Mary Kester: Pushing the Boundaries of Image and Dimension

Baldwinsville resident Mary Kester is not your typical fiber artist. The title of her new show, Pushing Tapestry: Image and Dimension, is an apt one, as her work defies preconceived notions of what tapestry looks like. She explained her process in a recent interview with Carousel:

TRIPLE CITIES CAROUSEL: When most people hear the word tapestry, they associate it with medieval wall hangings. Your tapestries are very different, and very unique.

MARY KESTER: Medieval tapestries originally were created to fill two roles: insulation and aesthetics. They were representational, presenting "pictures" of people, animals, objects. They developed themes and told stories and beautified the room, all while helping keep it warmer by covering the bare stone walls. I've made mine to be objets d'art, merging image and dimension, each one a unique shape. I've drawn on landscape, human form, and, for some time now, Neolithic stone sites, abstracting their forms and colors, as well as employing three dimensions and irregular edges. They would seem to go against the "rules" of tapestry, but nevertheless, that's what they are.

TCC: You have a BA in art from the University of Northern Iowa and an MFA from Syracuse University, where you studied a wide variety of art forms including drawing, painting, printmaking, jewelry making, and papermaking, as well as fiber art. You also studied art history, which certainly would have included an examination of medieval tapestries. From this variety of art forms, what drew your interest to the creation of tapestries?

MK: My undergraduate degree in art exposed me to all the usual art forms, but by graduation I had embraced fiber as my primary genre. Early on in my career, I worked in basketry, crochet, netting, felting, and knotting techniques, as ways of experimenting with form. A bit before beginning my MFA program at Syracuse University in 1979, I had woven a few tapestries, but it was my time at SU that confirmed my commitment to tapestry. I found that my undergraduate experiences - especially in drawing, painting, and printmaking - were very instrumental in developing my vision of tapestry. In fact, after graduation in 1981, I taught fiber at SU for three years, and encouraged students to take plenty of drawing and art history classes as well.

TCC: What is it about creating art in tapestry form that draws you, as opposed to other art forms?

MK: An artist embraces a primary emphasis for a variety of reasons. Mine is fiber because of a personal affinity for the organic aspects of wool and cotton. I love the feel of the fibers in my hands - their tactile quality and substance - and then revel in the process of combining them into an object. That my fiber objects are now exclusively tapestries stems from my interest in image, which is all-important. I intend for the tapestry itself to be an image, with other images - as especially with my Neolithic stone site pieces - appearing in the work's design and dimensions. I want to merge object and image, not merely make pictures.

TCC: How do you come up with the ideas for new pieces?

MK: I've found inspiration for my tapestries in a number of sources: personal experience, travel, intellectual design questions, and, most dramatically for me, in Neolithic stone sites. In 1995 on a trip to Ireland, I had something of an epiphany of sorts after visiting a site called Creevykeel, near Sligo. I was entranced by the sense of it being a place held sacred by ancient people. The mystery surrounding these sites - I've visited them in France and England as well - has led me to interpret them in tapestries: fairly representative early on, but becoming increasingly abstract. Indeed, my most recent ones are barely recognizable as stone sites at all. They have become illusionistic, perhaps complementary of the mysteries surrounding the sites' origins and purposes.

TCC: What are the logistics of creating such large pieces?

MK: I weave on a scaffold loom in a studio with a thirteen-foot ceiling, which allows me the flexibility to make tapestries of various sizes. The process is essentially the same as that used by medieval weavers, beginning at floor level and ascending up the loom as high as the tapestry needs to be, with a drawing, or "cartoon" of the design attached behind the warp. This involves ladders, a scaffold, and, to create a third dimension for a tapestry, moving from front to back and back to front, working on both sides of the loom. It's a deliberate process; I produce, essentially, two pieces a year. I tend to measure output by season: there's a spring/summer tapestry and a fall/winter one.

TCC: What can our readers expect to see at your exhibit at the Salati Gallery?

MK: I hope viewers of the exhibit at the Salati Gallery will find the tapestries intriguing because of their illusions - especially the contrasts between depth and surface, and depictions of solid stone by pliable fiber.

Pushing Tapestry opens at the Salati Gallery on First Friday June 2nd with an artist’s reception from 6-9pm. The show runs through the end of July; an additional reception is planned for First Friday July 7th, also from 6-9pm. The gallery, located at 204 State Street in Binghamton, is open First Fridays from 6-9pm, and Saturdays from 11am-3pm. Further information about the artist can be found at marykester.com; gallery information can be found online at oraziosalati.com or by calling (607) 772-6725.