26 Sep 2017

Drawn Threads

Beard and Weil Galleries, Wheaton College

Reviewed by Elizabeth Michelman

Curator Michele L'Heureux radicalizes "thread" to include sculpture and feigned textiles along with traditional stitchery. An archetypal bust, upholstered in pieced and quilted scraps of cloth by Leslie Schomp, raises a finger in calm benediction while a snake coils around her neck. J. Carpenter pierces the length of a roll of translucent paper with skeletal lines of royal-blue thread to map an architectural tour of 19th century cornices.

Antoinette Winters' eighteen-foot shelf of sixty overlapping panels of fluorescent floral lace drawings dazzles the eye from afar. Snippets of true blue, sky blue, lime green, neon pink, orange, purple and gold gyrate and skip like a breeding urban skyline. Winters has also created a spacious wall-drawing of lacy green and pink appliques cut out of Dura-Lar. Her fragmented forms hint at dancers, beetles, turtles, and scorpions. Scattered Lucite disks bearing fuchsia doilies project from the walls and delight with their perforated shadows.