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In workshops, I often suggest that students work on two or more pieces at a time, using different approaches to see how the story changes in the telling. That's what I did for Re:Interpretations, a 2010 show at the Perlow-Stevens Gallery in Colombia, Missouri. The show featured work students I taught in a workshop the year before made in response to what they learned. When they asked to include my work in the show, I kicked around a bunch of ideas and did some sampling. Here's what I ended up doing.
Both pieces are made from a simple shape that looks like a winding path. Both pieces are made from layers of fabric. Even layers that are hidden from view are marked with paint, dye and stitching. It's a kind of shorthand that represents all the paths that intersect in a workshop, all the stories told, all the lives that become connected.
Vocabulary celebrates the ways learning and language helps shape our views of the world. The more fluently we can combine elements, the more confident we are in choosing how we want them to fit together. In this piece, the winding path shape became mountain-like to represent the love of challenges shared by this group of artists.
Dialect celebrates the way a common language is transformed into distinct forms. I asked the other artists in the show to take turns changing the form of this piece. The winding path became whatever they made of it as each pair of hands translated a shape into a form. Each re-interpretation represented two voices, two stories, and many more possibilities.
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