As a young painting student at the Bauhaus, Anni Albers (1899-1994) saw that painting was, even in the that modernist academy, still considered a male preserve. Even young aesthetic revolutionaries were still infected by the misogyny of bygone decades. Albers took the hint, transferring to textile design, and eventually proved that a traditional “woman’s medium” could lead to abstract work as powerful and poetic as that of her husband, Josef Albers, or her teacher, Paul Klee.
The dozen woven artworks in Amy Hamley’s exhibition, “A New Place to Be From,” demonstrate Albers’ imaginative material-based approach, which may be a product of the artist’s recent residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut. For Hamley, being creative is not so much the desire to do something as it is listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of the materials. The material itself is full of suggestions for its use when approached receptively.
Another key influence on Hamley is the intricate lacemaking tradition of the Baroque Era, exemplified in Dutch masters group portraits, highlighted by touches of luxury relieving the unadorned Calvinist black fabric. Hamley’s works incorporate small pieces of porcelain within the woven fabric. The feminine fiber is born of nature. The masculine artifact is the porcelain, standing in metonymically for classical Greco-Roman white marble, or bone, or teeth. Some might interpret this marriage of opposites in metaphorical or mystical terms. I see them as attempts at preservation, or even healing. Hamley studied art therapy in college, and her slow, ritualistic working method suggests remediation.
