Textiles as Image

 

by

Virginia Davis

 

I am an artist who has a strong interest in color theory and theories of perception and I have the power to weave my own canvas. I want to emphasize the importance for me of the study of textile history, and the privilege of viewing museum collections. Although I began weaving with silk, now I literally weave painter's linen canvas similar to the sort that can be purchased from artists' materials suppliers. Formally, the work explores optical aspects of vision and nuances of value contrast. Ikat and weave structure give special effects. Ikat technique, dyeing and painting the yarn before weaving, enables color and image to be embedded in the woven structure and locked inside the canvas. Color reflects light differently depending on whether it is placed in the warp or weft. The representation of space occurs through color overlay. There is a play of edge, hard and feathered.

 

From a current perspective, my work examines and reinterprets minimalism in the context of textile imagery. Some of my silk pieces use images of kasuri, greatly enlarged.  Another was inspired by an Indonesian textile. I switched to linen as a comment on the materials of art, referencing the 16th century transition from images realized in fresco or on wood to painting on fabric (oil on linen). One image was taken from the log cabin quilt and used the color weave sequence that weavers call “log cabin”. Other works use the image and weave structure of the telia rumal, the tartan or denim.

 

Virginia Davis works with ikat weaving and other resist techniques. An internationally exhibited artist, her awards include four Visual Artist grants from the NEA and the New York State Council for the Arts, a Fulbright to India. Her MA in Sociology/Anthropology is from the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her interest in Mexican culture began while, as a graduate student, she was an assistant to Oscar Lewis on an anthropological field trip to Mexico. In 1991, she published “Resist Dyeing in Mexico: Comments on Its History, Significance, and Prevalence” in Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Her video (1992), Fidel Diaz Valencia, Master Weaver, documents the last jaspe rebozo weaver in Oaxaca. With a joint NEA/Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes award (1995) she, with Irmgard W. Johnson, researched stitch-and-tie resist skirts in Mexico. Starting in 1988, she organized the Elsie McDougall Archive of notebooks, letters and photographs in the Department of Anthropology, the American Museum of Natural History.