process, and in this work, the final image is always a surprise.  These finished pieces average 24”x40”.

Curator's Statement

Ellen writes about chance, which is, I suspect, for most artists engaged in paper weaving, something that they are at least aware of, and at most actively working with. What will show through? What will be covered up? Does the artist accept the results of chance or not? 

I love that the source material for these weavings is art created by the artist that was not made for the express purpose of being a part of these pieces. A repurposing of existing original art. Some other artists in this exhibition do this, too, as you'll see below, with photographs or handmade paper.

CAROLE P. KUNSTADT

https://carolekunstadt.com/

Artist's Statement

Woven Paper as Metaphor

"The path of inspiration following art school led me to studying in Europe and viewing art and tapestries wherever possible. I had been executing my designs into layered and sewn fabric constructions but limited by existing fabrics. I became interested in contemporary tapestry in order to facilitate expanded selections of colors and texture. Upon returning to New York City I found an internationally known tapestry workshop in the heart of Soho and became an apprentice and then assistant in weaving large-scale photo-realism tapestries for corporations. The inventory of thousands of yarns of varying colors and textures developed a keen eye. The commissions took from a few months up to years to weave. Eventually frustrated with the technical and laboriously intensive work, and after my first pregnancy, I returned to drawing, painting and collage in my studio, inspired by paper, layers and texture.

I had begun working with pages from an antique book of psalms when I intuitively cut the paper into strips and started to weave them together. The years of fascination with tapestry weaving which previously seemed like a detour in my creative path, now brought me back full circle. The satisfaction of weaving again, after a gap of twenty five years, was startling. The immediacy of the materials, the tactile process and the resulting transformation was ultimately rewarding.

Vintage photo-postcards

Altering the images of iconic photo-postcards of the early 1900's by weaving multiple views together, the pixelated scenes become intriguing alternate visions of a reality suspended from their original context. The aged quality of the photograph informs and enhances the varied combinations creating simultaneous vantage points. They playfully represent the merging of a vision of history, the views caught and the subjective impressions which through the passage of time have been transformed.

Interlude Series

Hand written music manuscripts from the nineteenth century, drawn with oak-gall ink on handmade paper, are cut and woven.  Responding to the existing marks and their graphic patterns while intuitively recombining them allows for a new text to form. The deliberate notations and staves are divorced from their intended musical equivalent and when re-assembled present a cacophony of lines, notes and  marks. Threads are repetitively knotted into the woven surface of fragmented notations and lyrics creating a densely textured surface. Through the manipulation of the materials - resulting in  alternative rhythmic patterning, the process reveals how musical notation can become visual through re-interpretation.

Sacred Poem Series

Pages of psalms dated 1844/49 are manipulated and recombined, resulting in a presentation that evokes an ecumenical offering - poems of praise and gratitude. Visually there is a consistent and measured cadence to a page of psalms which is echoed in the reductive and additive process of weaving the paper: pages are cut in thin strips and woven creating an altered dense surface. The fragmented text suggests the temporal quality of our lives and the vulnerability of memory and history.  The continuous repetitive action of weaving is similar to reading  and reciting: implying that through the repetition of a task or ritual one has the possibility to transcend the mundane."

And "here are the three (self) portraits I did . My son is a professional photographer - he shot the images of me. The idea was that if I could weave them together the portraits would truly represent me visually and in technique as an artist."

METTE JANAS

Artist's Statement

Nothing here yet

MARIA ALLNER
https://www.maria-allner.de/

Artist's Statement

Nothing here yet

LIZZIE WELLS
http://lizziewellsart.com/

Artist's Statement

My work involves painting paper using mainly acrylics, creating two pictures, cutting them into strips of varying lengths, widths and angles, and then weaving them together to form one coherent image. Colour has always been a major factor in my work, and as paper colours are limited I stretch and then paint Fabriano cartridge paper.

I like the way the weaving and the use of particular colours together can help create the illusion of different shapes, ripples and directions. Patterns in nature - in plants, trees, clouds, water; and places like Sheffield Park - offer a fund of inspiration.

