Stitched Works: Tangled
Threads
"Jen Pack’s work at Sarah Lee Artworks &
Projects appears light and lithe, but in choosing her
methods and materials, Pack has knowingly taken on a heavy
load. Stitching onto delicate silk chiffons, she assumes
the baggage of traditional associations with feminine
craft.
"Working with stark squares, reiterated in line,
she incorporates the discipline of Minimalism –
its formal and emotional restraint. For the most part,
Pack’s technical ambition carries the work. A cloying
prettiness trivializes some of it, but in several pieces
her disparate motivations come together with grace and
power.
"Red Mess is the finest example. Pack stretches
translucent, acid yellow chiffon over squared stretcher
bars and stitches across the surface in staggered, stunted
streaks of crimson thread. The surface pulsates with starts
and stops. Each fragmented line is punctuated at the end
by the back-and-forth stitches of closure and then, like
an ellipsis, a dangling thread. The threads multiply and
tangle until they form a frizzy beard, narrowing to a
scraggly tail. The vaguely erotic allusions carry further
the bodily references Pack builds into other works –
one a delicate skeletal dress articulated in taut thread,
another a Rapunzel-like tress of dense blue threads falling
from their square source high on the wall into a fluid
puddle on the floor.
"Eva Hesse comes to mind. So do the weavers and color
theorists Anni and Josef Albers. Pack anchors her work
in the essentials – color, form, line and light
– but lets it fly by playing the regular off of
the irregular, control off of abandon."
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