PRACTICES IN WEAVING: TAPESTRY

Catalog description

(Slashed with ARTS 45314 )(Repeatable for credit) This intensive studio course considers tapestry expansively as an interface through which weaving contributes to aesthetics and meaning according to its own logic and history. Woven form is realized in collaboration with the tectonic grid of the loom, yielding a unique relationship to image-making; the structural surface and the image it bears are one and the same. Working with multi-harness floor looms, students engage this question through rigorous material explorations. Vocabulary is expanded through the study of double cloth, discontinuous/supplementary wefts and dye processes. The position of weaving as a progenitor of abstraction and the role of color as a catalyst for meaning are essential points of inquiry. Critical discussion of core texts and individualized research occur in tandem with studio activity. Students produce studies and fully realized artworks developed through in-process discussions and presented in formal critique settings. This work considers the practice of weaving as an expansive playground to complicate the paradigms of contemporary art with textility.