Recognizable stitches

BAILA LAZARUS

Most of us have probably picked up a spool of cotton thread at one time or another to sew on a button, hem a pair of slacks or mend a tear in a favorite shirt. But Barry Todd Goodman takes the use of cotton to another level in his exhibit Black Fire/White Fire – Fibre Art and Installation.

Passing casually by the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, one would be excused for thinking the latest show is a collection of photos of famous people - Mordecai Richler, Irving Layton, Sigmund Freud – with an installation or two thrown into the mix. The images, however, are not photographs: they are stitched cotton on fabric. Some are done almost to completion, with the faces clearly recognizable; others are partially filled in, leaving the visitor to gain different views as they move nearer or further away, or walk from one side to the other.

Many, like "Judith," take on the quality of a Seurat pointillist painting. Up close, all one sees are dots, like an overly pixilated photograph. Step back a few feet, and the face materializes.

Others present a different image entirely. From the left, "Mordecai Richler" looks a bit like a skeleton, with a large black hollow where his eye should be. Move to the right, and Richler's recognizable face is clear to see.

Freud looks like some blotchy patches up close, but from across the room, he looks like a black and white photograph.

Standing in the gallery on opening night, one could actually hear viewers say, "Oh, now I get it," as they strode side to side and a previously inaccessible image emerged.

It was akin to those 3-D images that were so popular in the mid-1990s, which, when stared at in a certain way, revealed pictures of ships, dolphins or gazelles.

The art in the Zack Gallery exhibit is a collection from the last 10 years of Goodman's work, all with Jewish themes. They fall under categories of literature and history, the Bible and the Holocaust. He is particularly interested in technology and communication and loves working in the tactile sphere of fibres. For him, however, "fibre" has a broad definition. It appears in the gallery in the form of cotton stitching, balls of twine and woven sheets of magnetic audio tape.

For his installation piece "Ezekiel," Goodman created 48 balls of linen, about four inches in diameter, to represent the 48 verses of Ezekiel.

"It's not about holiness, but purity of material, the hidden and revealed, the wheel that turns," explained Goodman, who admits he has a "very loose idea of what media is."

Driving on the road, he recalls seeing an old cassette with its tape stretched on the pavement, forming its own design. Goodman decided to take similar audio tape and weave it into the piece "Amalek" – four strips, reaching floor to ceiling, overlooking the room with a strong presence, like the chief that Amalek was.

Goodman, who was born in Montreal and currently teaches art history at Langara College, doesn't expect people to immediately know the topics of his work, such as the Book of Judith, the artist Pissaro or the poet Gertrude Stein; he wants viewers to think about the subjects and have the incentive to look them up and find out more.

As one of Stein's quotes in the exhibit says, "Every one who ever was or is or will be living sometimes will be clearly realized by someone. Slowly, every kind of one comes into ordered recognition."

Black Fire/White Fire runs until June 11. Call 604-257-5111, ext. 244, for more information.

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, photographer and illustrator living in Vancouver. Her work can be seen at www.orchiddesigns.net.

^TOP