Transparency

Gauze is the thinnest of the materials I use. I love it for its transparency, the irregularity of its weave and the elegance of its movement. It is like a veil, covering, but not quite, revealing, but not all. Looking at a veil always includes an alternative. You can look through it and focus on what is behind it, because the partial covering makes you curious. Or you can study the veil itself. Here you need to focus more closely, because it is in competition with the images that traverse through it. I want the veil itself to attract the viewer’s attention, so I manipulate it so that it arrests the viewer’s eyes. But I also think that what’s behind the veil is of importance, because it adds a new dimension to the piece. 

wet gauze panel, stretched (detail)

My next panel is finished. While it is still wet, it anticipates an idea of its beautiful transparency. The challenge always lies in how and where to photograph it. So far I haven’t run out of spaces. Sometimes, though, I wish the sea wasn’t so far from my home. 

 

Some of the pieces would look so good at the beach,

 

competing in beauty with the sand,

the sparkling turquoise waters,

   a sunset sky reflected...

The view from my studio window used to show Takutea, a tiny island 16 miles offshore Atiu. Now the pine trees, established here for protecting the soil erosion after our island’s pineapple industry collapsed in the late 1980s have grown so tall I can hardly see the sea, sigh! So this is the best I can do today.

Detail of panel, gauze, bark cloth, lace, total dimension 2.90 m X 0.40 m