NIKKI SOPPELSA
http://nikkisoppelsa.blogspot.com/

Curator's Statement

Found this woman on instagram while searching #wovenpaper. It's a real experience surfing through thousands of images and coming upon one that stops you in your tracks. The top image below did just that. "Holy crap, is that braille?!" Yes, it is. And being so, it opened a whole rich trove of interpretation for me. One of the things that fascinates me about weaving (all of the paper weaving I've personally done has been with two different images) is the consideration of what will NOT be seen when the piece is done. Half of the image will obscured by the other half. What are we missing? Here, in Nikki's beautiful work, I think about communication and attempts at communication and failed attempts at communication and so on and I remember, over the years, thinking about making visual art specifically for the visually impaired. And I think about how wonderful these pieces by Nikki Soppelsa are. Thank you, Nikki.

Artist's Statement

I generally weave paper using vintage/antique papers to create a new visual, pattern and texture...new sentences from the old. Sometimes woven through the sprocket holes of piano roll paper or on its own, the Woven becomes either 'the' art or the background art for my collage. Varying sized strips, most often thin, it is a tender, delicate, contemplative process this play of varying typestyles /sizes, paper tone, musical notes, dots and dashes.



The Braille paper is most certainly different. Using pages from discontinued library books, the process is not as complex, but still similar to the above. With added elements, elements taken away, the Woven remains a jumble of text and punctuation. The stories are broken up to perhaps create anew or perhaps, simply jibberish.
This piece is a Zhen Xian Bao, a Chinese thread book. They have been described as folded secrets with their precise, complex origami techniques...the construction resulting in hidden compartments to store, conceal the purposeful and treasures alike. As I went along, I began to feel the paper akin to the thread book...so tactile, and both being made up of what can and cannot been seen. Visually impaired or not, or sighted with the ability to understand Braille, the interpretation will vary as does the definitions of seeing, feeling, reading. The ability to appreciate is available for everyone. A self-taught artist in paper arts (collage, origami, paper-making, paper weaving), textile arts (eco-dying/printing, cyanotype, stitchery both traditional & sashiko, felting), printing (linocut, collograph, nature), watercolor, alternative photography.

Presently involved with the Chinese folk art of Zhen Xian Bao which allows me to utilize any or all of the above art forms. The Braille Woven is #11.
My art has been published, awarded, made in collaboration with and occasionally donated to...and is in public and private collections.

The small college town of Berea, Ohio, is home.

EMILIANO BAIOCCHI
Artist's Statement:

I use the technique of woven paper as a way to surprise myself by the combination of two different images. Even if the two pictures are chosen by me, the result is always unexpected.

"ARYAVISUAL ARTIST"
https://aryavisual.art/

Artist's Statement
"The reflection on the mystery of perception, and the consequent transformation and reworking of the image is the first step of my creative and experimental process. The intertwined images of places, objects or figures amplify the expressive depth. Finally, I am fascinated by the very act of weaving, which belongs to women from ancient times, associated with magic. In fact, practiced for a sufficient time, it results in a sort of meditation, reaching inner silence and following creative flow."

DAVID SAMUEL STERN
http://davidsamuelstern.com/

Curator's Statement

I love what the artist (a photographer) says below in response to the question of this exhibition, about how weaving takes his photos to a different place. How it makes them more of a "physical object". Indeed, the weaving takes two separate 2-dimensional objects and turns them into a 3-dimensional object. His woven portraits also seem to add an element of time; a snapshot captures a particular moment in time, rendering it eternal. Weaving together two such moments creates (in my mind anyway) a stretch of time between those two shots. Was it a moment or a minute or a day? We don't know from viewing Stern's portraits and it doesn't really matter - the addition of this other dimension brings a deeper dimension to the artworks.

Artist's Statement

"Portraiture and photography have similarly impossible missions: we don’t see a person by looking at their portrait; and a photograph is not a window into another time—it is an object. I want my work to acknowledge these impossibilities, but not as dead ends. Portraiture always had in it a certain yearning, and a photograph has always been a mechanical and tangible thing. I think this is a striking conflict, which has its own way of conveying meaning, because, to me, portraits and photography have another similarity: they both hide as much as they show."

Why weaving?

"Weaving is a universal way of making something tangible. It's an extremely human thing to do. Making something tangible is not the typical concern of photography; mostly a photograph is considered a window that you look through. But, even though I'm a photographer by training and the medium guides my thought process, at the end of the day, I really want to be making physical objects."

