PROFILE:  JOAN DIAMOND

I completed this piece last year (2019) called “Enduring”. This piece is particularly important to me for several reasons. It is the first textile piece I’ve done that I want to be hung in space and not against a wall, rendering it a sculptural statement. In prior Bojagi pieces the network of shadows cast onto walls by the seams were integral to the “message” of the piece. “Enduring” is a big themed piece, and the idea that it should take its place within the largeness of space, to be walked around and observed from different angles came to me when I first started on it. Moreover, bc it is made mostly with mediums that have a transparency, as people view the piece from opposing sides they will see each other thru the piece. To have actual people included in the visual sweep of the piece as part of its “big picture” is complementary to its theme, and exciting to me.

“Enduring” is the third largish Bojagi piece I’ve made but the first where there is a mix of materials: cloth hand-in-hand with non-cloth (plastics). It is the first time I have used readily available throw away materials and have recycled their use to become an important contribution to the theme of the piece. I have not considered myself an artist who does political commentary, but am now not necessarily immune to using cultural and political climates as fodder for artistic content. We are all a part of our times...it’s inescapable. From this experience of working with single use plastic bags I have ideas for another piece, this one meant for the outdoors, and am actively collecting materials for it thru community contribution. “Enduring” has given me the confidence to tackle yet a different Bojagi piece, which will be my largest one yet. This will also be an indoor sculpture, composed of layers of panels. I am only thru the first panel, so it will take me quite a while...this is where one wishes an assistant would materialize! It is an ongoing project which I work on betwix and between other explorations.

Photo of 1)Enduring. 2)Detail photo of enduring. *carol: so bc I am not forwarding photos for our practice, if u desire ( not necessary though) you can look at my website to see the pieces I’ve referenced.

 I come to textiles largely by accident. Photo: big apple. I have a long history with clay, 20 years. I took a clay class in my senior year of undergraduate study, saving it for the end bc it was to be an especially dirty class! The minute I walked into that dusty outcast basement pot shop I seemed to breathe better; I looked around at the works in progress and immediately felt I had found home. I had been an art major, really, without an art until that first moment my hands touched stoneware clay, and I fell in love.

 If you have ever worked with clay you know that this gorgeously silky and complex medium encourages endless loops of interaction, and too, needs constant overseeing. Years later, Interrupted studio time to raise three active boys and to work full time meant clay works in progress didn’t get completed. Lost in an over busy schedule is time. One needs time and attention to manage a clay project properly, to alter a piece as it dries before it reaches a point of no return, even if one has started to work on a very small scale. . Photo: doodle and hairpiece. What I needed to satisfy my art itch now, strangely, was inertia. Finding a medium tolerant of my work cycles, with art work remaining as I had left it, led me to experiment with a surface design class at Newark Museum. I have been busy expanding my textile vocabulary ever since that class. Today I work pretty much squarely in the fiber world. However, from time to time when I work with clay, a dense medium into which no light penetrates, I feel connected to its world: sturdy, timeless, quiet. I marvel at the process and feel of the medium as it moves fluidly thru my hands, and which can be coaxed into endless possible forms. I sharpened my art teeth on clay. My last notable clay project was a marriage of clay and fiber: a stitched clay mono print. Photo of Tethered, clay mono print sculpture.

 Sheer fabric promises that light will be apart of the art, and warp and weft offers a rigidity that clay does not! Of late I have been exploring the nuances of transparent cloth, and also loving dying fabrics. I have no formal training in textiles; no grannie or mom whom I may have learned sewing skills; no college coursework. Until quarantine, an active international travel schedule and workshops served to fulfill my curiosities and be a wellspring of inspiration.

Photo: possibilities.

 I enjoy experimenting and exploring fully different techniques. One such technique I have been working with this past year is machine stitch shibori. I love the uptake of dye on protein fabrics (wool, silk, etc..) and have been experimenting dying different fabrics together, and exploiting their differences. I make many scarfs which really, functions for me as a kind of sketch book for my thoughts on process. I get to understand the complexities of how I can push the technique, and I wind up with a pretty scarf in the end instead of just a sample book. With some experience, shibori is a technique that one can “read”, so it is easy to pick up something later and understand how I did it. Photo of scarf with wool and organza.

 Joan Dideon famously wrote “I don’t know what I think until I write it”. In March 2020, as backdrop to studio time came the shocking knowledge of the unfolding global scope of contagion and death, and the precipitous cut off from everything that had been normal. We were to be shut ins, suspicious of groceries, counter tops, family, friends, neighbors, store clerks, etc...as lethal spreaders. I felt urgently compelled to work in black and white, something I had never done before. With my dyes, threads, and mono prints I normally live squarely in a world of color. Now, without question the challenges of working with a colorless palette was compelling and appealing. I made several translations of drawings made with various marking mediums such as charcoal and ink to fiber. After doing three “textile drawings” and evaluating them I realized that all three had something in common: a blob of some sort encircled and overwhelmed by a bigger blob of sorts. Photo: CoVid 3. It was during this time I realized how faithful a barometer art can signal the times we witness.

 In the studio I work on several different scale projects. For me, the main value of a smaller project is that it keeps me going. Big projects take big time. So often it is hard to envision an actual end, and, then there is the vicissitude one needs to plow through that middle part of the project, when I seem to hate or doubt every step I take. So, small projects are a reward, and a gift that gets the ideas out faster.

 I tend to enjoy the many processes I’ve been involved with to date. I would say I’m not yet finished exploring Bojagi, nor textile drawings, nor stitch shibori, and certainly not dying, whether that be protein or cellulose fibers. For the time being, fascinating clay will have to make do with a rain check. As part of my artistic journey should a new concept begin to take shape and ripen in my percolating thoughts, and should that new concept warrant a new tool in my toolbox of techniques, I consider it a challenge to hunt it down, pursue and develop it.