Loving Line

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Sarah Vaeth must really likes lines; abstract lines, all kinds of lines. Although these thread and graphite works on paper are small, she gives us ginormous images on her Website so we can easily see the detail. This image is from the Works On Paper (2003-2007) part of her site. At the time of this posting, the link to her Recent Work didn't load. But after a little searching, I think a visual clue to what she's doing now is on the Home page at her site. Seems like she's making her lines with thin wire and making 3 dimensional works where sometimes the shadow is also part of the visual.

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She explains her work with the following Statement;

Although I work in several modes and media, I seem to think in terms of motifs which relate otherwise diverse bodies of work to each other. A few favorites are webs, quilts, tents, bridges... I use these in images which are intentionally ambiguous, leaving room for psychological associations to come in. For several years an idea of construction/dissolution has been the major principle of my work. My drawing process is driven by activities like placement, building, dismantling, rebuilding. Often I'm working from a basic unit of line or mark, thinking of the lines or marks functioning like bricks out of which the image is “built.” This synonymous relationship between drawing and building approaches a literal equivalence in my thread drawings, and fully arrives at this equivalence in my wire drawings. (I do think of these 3-d constructions as drawings, only the line is physically embodied in a length of wire.) I may spend as much time taking a construction apart, as I spend making it. Works like Mutable Box begin as symmetrical and firmly supported quasi-architectural forms- then I introduce flaws in the integrity of the structure, moments of slippage. I feel finished when I've hit this balance between precise placement and capricious disarray. Even my recent series of observational pencil drawings, the tablels, followed this pattern- as I arranged, pulled apart and rearranged the casually sculptural elements of these table-top still lifes. This play between structure and the dissolution of structure is very compelling for me, suggesting analogies to human constructions subjected to time and entropy. I feel again and again that I'm expressing an acquiescence to the fragility and failing of things.

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