Thread Lines 5 -- separated at birth

One last piece at the Thread Lines exhibit to tell you about.  When I came upon this large piece (45 x 51") I was immediately taken by its calm, subtle palette and tiny markings that invited a closer look.

Drew Shiflett, Untitled #60 (details below)

It's made from handmade paper, cut and torn into small pieces and then reassembled in layers.  There's some cheesecloth in there to help hold the pieces together.  Finally, it's painted with a bazillion thin vertical lines.

I love the rolling, bulging surface and the way it's pasted together haphazardly with a bunch of different patches and splices and irregular edges.  I love the rows of stripes, clearly applied by hand.  So much to look at and find up close, and yet with all this busy-ness, the whole piece is serene.

After I looked at it for a while I realized that it's a conceptual clone of two quilts that I made a couple of years ago.

Kathleen Loomis, Linear A 

Kathleen Loomis, Linear B (detail below)

All of these works are made to the same "recipe" -- an irregular, unstable "tower" of stacked horizontal bars, each constructed of numerous small vertical stripes, in a neutral palette.

No wonder I liked it!

That's all I have to say about Thread Lines, on display at Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft through August 6.