NORM MAGNUSSON
https://pornweavings.blogspot.com/

Artist's Statement below

Norm Magnusson - Artist's statement

“But why weaving?” my boy asked. He’s 16. It’s embarrassing for him to come home and see massive photos of naked women laying on the studio work table being sliced into strips and woven together to make art.  But why is it embarrassing? Certainly he looks at porn online.1 Though he would never admit to it. I guess I would have been embarrassed too, at that age. Maybe not because of the pictures themselves but rather because of having to see them at the same time and in the same place as my dad.

Truth is: porn is a private thing. Sure, some couples or groups of enthusiasts may view it together or even incorporate it into their carnal activities, but mostly, it’s something that one person looks at by themselves. Alone. With no one else watching.

It’s private but it’s also deeply ingrained into the (American, anyway) psyche and therefore the subject of some amount of public discussion. I remember Johnny Carson joking, 30 or 40 years ago during a Tonight Show monologue, that there’s now a special “Playboy magazine for married men” and that it had a nudie photo of the same woman in every issue. Forever. The Mills Brothers sang about porn in one of their greatest hits, “Paper Doll”:

I'm gonna buy a Paper Doll that I can call my own

A doll that other fellows cannot steal

And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes

Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

All kinds of pop culture has dealt with pornography over the years and it’s had the effect of normalizing this inherently taboo topic and its ever-attendant partner in crime: masturbation. They go hand in hand. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Masturbating. Jerking off. Rubbing one out. Shaking hands with the governor. Spanking the monkey. Beating the meat. Having a wank. Tugging the slug. Shucking the corn. Flogging the log. Jerkin’ the gherkin. Slapping the salami. And on and on forever, including: making the bald man cry and fapping. Even the surfeit of slang for it (the male version) shows how deeply pervasive this is in our society.

Tom Waits joked about it in “Better Off Without a Wife”:

Well usually about 2.30 in the morning

you've ended up taking advantage of yourself
There ain't no way around that you know.

Yeah, making the scene with a magazine, there ain't no way around
I'll confess you know, I'm no different you know.

I'm not weird about it or anything, I don't tie myself up first
I just kinda spend a little time with myself . . .

But let’s not leave out the girls and women! A preponderance of online studies show that 1/3 of women over 18 watch porn at least once a week. There are even porn sites specifically targeted to women, some of which are carefully and ethically produced and designed to challenge well-worn porn stereotypes and worn-out porn “plots”, such as they are. The content on these sites seeks to diversify the offerings with content created by women and for women and starring women.

And there’s not just porn for women or porn for gays or porn for Hispanics or blacks or Asians or straight white males. There’s porn for EVERYBODY!!! Estimates show 12% of all websites are porn. That’s about 25 million porn sites!! And 25% of all search engine requests are porn related; that’s about 68 million porn related searches every day.  In fact, porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Twitter and Amazon combined. Let that sink in for a minute. So naturally, market segmentation and specialization would begin, right? A short digression:

Years ago, I used to pass these people walking on the back roads of Woodstock, where I lived at the time. They were always out there walking. A couple. A man and a woman. Someone told me that they’d retired after making millions creating and hosting the first website devoted to transgender people. The first place EVER on the web where trans men and women could go to commune with others like them - to ask questions, read answers, whatever. At the time, 15 – 20 years ago, it seemed so very niche and specialized. Today, it seems remarkably broad and unspecialized. People’s proclivities and appetites have become much more specific over that relatively short span of years.

