Local artists are throwing a work party to wish Bainbridge Arts and Crafts a happy birthday.
Printmakers, painters, potters, sculptors and weavers put the creative process on public view through August with live demonstrations of the art forms the gallery has supported for 55 years.
“We are actually continuing a tradition,” assistant director for education and information Victoria Josslin said, “because BAC celebrated the 25th anniversary in 1973 with artist demonstrations.
“We’ve added 21st century art forms like computer-generated art, while preserving some of the oldest, such as weaving.”
Island artist Sally Robison will make images on the gallery’s computers, while weaver Jason Devinney turns his venerable art into a performance by working two looms at once.
The hyperkinetic “performance weaving” is a natural for the energetic artist, who calls himself a “fiber junkie.”
A visit to Devinney’s north island studio supports his self-description.
The walls of the tiny space are a floor-to-ceiling honeycomb of open-ended boxes showing skeins of mohair, wool, silk and rayon in rainbow gradations.
“I start with the white ones up front, near the window,” Devinney said, “and move to the darker hues in the back so that they aren’t damaged by the light.”
He often finds his fiber at garage and estate sales and at thrift stores. He is not what calls a “fiber snob,” and will use rayon and other synthetics.
He will even weave sewing thread into cloth so dense it’s hard to pick out any one individual strand.
“What most people call yarn I call fiber,” Devinney said. “As a weaver, you buy fiber by the pound. If I were to buy it by the skein, it would be prohibitively expensive.”
Newly acquired fiber spends time in quarantine; isolation in Devinney’s freezer kills bugs the skeins may carry.
Then he he shoehorns them into his growing collection.
The stored fiber makes an eye-catching three-dimensional grid pattern that mirrors this artist’s obsession with the intricacies of repeated design.
Devinney loves the intellectual challenge of figuring out the mathematics of a piece.
“It’s totally mathematical,” he said, pulling out a gorgeous swath of red wool woven with a blue wave pattern. “There are 24 threads per inch, so within the inch it’s a sequence of ‘six times four.’”
Life loomed large
Devinney sees pattern everywhere, and he’s not averse to drawing on the designs of other artists for inspiration.
A photograph of architect Louis Kahn’s library for Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., inspired “Spirit x 7,” an 8-foot rug.
“When I saw the picture in ‘Art in America’ I said ‘oh my god, it’s a weaving.’ I love the stacks going up story after story.
“As soon as I saw it I knew I had to weave it.”
The piece was the first Devinney did free-form, without a “cartoon” – the rough design sketch placed under the loom to guide the artist.
The more harnesses Devinney adds to raise and lower the warp threads in the loom, the more intricate the pattern.
He’s added four harnesses on the Macomber Add-A-Harness loom that he bought years ago, doubling the number with which he began.
Devinney’s first encounter with his work happened by chance when the young Vietnam vet was attending Long Beach City College in Long Beach, Calif., on the G.I. Bill in the late 1960s.
“There was a room with looms in it. I asked my teacher, ‘What are those things?’ and he said, ‘Perhaps you’re ready to weave.’”
With the notable exception of the upcoming BAC weaving performance, the practice is a solitary one for Devinney, who says that conversation distracts him into making mistakes.
“It’s a spiritual connection,” he said, “It’s really a physical meditation.”
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Bainbridge Arts and Crafts’ 55th Anniversary exhibition, Artists In Residence, features a different artist demonstration every day from Aug 1–Sept. 4. For a complete schedule of participating artists, call 842-3132.
BAC invites the community to a 55th anniversary reception, 6-8 p.m. Friday at the gallery.
