Wednesday Wonder: Miles and Miles

...These installations so ethereal they become 

like these frozen layers of light....

~ Gabriel Dawe, Mixed-Media and Installation Artist

If you've ever wondered what an artist can do with ordinary sewing thread and a pole, wonder no more. Just be amazed. The installation artist Gabriel Dawe of Dallas, Texas, who came to the United States by way of Mexico and Canada, has created for the "State of the Art" exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art a 20-foot-tall sculpture, plexus no. 27, comprising thread that he has stretched between the ceiling and the floor so that subtle shifts in color occur as the eye moves across the piece. In the short below, Dawe explains the "Zen-like process" and concentration needed for this work, which required an estimated 40 miles to 60 miles of sewing thread in 16 colors. His dialogue with the space in which he worked was "the most challenging" aspect of the installation's creation, producing an artwork that "is almost kinetic". A photograph, he says, does not do justice to the work's richness.

The Crystal Bridges exhibition, in Benton, Arkansas, remains on view through January 19, 2015. Download the State of the Art mobile app on iTunes. To see more of the artworks in the exhibition, click on the exhibition link above.

(My thanks to PBS NewsHour Art Beat for the link.)