Textile Art Scale and Impact
My favorite way to work is large scale. I feel as though I have room to move if I have a field of fifteen, twenty, thirty feet. Without the installer on the ladder, it would be impossible to tell the scale of these pieces. They were installed in the end wall of the airport lobby in the Southwest terminal. You could see the color all the way at the other end of the airport. The theme of the work is endangered species; the concept that the most common weeds that grow on a roadside or next to a stream or on a mountain top are as at risk as any exotic or protected orchids. Perhaps more so, because humans will just trample on them or rip them out of the way. “oh, thats just a weed,” they say.
I say that weeds and orchids are both miracles. And another miracle is that I, as a member of another endangered species, can create color and imagery that can create an impact on countless people who I have never met. Here on top of my hill, looking out at grassy fields covered in a dusting of snow, that riot of color seems far away. But I can bring myself back there any time I wish to, simply by picking up any of a number of pieces and works in process I have at hand.
My work is an escape from my other work. What is work? What is productivity? I have a long list of tasks that I would like to accomplish by the end of today. Many of them are mundane, everything from editing video thumbnails to cleaning the refrigerator door. Others, like the stitching I am finishing on one piece, and the design and execution of my latest commission piece, are exciting and fun and I do not want to stop.
I have not decided whether writing here, on Medium, is work. I love to write. I can think when I write. I have also discovered that writing brings out thoughts I did not know were there. Writing is an avenue to creativity. Photography is that way too, for me. When looking for inspiration, or thoughts, or if I am just plain feeling stuck, ( or if I want to avoid cleaning the refrigerator door), I might just step outside, frame a photograph, and look inside it for the ideas that lie just beneath the surface of my consciousness.
I don’t get to work large as often as I would like to. But when I can, the sheer size of the space I have to work with gives me an infinite number of possible directions for the countless meanderings of pen, needle, dye pot and camera.
I am working on finding ways to take people with me on these ramblings.
Carol LeBaron
www.followcarollebaron.com
