A story of an Artwork
Fifty years ago, when a furnace got too hot, the thermostat would blow. There were various malfunctions that could cause this. A spray nozzle could break and raw fuel could pour into the furnace, the relief valve in the fuel pump might go bad, causing the fuel ro constantly spray; perhaps there could be a spark problem, causing an electrical problem that forced the unit to stay on constantly, rather than cycling as it was meant to.. Any of these conditions would cause the furnace to overheat, triggering the thermostat. The thermostat had mercury in it, which expanded, causing it to hit an emergency shutoff switch. Without the thermostat, the furnace itself would blow up.
These thermostats were all brand new. In the early twenty first century, the old furnaces with mercury thermostats began to be phased out. According to the Northeast Waste Management Association, there were approximately four grams of mercury in every thermostat. This meant that the old furnaces and any unused parts had to be recycled in a very particular way. That is how fifty to seventy thermostats arrived on this bench, next to a garage, arranged in neat rows, obediently waiting for recycling, taken from a warehouse somewhere in Western Massachusetts. There was something about the light on the repeating forms in front of the window in the side of the garage that struck me, and I took the above photograph.
That photograph, which in its first state was a Kodachrome slide, got packed in a box with many others when we moved from Massachusetts to Tennessee in the year 2001. Right around that time, it was getting harder to find film and get it developed; by 2010, my color photographic medium of choice, Kodachrome. was discontinued. (I do still have quite a few slides, along with at least one slide projector, in my attic).
In 2006, I began creating digital textiles. I got involved in making jacquard tapestries. Now one interesting thing about textiles and computers is that the Jacquard loom had a direct connection to the invention of computers. The cards used in weaving were the impetus for the first computer cards. I was (and still am, for that matter) fascinated by this connection, the juxtaposition of the old and the new. So, in Photoshop, I took a photograph of a still life I had painted years ago and placed that photo behind the window in the photograph of the thermostats. Then I took the Photoshop image and put it in the CAD program(JacqCAD), turned it into 12 colors in a warp faced tapestry weave, and created the image on an industrial loom.
This artwork, therefore, is a testament to the history and advancement of technology.
I love exploring these things and I hope you do too. More explorations to come in and out of the studio.
Carol LeBaron
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