the conceptual geometry of textiles

“Weavers, spinners, Penelope or someone like her, once seemed to me to be the first geometers, because their art or craft explores or exploits space by means of knots, proximities and continuities, without intervention from measurement, because their tactile manipulations anticipate topology. The mason or surveyor anticipates the geometers in a strictly metric sense, but she or he who weaves or spins precedes them in art, thought and no doubt in history. We had to dress ourselves before building, clothe ourselves in loose garments before constructing solid buildings.” (Serres 2008:83)

Serres, Michel (2008), The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, Translated by Peter Cowley and Margaret Sankey, Continuum International Publishing Group, London [via the textile files]

a tiny kite

Inkblots have been surfacing in my studio again and again. At first I was in search of a way to generate kite forms, symmetrical, yet divorced from the direct associations of flighted things: birds, moths, and planes. As a result my sketchbooks and my studio have been filling to the brim with inkblots over the last few months in between preparing for shows. There must be hundreds haunting my studio by now. This paper skin has been waiting for most of that time, and I finally began my first small bamboo and paper kite with it.

After carefully splitting the bamboo down, and mapping out the kite's bones, I taped them onto the drawing and heated them up to set in place.

My bamboo shaping methodology is a mite unconventional and could probably use some refinement. 

 

Despite the close call with a torch, the bones are fine. This particular bamboo was gifted to me by a traditional Japanese kitemaker, Ohye Makoto, in Cervia, Italy in April of 2010. It's beyond satisfying to finally be using it.

The finished kite flies beautifully even indoors. The tail is 32" long and I'm still tinkering with different materials to find something a little more pleasing.

the back

for scale

There's a lovely connection between this shape flying in the sky and the clouds alongside it.