Artist’s dreamlike thread drawings bloom at W&J
Amanda McCavour’s “Neon Bloom” series consists of a suspended field of neon pink flowers with blue embroidered “spirographs” that create a large colorful environment.
“Spirographs Drying” in McCavour’s “Neon Bloom” series
“Subtle Technologies” portrait of Toronto-based artist Aman-da McCavour, whose artwork is on display in the Olin Fine Art Gallery at Washington & Jefferson College until April 3
Washington & Jefferson College is featuring the delicate and dreamlike thread drawings of Toronto-based artist Amanda McCavour in the Olin Fine Art Gallery until April 3.
McCavour is presenting an installation called “Pink Field, Blue Fog,” part of her “Neon Bloom” series, which consists of a suspended field of neon pink flowers with blue embroidered “spirographs” to create a large colorful environment.
“Using ideas around the space of the garden, as well as silk flowers, this piece is a new installation/embroidery work based on an imagined and abstracted field of flowers,” McCavour said.
“The large installation work is growing and will be composed of thousands of these pieces installed on the floor of the gallery, creating a field of flowers and a field of color. Visitors would be able to walk through the colorful field through paths, and would be surrounded by the work, their movement also being controlled by the piece.”
By using only a sewing machine, water soluble fabric and thread, McCavour creates colorful images through this unique art medium, which she chose because of her interest in thread’s properties of delicacy, line and touch.
“I like thread’s vulnerability,” McCavour said. “Creating images and installations out of embroidered parts allows me to create ephemeral pieces that are both in a space, but also seemingly on the verge of not being there. My interest in embroidery stems from an interest in line.
“I am interested and excited by the potential thread has to create both readable images and abstract images. … We feel (fibers) often. They are right next to our skin when we are wearing clothes. I like how when I use an embroidered image that this might be in the back of people’s minds, that looking at an embroidered piece also becomes about this memory of touch, of touching something soft, of what the piece might feel like if you were to touch it.”
The accumulation of time and material, and the hard work that McCavour puts into her artwork, is another aspect that she enjoys about thread drawing.
“Spending lots of time at a sewing machine and building up the embroidered thread pieces informs my work as well. The accumulation of thread, which is what holds the pieces together, is accompanied by an accumulation of time,” McCavour said.
McCavour received her bachelor of fine arts from York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and her master of fine arts from Temple University in Philadelphia.
All Olin Fine Art Gallery events and exhibitions are free. The gallery is in the Olin Fine Arts Center, 285 E. Wheeling St., and is open from noon to 7 p.m. seven days a week during exhibitions. It is closed during college breaks.