Linger in a forest made of fabric

Exhibit at the Craft Museum spotlights two textile artists

By RANDALL BARTON

The Portland Tribune, Feb 5, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

NORA ATKINSON / BELLEVUE ARTS MUSEUM

Mandy Greer uses fabric and found objects to create woven chandeliers that conjure up a fantasy forest.

“As a child, I couldn’t ride in the car without weaving my fingers,” Mandy Greer remembers. She still has busy digits.

As an artist, Greer taps into a childlike sense of wonderment, using yarn, beads, shells and other found objects to conjure a story in the minds of the viewers.

In her installation at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, entitled “Dare alla Luce” (“to give to the light”), Greer creates a verdant forest of woven chandeliers with hanging fabric vines that segues to a dark celestial environment replete with shining fabric stars and black, plumed owls and pelicans. The space is dreamlike, a stage setting for chimera that exists only in the viewer’s mind.

The piece speaks to a human longing to return to the forest, Greer says.

“As humans, we are really only animals dressed up in clothes. A part of us wants to leave behind the trappings of being human and lay down in the forest. We are torn between the forest and the city. But in the end, we turn back to the intellect, to the city.”

Her piece allows the viewer to dwell in the forest, or, in the sense of theater, linger on the set.

“Here,” Greer says, “you can have the bodily experience of being inside a heightened reality and stay as long as you want.”

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