Diane Savona — her textile work wows me with its ingenuity, personal vision, its way of making more than you’d expect of little. A thinker.
All images are from her website, https://www.dianesavonaart.com/
Some Savona quotes:
How do we learn history? Textbooks give us dates and leaders; students memorize facts for the test, but few people have a deep understanding of how our ancestors lived.
As a child I felt that lessons of wars and nations had little bearing on my family history. It was like studying weather patterns, gusting far above, knowing that my peasant grandparents had survived in thatched huts in Poland. What was their story? My art is created with that question in mind.
The objects I use are collected at my equivalent of archaeological digs: garage and estate sales. In my Passaic neighborhood, there are still large numbers of first and second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe. At these sales I hear the language and find the tools of my grandparents. There, I unearth items that were once commonly used in the domestic sphere – pincushions, darning eggs, crochet hooks – but are now almost extinct. I exhume forgotten embroidery and mending, and present them as petrified specimens.
My textile works are art and archaeology. They are the stories of past generations. By deconstructing past artifacts and preserving them in an archaeological presentation, I hope to change viewer perception of our textile heritage.
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This Too Shall Pass
Ancient knowledge was preserved on clay tablets. As we progress from punched cards to zip drives, what information will be readable to future generations? Like rotary phones and typewriters (once cutting-edge communication) all equipment becomes obsolete. By disassembling technological devices and sewing the parts tightly under vintage cloth, I am ‘fossilizing’ them – preserving their forms, not in the permanence of clay or stone, but in relatively fragile textiles.This Too Shall Pass is a series of hundreds of 6” tiles, each mounted on industrial felt.
See plenty more of Savona’s work on her website https://www.dianesavonaart.com/
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A note to my readers: This represents a radical rethink of my blog so I can spend less time formatting and more time making my own art. Hope you’ll enjoy seeing the increased number of artists appearing here.