Laura Foster Nicholson's Ribbons
"My woven work aspires to fill space with a sense of alertness, inquiry, and transformation. There is both calmness and exuberance in pattern. The idea is to fill a plane with enough information to mesmerize, to create movement and flow and depth using units of repetition either exactly the same, or merely similar. This work is concerned with physicality as well as a kind of transcendence; it is deliberately tangible, made to be objectified, yet offers a sense of well-being and contemplation which is as important to the process of making it as the experience of living with it afterward."
"In recent years I have become increasingly interested in taking my idiosyncratically patterned weavings off the wall and placing them on found furniture, to re-examine ideas about upholstery and function. Flirting with the idea of what patterned fabric means as something to be manufactured and produced in quantity, these fabrics and the objects they cover remain one-of-a-kind and obstinately artist-made."
"Most recently, my work in ribbons reflects the same concerns as my hand made tapestries. Ribbon is the industrial equivalent of the tapestry: an ornate and often elaborate woven textile, its only function is to provide decoration, richness, and a sense of delight."
Laura's ribbons are works of art to be enjoyed on home furnishings, wearables......any of your sewing projects.
May 2003: Congratulations to Laura! Eighteen (18) of her ribbons have been added to the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, in New York. Tomatoes, Chard, Cakes, Trees, Pears, Manikins in Ivory & Aqua, and all 6 Labyrinths. There were several other ribbons which we do not carry at this time.