Nobody and no place has a better handle on all of this market segmentation than Pornhub, the most popular porn site ever with an “average of 115 million visits per day. One-Hundred-Fifteen Million – that’s the equivalent of the populations of Canada, Australia, Poland and the Netherlands. Every day!” (source: Pornhub 2019 year in review. (https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2019-year-in-review. (Really worth a look.)) In this year-end round up, they list the searches that defined 2019’s fresh desires as:

-       Amateur

-       Alien

-       POV

-       Belle Delphine

-       Cosplay

-       Mature

-       Bisexual

-       Apex Legends

-       ASMR

-       Femdom

Now, if you’re like me, you have to look up some of this stuff. And yet, there it is: amongst the top 10 porn new searches online for 2019. (Kinda makes you feel your “Curvy Moms” search is pretty tame, no?) (Don’t look at me; it’s just a random example.) To save you time: Belle Delphine appears to be an overly cute English girl; Apex Legends is a massively multi-player online game (MMOG); and AMSR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. (Seriously, read this article and click on the first link in it; it’s fascinating: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/15/8965393/asmr-video-youtube-autonomous-sensory-meridian-response.) I’m guessing that each of these more or less G-rated things has, on Pornhub, an x-rated expression. I’m further guessing that lots and lots and lots of people find those particular x-rated expressions to be quite titillating. Titillating enough. My goodness, what a world.

When I was a kid, my friend Bill’s dad had a collection of old Playboy magazines. We all LOOOVED going over to Bill’s house. Later, a friend of my big sister had a vast collection of Penthouse magazines in his garage. Nowadays, there’s no real reason to collect porn since it’s all available online anytime day or night, and yet estimates say that 35% of all internet downloads are porn related. People do collect it! Porn definitely feeds obsession, maybe even addiction.3

It’s fascinating and taboo-breaking, or taboo-exploiting or taboo-reinforcing or whatever. But it’s out there and people, evidently, obsess over it and, personally, I've wanted to make art about all this stuff for a long time. Initially, I thought I would write and perform a monologue about it but then, somehow, the idea of doing a paper weaving about it popped into my head. I'd done a bunch of paper weavings in the past, including this one (below) from my "After the 11th" show:

"Loss of innocence" 2002, 40" x 60", paper weaving - map of world and map of U.S.

It's a cool technique that I'd been doing since about 1985 when I was first exposed to it by Laurie Anderson, who was giving a slide show about her early work as a visual artist and sculptor.

Laurie Anderson, "New York Times, Horizontal/China Times, Vertical”, 1976 

And so I tried one. A rough mock up, a sort of "proof of concept":

The first artist's proof. Untitled 2018 about 12" x 9"

And I loved it. Somehow the weaving captured all kinds of things I thought and understood about pornography and people's lives with pornography. Even more, it seemed to capture some things that I felt about it all, things that I couldn't quite explain rationally. The weaving just seemed right.

And that, dear son of mine, is why weaving. The weaving process, and the finished woven piece itself, is obsessive and repetitive and fetishistic. Weaving is a craft that has been traditionally engaged in by women and (though this seems to be changing slowly) porn continues to exploit primarily women. The source material is taboo (ish). And in all these ways, I feel, the "Porn Weavings" mirror many people’s relationships with porn (very specified kinds of porn in particular), the compulsion to collect porn, and the porn industry’s business-building relationship to its own offerings.3

Last, but not least, the title of each piece in this series is from the specific search criteria that led to them. Some of the search terms were offered by the porn sites themselves on their landing pages, some were found after clicking through on those first, offered categories, some were suggested by friends, and some were thought up by me. An aging and imaginative American consumer of porn.4

FOOTNOTES!

1The average age at which a child first sees porn online is 11.

2Now, researchers have put a nail in the coffin of porn addiction. Josh Grubbs, Samuel Perry and Joshua Wilt are some of the leading researchers on America’s struggles with porn, having published numerous studies examining the impact of porn use, belief in porn addiction, and the effect of porn on marriages. And Rory Reid is a UCLA researcher who was a leading proponent gathering information about the concept of hypersexual disorder for the DSM-5. These four researchers, all of whom have history of neutrality, if not outright support of the concepts of porn addiction, have conducted a meta-analysis of research on pornography and concluded that porn use does not predict problems with porn, but that religiosity does.  (David J. Ley, PhD.)  (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201808/science-stopped-believing-in-porn-addiction-you-should-too)

In related news: Conservative Mormon Utah holds the record for the nation’s highest online porn subscription rate per 1,000 home broadband users: 5.47

3 I always loved this Prego spaghetti sauce case study anecdote. It seemed to me that everything changed with Moskowitz’s insight: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/03/content-marketing-diversification/

4For what it’s worth, the number one search term used by porn users over the age of 65 was “Mature”. I think this is kinda sweet.