Terri Friedman (CCA Faculty) in solo exhibition The Smell of Gasoline
ACME, 2939 Denby Ave, Los Angeles
February 25 – March 25, 2017
The process of weaving is unforgiving, mathematical, and imperfect. There is no painting over. It is like a digital printer, generated from the bottom to the top until an image is formed. Like many weavers, my process is not organic. After drawing, painting, picking palettes for warp and weft (the vertical and horizontal threads), measuring, laying them out on grid paper, I am ready to warp my loom. Though there is room for spontaneity, each warp thread and each section of the painted image is mapped out on paper before I begin. I like the very basic and straightforward technology of a loom. It is ageless.
Weaving color. Yarn as paint. I have BOXES of yarns sorted by color and fiber. I welcome the tension between the natural fibers next to mass-produced artificial neon color yarn or even painted cotton piping. I am interested in the sickly sweet, awkward, uncertain, chromatic, theatrical, and ornate because it mirrors the unhinged world and fragile ecosystem we live in. The more I use these opposing fibers, textures, and palettes, the more it mirrors agitation. Because sometimes we just want to scream!
