Printed on archival, 100% cotton Hahnemühle Museum Etchings paper. 

Limited edition run of 50. Each signed and numbered by the artist. 

7x10" (paper dimensions only; print comes unframed and un-matted).

Original: watercolor and ink on Arches cold-press paper, 2017.

CONCEPT:

Textiles are a focal point in my travels: I seek out ethnography museums, scour markets, study region-specific symbolism, make note of the most oft-repeated patterns. Visually, I love textiles for their tactile quality; conceptually, I love them for their perfect balance between beauty and function; intellectually, and perhaps most relevant to my paintings, I love them because, across nearly all cultures, ancient textiles acted as a way of writing, in that each pattern or symbol had a corresponding meaning. In this way, a textile becomes like a book, capable of telling a story, serving as a talisman with a specific meaning and purpose for your home. 

After visually collecting and taking note of textiles in my travels-- notably in Turkey, Serbia, and Ukraine-- I started using them as a motif in my own work. I love how they create a frame-within-a-frame, how the edges create a second window (after the paper itself) into which the viewer can gaze. I found the tapestry conceit helpful in exploring new ways to enjoy oft-used Louisiana symbols : the repetition, the bilateral mirror effect, the symmetry, all pushed me to re-examine the objects, to think of them as geometric shapes and forms above anything else. 

Here, the mirliton-- so central in Louisiana food heritage-- is displayed in tapestry form. 

If you like this piece, you can look at the other pieces in the Tapestry series: Magnolia Tapestry: Life Cycle, Magnolia Tapestry: Fruit, Magnolia Tapestry: Fruit and Flower, Magnolia Tapestry: Flower and Holy Trinity Tapestry. Tapestries are also central in the Seed-Weaving series: Seed-Weaving 1 and Seed-Weaving 2.