CARRIE L. WRIGHT
Celestial Series
After two years of work on my Silk Diary Series, in January '24 I lost one of the best friends I have ever known. I have been pondering heaven and his place there and had a vision of adding gold leaf to the silk. With very little trial and error needed, my first piece hooked me, titled "If it Snows in Heaven". (see right) The gold leaf motifs add a layer of complexity to the other two patterns created in the composition. Working with varietals of Vietnamese brocades, the yardage was dyed in a muted color palette. Most compositions are created in a bookmark type vertical orientation and typically in a quite narrow size. When done correctly, my hope is that this series evokes a feeling as if you're receiving a peek into heaven itself. When the lights are turned off, any light dappling into the room causes the gold leaf to shine as if the elements are floating just above the surface of the silk. A whole new painting is created in this manner!
Silk Diary Series
I call these silk collages pages from my journal because they encompass pieces of hand-painted silk from the last several years of my journey as a professional artist. Constructing these works is quite meditative and gives me the opportunity to reflect on many very personal thoughts and stumbling blocks I’ve had to work through in order to become the more honest artist I am today. Each composition begins with one small shape, then every piece of silk after that is chosen based on color, illustration and weave that will best evoke the mood I’m trying to express overall. The pages are assembled like a puzzle, but with pieces cut on the fly without a finished sketch to guide me. The way the light causes your eye to move around the piece in different ways based on where you’re standing is due to the type of weave in the silk as well as which direction the weave is oriented. Having so many variables to consider in the construction of these pages is a fun challenge to me, and I think lends to these collages being quite alive for they capture the energy of the moment of their creation. After a page is full of its puzzle pieces, I add the machine stitching to create one final unifying note of texture and sentimentality. This traditional crazy quilt stitch is my subtle way of expressing that each of these individual pieces of silk bears a memory for me as the artist who created them. Last, the entire composition is squared up and stitched to watercolor paper for framing. I prefer that my pieces be encountered without any glass so you get the full effect of the light moving across the texture of the fabric. This is a finite series due to the limited supply of off-cuts, mistakes and sketches from my past work that I have chosen to devote to this body.
Meditation on the Creation
As we can now see a single atom thanks to advancements in electron microscopy, along with
seeing into multiple light frequencies in deep space thanks to the James Webb telescope, I find
my awe of the mathematical and artistic structure found in nature ever increasing. The Meditation
on the Creation Series is my attempt to celebrate through color and brush stroke rather than words
the truth that we are all created beings living in a created world designed by a single Master
Artist. Each piece is a thoughtful effort to paint numinous expressions of light, life replicating at
the cellular level and even snapshots of how I envision moments of the first days of Creation.
What if we could see the macro and micro view of nature along with our normal sight all at the same time? What if we had eyes and brains to comprehend every plane of life in a single glance? The pieces presented are studies for a much larger installation experience I am actively striving to complete.
