Currently, Solvang’s Elverhøj Museum is hosting the exhibition Cloth as Canvas, for which a reasonably expanded subtitle might be “cloth as canvas, creative host, and artistic content itself.”
This fascinating show, featuring the work of 11 local textile-based artists involved in the Fibervision collaborative, illustrates the rich creative potential of sewn, woven, quilted, and otherwise reimagined ideas on fabric.
As an apt frontispiece to the show, we enter the gallery and are greeted with Debra Blake’s “Seeking Space,” with offset geometric forms and contrasting colors cohering into a cool, casual statement. Abstraction takes a different, semi-figurative turn on the facing wall, with Kristin Otte’s “Mylado.” This portrait of a woman’s face is transformed into a broader narrative with a mosaic-like speckling of natural scenery, vegetation, and images of antiquity imposed on the facial base.
