CAMERON ANNE MASON | THE FABRIC OF MEMORY | ADVANCE PREVIEW
May 2 - 25, 2024
Opening First Thursday, May 2, 6 - 8 pm
Artist in attendance
Artist Talk, Saturday, May 18, 2 pm
Fabric is fundamental to my artwork. It is an intimate part of our lives wrapping us from birth to death. It protects us from the elements, gives us comfort, and is a means to express ourselves. It is sensual and essential. My work is in transforming fabric from its pedestrian uses into fine art.
My inspiration begins in the dye studio. The primary fabrics for this exhibition were dyed using ice and gravity. Melting ice activates the dye, and gravity pulls it through the fabrics to create ombre watercolor washes. Ice changes from solid to liquid to gas, leaving a document of its transformation on the fabric.
Witnessing this process, I find it impossible not to think of the melting of ice on a global scale caused by our warming planet. Glaciers, these huge and ancient forces, which took millennia to carve out the geography of our region are disappearing within our lifetimes.
The sculptures in this show are named for glaciers in Washington State, a memorial to their disappearing. These forms break into three dimensions, their fabrics dyed using methods of folding, binding, and printing. Monotypes of sword and bracken ferns, native plants that are survivors of drought and tough conditions, frozen in time with dye on fabric.
The whole cloth pieces featured in 'The Fabric of Memory' are dynamic documents of change over time, sped up in the dye studio. In each artwork stitch is structural and integral. It adds emphasis and embellishment, provides depth and pattern, and connects the fabrication to its traditional uses.
Nature closely observed and recorded, and the evidence of human hands upon it, are the themes of my artwork. Time is the inexorable subtext. My work is rooted in the Northwest, highlighting the challenges of a changing environment by looking closely at our geography’s emblematic natural forms and flora. - Cameron Anne Mason
For a listing of more available work and biographical information, please visit Cameron Anne Mason's primary page on our website.
