Decision Fields : paintings + textiles
- dym
- Jul 21, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 15
The visual by-products of a system that shows decisions, whether conscious or unconcious, intentional or accidental.
A record of patterns forming and bumping into other patterns, the result of myriad decisions and possibly changing intentions on the part of the "agent" who printed it then has a separate existence. This visual output or byproduct (of a process that has a life of its own as a game or conceptual investigation) will be either—or both—a painting and a functional textile.
Each image here is an example of the combination of one or more people (Miriam in collaboration with Hannah and River) using analog tools (specific wooden stamps, thickened dye, and linen) to investigate evolving and flexible pattern-generating prompts. The process, which I named Decision Field, allowed me to play out a range of pattern-not-pattern scenarios.
The most complex outputs of the Decision Fields process are paintings and, superfluously, functional textiles. (Perhaps not superfluously—having the ability to store or transform by cutting, sewing, embroidery, further dyeing, etc. unwanted experiments results is totally a bonus.) What the cloth is for—to be itself, or to serve a function—and how the "marks" add up to something beyond, yet inclusive of, pattern determine whether something is a painting or not. Sometimes a length of cloth is both, sometimes either-or. Back in the late 1950s or 1960s, an Italian artist experimented with selling paintings by the yard. My process is a cousin to those investigations, which imprint handmade objects with information about current market conditions for art.
Creating a painting-object on usable cloth has advantages—it can be draped, folded, sewn into loops, hung on a bar in space (instead of pinned rigidly to a wall), layered, and, if not wanted as "painting," turned into clothes, bags, bandanas, or rags.
This is a small selection. A few on @dymline on Instagram.
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