ADDING ON: IMPRESSIONS AT AN ART EXHIBITION

BY CLAUDIA CHAPLINE

My favorite old sweater is full of holes and raveled edges. The wind blows through it spinning me like a top. I think I am going somewhere until I stop. Where did I want to go? I forgot. When I mend one hole, another pops open. When I trim the loose threads, another one falls loose. I could condense what’s left into a felted head cozy. Better to undo it all thread by thread, un-looping un-knitting reversing all the previous working—roll the yarn into balls of autumn colors, russet purple and ochre, retrieve my tools and start over, knit one pearl two, up down, loop over under, over and over again, and again repeat, repeat renew make new another sweater from the same old yarn, just like the stories my grandmother told me in the kitchen while she stirred the soup.

CLAUDIA CHAPLINE is a curator and gallerist in Northern California. The above is an excerpt from Chapline’s essay about the exhibition, ADDING ON: Repetition with Variation for Carol Newborg, Jane Brucker, Kevin Nierman, Carole Beadle, and Nancy Macko, in San Rafael, California, June 2010.