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May 15, 2009
The tapestries' stories
Artist weaves about life, technology and religion.
OLGA LIVSHIN
A master of her craft and a true artist, Barbara Heller has been making tapestries for three decades. Her new show, the Future Reliquaries, which opened on May 7 at the Elliott Louis Gallery, includes tapestries from several thought-stirring series, proving that even such an ancient medium can invoke tough questions of life, technology and religion.
Tapestry wasn't Heller's first choice in arts though. She started out as a printmaker, until an allergy to the chemicals forced her to switch careers.
Her introduction to tapestry came in the form of an evening course in someone's basement. Later, inspired by a travelling show of Polish tapestry, she set up her first loom and taught herself by trial and error. She has been a full-time tapestry artist since 1980.
One of her first large tapestries was "Teeter Totter Teddy," hanging in a place of honor in the current exhibition, which is an ode to motherhood, reflecting the artist's youthful innocence.
Heller's later images veered towards more complex issues, like the series Cover Up, in which all of the images have a hidden face. "Surgeon" wears his mask, "Bride," her veil, while "New Guinea Mudman" has on an ugly head of mud. Who are these people behind the masks the tapestries seem to ask?
"Still Life With ... Bird" meanwhile was kindled by the terror of 9/11. The skeletons of the buildings in the background are revealing, but not as frightening as the bone fragments imbedded in the tapestry.
Heller uses the symbolism of dead birds in many of her creations, as a warning and a lament. "What saddens me is that I have been weaving images of war and destruction, dead birds and misunderstandings and worse for over 25 years, and they are as relevant as when they were woven – nothing has really changed," the artist said. "But we need to keep trying to change the world for the better, each in our own way. So I will try to keep weaving tapestries that make people stop and think and that reach them on an emotional level."
Poems written by Heller's husband, Michael Karton, are attached to many tapestries and deepen the emotional approach of Heller's artistic vision, serving as entry points into the art.
Heller's Future Reliquary series is more life-affirming, echoing humanity's developing love affair with technology. Each tapestry in the series is a depiction of a human hand on the background of an ancient weaving pattern, interlaced with a computer chip design. Pieces of real computers are part of the image.
In an artist's statement, Heller wrote: "The series deals with three apparently separate but, in my mind, connected histories: weaving, computing and religion. Weaving is a binary system of up/down, just as computing is a binary system of on/off.... Religion is not only a store of faith; it is a store of history and social values.... Today, we are creating a new religion, worshipping the technology.... These tapestries depict the future holy status of today's e-junk in the context of ancient fabrics; one code of up/down (weaving) morphs into another code of on/off (computing)."
The tapestries are bright and merry, as different textures of the artist's yarns juxtapose the shining gold of the hands, the metallic threads of computer themes and the quieter hues of wool for the traditional weaving patterns.
To emphasize the connection between old and new, she named the new tapestries using a word that didn't exist in the vocabulary of ancient weavers. "Kilim Algorithm" uses an old Turkish pattern. "Bokhara Algorithm" employs ethnic Uzbek motifs, stunningly similar to the mother-board's silvery circuits, while "Ikat Algorithm" adopts the weaving style common to many Asian nations, as well as native people of Latin America.
"Weavers at their looms and we at our PCs tell complex stories in simple binary form," she said.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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