Distaff - Hands Moving, Time Thinking Thoughts (2016)
The Swedish artist Helen Svensson and I explored a sheep farm on the island Öland in Sweden. We mapped its history and its cultural and natural surroundings by working with years' worth of dirty wool stored around the property. I created an over-sized anchor-like spindle from materials found on the farm and used it in a performance to spin a cable like yarn. The spindle with its yarn, piles of wool, old mysterious objects from the farm, and a drawing, made up my part of the exhibition, Distaff - Hands Moving, Time Thinking Thoughts, that was exhibited in the gallery housed on the farm. The exhibition, organized/curated by Swedish curator/artist, Johanna Karlin, was up for several months, allowing the weather, other artists and the sheep themselves to slowly modify the installation.
Distaff - Hands Moving, Time Thinking Thoughts
At the Haglerum Konstrum Annex, in the little cottage where Lydia and Selma lead their lives in the nineteenth century, Helen Svensson and Lisa Jevbratt are exhibiting process-oriented installations.
The work visualizes hands moving continuously in a steady flow. Teasing and fluffing the wool with intensive short movements, spinning it with longer and slower. The focused cleaning and the meditative regularity of spinning. Euphoria of the fluffed wool and the finished ball of yarn.
Simultaneously a pause, an act of reverence, in a chain of events where everyone does their part, preparing for someone else, and then hand it over. Giving support: sheep to shepherd, cleaner to carder, spinner to weaver. Mother to daughter.
Then there is Frigg, Odin's wife, who is spinning the clouds and our destinies, not revealing them, but allowing us a glimpse.
Lisa Jevbratt
Double Helix
A simple anchor-like spindle - an oversized DIY project - is used to spin and ply a yarn. Draft, twist, draft, twist, around and around like a dancing dervish. A circular motion stretched in time. A meditative repetition, a mantra.
The resulting form, the double helix, mirrors the structure of our DNA and the shape of an awakening Kundalini.
Helen Svensson
Every Day
An object of raw wool placed on a table in the middle of the room. Teased wool is organized in a group forming an irregular shape. With a controlled process one structure is disintegrated, the movement of the hand is cleaning, teasing and fluffing the fibers and transform it into a new homogenous fluffy structure.
Partition
Seven drawings illustrate simple movements
The exhibition is curated by Johanna Karlin and has received materials and support from her and Staffan Lindqvist, and the University of California Santa Barbara.
