Interloop/Wind as Weft is a collaborative site specific installation by Mary Lou Riordon and Joan Caplan on October 9, 1990 in Calgary, Alberta.
Nose Hill Park was chosen because it is an unmanipulated natural environment. The specifics of the site were simple and powerful: land, wind, sun, the unpredictability of weather conditions. All became integral to the piece. We added fibre in a time frame that was set by the sun. We began at sunrise and by nightfall there was little to indicate that we has stopped by. A variety of fibre stretched back and forth across the valley to accentuate on the one hand the land formations, and on the other, the changes in the quality of light. It was ever changing, a weaving: the weft woven by the wind.
The process used in making the work was devised to span the valley without trampling the underbrush. We were two women, one on each side of the valley, wearing aprons laden with hammer and nails, firmly connected to each other at waist level with a fifty foot clothesline pulley system. It was a celebration of women's labor, and intention, and activity with colours flying. The process of passing the fibre one to the other was symbolic, a touching, as was the pinning of string to the ground with a nail. And by the time of the opening, there we were using clothes lines, wearing aprons, a sight (site) similar to work in the home.
Nose Hill Park was chosen because it is an unmanipulated natural environment. The specifics of the site were simple and powerful: land, wind, sun, the unpredictability of weather conditions. All became integral to the piece. We added fibre in a time frame that was set by the sun. We began at sunrise and by nightfall there was little to indicate that we has stopped by. A variety of fibre stretched back and forth across the valley to accentuate on the one hand the land formations, and on the other, the changes in the quality of light. It was ever changing, a weaving: the weft woven by the wind.
The process used in making the work was devised to span the valley without trampling the underbrush. We were two women, one on each side of the valley, wearing aprons laden with hammer and nails, firmly connected to each other at waist level with a fifty foot clothesline pulley system. It was a celebration of women's labor, and intention, and activity with colours flying. The process of passing the fibre one to the other was symbolic, a touching, as was the pinning of string to the ground with a nail. And by the time of the opening, there we were using clothes lines, wearing aprons, a sight (site) similar to work in the home.
" On October 9,1990, Joan Caplan and Mary Lou Riordon Sello presented a two part installation, in situ on Nose Hill in north Calgary, and at the Marion Nicoll Gallery of the Alberta College of Art. This work encompassed an element of performance, and a range of media from weaving to videotape. The core of the installation took place on a slope of Nose Hill Park where the two women worked together to warp a variety of threads and strings across two descending gullies. This ephemeral web, anchored by removable spikes, encroached minimally upon the environment, while the varied colors of the spliced threads echoed the autumnal colours of the scrub. As the title suggests, the wind tugged at these chords, producing a stunning visual effect. The work was completed throughout the day and removed the same night. Viewers were invited to watch the process in the late afternoon.
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What set the outdoor work apart from a traditional sculptural intervention into the landscape was the manner in which Caplan and Riordon-Sello, one on each side of the gap, attached themselves to each other using a clothesline pulley mechanism. Threads were shuttled from one to the other on this umbilical cord, while they gave instructions to each other or conversed with the viewers. The deliberate and seemingly casual nature of the activity displaced urgency from the making of an object, the transformation or colonization of material, to the symbolic relationships contained in the activity itself. By emphasizing their own interaction, the choice of weaving as a medium in a nontraditional form, and the integration of nature as partner into their work, Caplan and Riordon-Sello explored their identity as women and the nature of "women's work" within western cultural history, as well as their ontological relation with the world in general. As a consequence, they drew attention to the implicit "maleness" of modern artistic conventions."
Rob Milthorp
INTERLOOP/WIND AS WEFT
Joan Caplan and Mary Lou Riordon-Sello
Alberta College of Art
October 9 1990
Artichoke magazine
"The notion of women working together or writing their own histories and understandings of the world has been repressed, just as the importance of their existing contribution to culture has been neglected, and activities such as weaving pejoratively relegated to "craft". Caplan and Riordon-Sello's work on Nose Hill, guided by their interest in feminist critique, was emphatically social, celebrating their work as a function of their own identities and relationship. The viewer became part of the environment, part of the piece itself. Even the generous offerings of refreshments, which has become such an expected and jaded feature opening receptions, in these circumstances contributed to an unusual bonding of the participants. Consequently, "art" appeared as a reflection of, rather than as subject of, these women's activity."
Rob Milthorp
INTERLOOP/WIND AS WEF
Joan Caplan and Mary Lou Riordon-Sello
Alberta College of Art
October 9 1990
Artichoke magazine
"And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends...But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all great women of fiction were until Jane Austen's days, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a women's life is that..."
Virginia Woolf
A ROOM OF ONE"S OWN
Interloop/ Wind as Weft celebrated and was symbolic of the many significant ways women connect with and relate to each other. Each aspect of the installation talked about working together. Being supported by,,,communicating with...the energy between...sharing the load...sharing the fun...being energized by...supporting...relying on... When asked if this piece was radical or benign, I wondered about the idea of a close relationship between women, its radicality, its ability to seem, to look latent or benign: do close relationships between women hold a threatening quality - women's empowerment- which can seemingly be subverted or controlled by naming: invalid inconsequential invisible unauthorized benign ?
from an artist statement December 1990. Joan Caplan
from an artist statement December 1990. Joan Caplan
"In the gallery space, over a period of a week, a display of slide and video documentation of the event was combined with a sculptural arrangement of canvas sheets on opposing walls. These sheets were pulled tautly towards each other with threads woven across the room, reflecting the activity on Nose Hill" Rob Miltorp |
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