Saturday, August 15, 2009

Tapestries. My drawing, a tapestry aesthetic?

As a tapestry weaver I am familiar with the concept of narrative, due to my interest in the history of tapestry. Often within a medieval tapestry, for example…. a ribbon with text on it would be used as a compositional as well as a communication device to link the images and the events contemporary to the times. (This is an early representation of the speech bubble, like comics.) A central character may also be repeated in different aspects within a piece to help convey time passing in a story.
The actual appearance of drawing used as a starting point for tapestry often does not contain many of the details that would appear in the tapestry and vice versa. I make many decisions while working on the loom, rather than having everything worked out before beginning the tapestry. I expect that some of the drawings look very bare of detail, even though they are not all going to become tapestries I do think that drawing for tapestry can have an effect on how finished a drawing can look.
I use minimal text in my work, as opposed to my reference earlier about medieval tapestry, as I believe in leaving images ambiguous. I think if there is enough information available in a drawing or tapestry, the viewer can make their own interpretation of what they see.

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