rope

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Art

Industrial Materials and Rugged Topographies Converge in Jacqueline Surdell’s Knotted Tapestries

Chicago-based artist Jacqueline Surdell sutures lengths of rope, fabric, and silky ribbons into sprawling abstract tapestries that hang from walls and standalone armatures in textured, colorful masses. Swelling clusters of knots and ties, loose weaves, braided tunnels, and dangling strands compose her three-dimensional compositions that are disrupted by sporadically used items like steel chains, volleyballs, and polyester shower curtains. Because of the scale of the pieces and the hefty materials, the artist often uses her body as a shuttle to weave the brightly colored fibers together on massive hand-built looms.

Surdell embeds parts of her Chicago upbringing in her wall sculptures, especially childhood memories of her grandmother’s landscape paintings and her grandfather’s job in South Side steel mills. These two experiences converge in her textured works by evoking vast terrains and the city’s industrial history through her use of commercial materials. Each piece offers further reflections on today’s world, with energetic and chaotic pieces like “We Will Win: Our Banner in the Sky” (shown above) responding to the fraught political landscape in the U.S. and destructive events like wildfires and loss of coral reefs sparked by the climate crisis.

You can find more of Surdell’s large-scale tapestries on her site, and head to Instagram to see her latest work-in-progress.

 

Art Craft

A Trio of Monumental Macramé Installations Stretch 37 Feet Across a Seaside Structure in Bali

In just 12 days, Jakarta-based fiber artist Agnes Hansella fashioned a staggering trio of macramé installations that hang from a ceiling in Bali. Each of the knotted works spans more than 37 feet wide, cloaking the open-air structure in fringed fibers that evoke the coastal surroundings of Jimbaran.  Titled “Mountain,” “Ocean,” and “Sunset,” the wall hangings reflect the natural environment through asymmetric patches reminiscent of coral, waves, and birds.

Alongside a team of artists she hadn’t worked with previously, Hansella cut manila ropes with a hacksaw and balanced on scaffolding to assemble the massive works. All three began with rough sketches and evolved on-site. “I was never good with drawing pictures, so the finished design is mostly something I came up with on location. I change them a lot based on my instinct and situation. With macramé techniques, the ropes have their own will and character so as the artist I follow them and see what can and can not work,” she tells Colossal. The trio was commissioned by Flowerbloom Studio.

Currently, Hansella is working on a smaller work for a villa in Bahrain and plans to explore tufting and fiber sculpture in the coming months. She sells macramé supplies, wall hangings, and functional objects in her shop, and you can follow her latest projects on Instagram.

 

Art

Uncoiled Rope Sprawls Across Canvases and Open Spaces in Organic Forms by Artist Janaina Mello Landini

Janaina Mello Landini (previously) unbraids lengths of rope to create fibrous labyrinths that breach canvases’ edges and crawl from floor to ceiling. Including both sprawling site-specific installations and smaller pieces confined to a few dozen centimeters, the São Paulo-based artist’s body of work is broad. All of her projects, though, explore tension and space as they spread into arboreal forms or perfectly round networks.

Her recent works include a massive tree-like installation that fans out across Zipper Gallery’s floor and walls into delicate, tape blossoms. Another is a smaller, numbered piece that was born from the artist’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  “My days are quite slow now, no more assistants around, but I’m still working and thinking a lot,” she shares with Colossal and notes that at the beginning of lockdowns, she completed “Ciclotrama 177 (Fibonacci),” which is shown below.

Since 2010, Landini has been contributing to her Ciclotrama series, a moniker that defines each piece. “The social cartography of individual networks shows the infinite interconnectedness of personal trajectories throughout a system, society, and the world as a whole. The movement of bodies (ropes) and the relationship between rhythm and time are also fundamental aspects of these series,” she says.

To dive further into Landini’s work, check out her Instagram or Artsy, and take a virtual tour of her recent show at Zipper Gallery.

 

Art Craft

Rope Twists into Massive, Fibrous Circuit Boards by Artist Windy Chien

California-based artist Windy Chien began her career with macrame before becoming frustrated with its limitations. “I gave myself an assignment to learn one new knot every day for one year, and thereby increase my vocabulary of knots and become fluent in what I now recognize to be a language—the universal language of knots,” she says. The year-long exploration spurred her more recent series of Circuit Boards, large wall hangings of winding rope with gold, red, and white thread wound around the strands’ ends. 

Spanning up to 24 feet, the fiber pieces resemble conductive pathways and tracks made from metal. While broadly inspired by electronics, Chien also is influenced by Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 redesign of the New York City subway map and fashion editor Diana Vreeland’s belief that “the eye has to travel.”

I find the metaphor of the journey to be potent and relevant here. For me, the visual pleasure derived from the Circuit Boards comes from choosing one rope end and following it to the conclusion of its journey through the work. Electronic circuit boards connect and conduct power; subway maps (maps in general) provide a kind of simulation of a journey, a guide to choices and paths. 

The artist tells Colossal that by examining the inherent tension in knots, she hopes to consider both their physical function and aesthetic value. “The neurosurgeon Leonard Shlain pointed out that art interprets the visible world, while physics charts its unseen workings. I think of my work as a fusion of the two,” she writes. “Art matters because it voices the unvoiceable—it is human experience distilled.”

Follow Chien’s work that imbues traditional craft techniques with technology on Instagram, and take a peek inside her studio.

 

Craft

Brightly Colored Rope Masks Born from Happy Accidents by Bertjan Pot

During a material experiment, Dutch designer Bertjan Pot, along with his fellow designer Vladi Rapaport, discovered a technique for stitching together lengths of brightly colored rope to create interesting face masks. Though reminiscent of tribal masks and seemingly full of meaning and individual narratives, Pot says that the faces came from a less-than-successful attempt at making rugs.

When trying to turn the rope into rugs, Pot found that the material would not stay flat. His assistant noticed the curvy samples and suggested that they be used to make faces instead. “In the end it turned out to be the most powerful application for the material,” he told Azure Magazine. The combination of colors and shapes give each mask a unique personality. Stitched elements resembling facial features cause the viewer to ascribe emotions to the characters, even if that was not the designer’s intention. As of the Azure interview in 2018, Pot had created around 250 masks, many of which have been shown along with the designer’s other work in exhibitions around the world.

To see more of the vibrant and expressive face masks, follow the designer on Instagram.

Art

Organic Shapes Emerge in New Installations of Intertwined Rope by Janaina Mello Landini

Using lengths of colored nylon rope, installation artist Janaina Mello Landini (previously) creates complicated networks of intertwining threads. The unwound rope ends tangle and reach in a giant game of Twister, resulting in sculptural installations that bring to mind the natural patterns found in neural networks, blood vessels, and tree roots. One recent piece, Ciclotrama 50, is a permanent installation at Foundation Carmignac, a French island museum that opened this spring.  You can explore more of Landini’s portfolio on her website and Instagram.