I love working on larger scale projects. They often grow to take on a life of their own, my original idea becoming stonger, and then distilling that idea to its most focused message. Ami Network is for the upcoming show Contact 2018. Please be patient as I really need to work on my photography skills or learn how to create artwork that is easier to photograph =)
Ami Network has been two years in the making with the original thoughts regarding nets & networks after having met several ghost net artists combined with receiving a large amount of colored telephone wire. The plastic coating, in great color combinations over copper wire, is lovely to work with, easy to crochet, and easy to use in the handmade traditional hi’a.
Ami Network is an autobiographical piece, a visual of my connections with people both near and far from my personal Contact Zone with Hawai’i. I began with a couple of ideas as to how to complete my Ami Network installation and I have tested those ideas. I was greatly concerned my original tapestry idea would be just a messy hodgepodge so I felt it needed some kind of order such as presenting it in a chandelier form. The more work I completed on the ghost net and telephone wire tapestry section, the happier I have become with it. The chandelier idea started out great, but after much work, a fair amount of tweaking, I realized, the end result would simply be more, not better. Therefore I am editing back down to one of my original presentation ideas…as simply a large, beautiful tapestry.
Contact Hawaii 2018 runs from April 6 – 22 in various locations on Oahu. You can follow my day to day progress via Instagram: Studio Deanna
Abbreviated Artist Statement – Stitching the fabric of a loose kind of tapestry starting with Ghost Nets(fishing nets) collected on the beaches; drifting, washing ashore, battered, collected, a piecing together of community. I will be adding to the Ghost Net pieces with the techniques I learned in the Net Making class at Na Mea. The word for both netting and network in Japanese is ami, which is also the word for things made of yarn. It is knit groups in both countries that has helped me stitch a life together.
I continue to grapple with my impact in Hawai’i, on the planet, with my activities, both physically and with the people I meet. Is this life capturing culture as my unwitting victims? Or am I stitching a beautiful community together as is my hope?