Andrea Donnelly
For fiber artist Andrea Donnelly, the loom is a tool for mark-making, along with other materials like ink, dyes, and found items like milkweed pods. And making art is a full-body experience. When she finishes a piece, it contains not only the woven cloth and ink that we see, but also the marks of her body. The tension of opposing concepts also plays a big role in Andrea’s work - the discipline of weaving and the impulsivity of painting on cloth with ink, the presence of time and the shadow of memory, density and transparency, even the literal weaving, unweaving, and reweaving of cloth. What results is gorgeous and complicated, work that you want to spend time with. We spent some time with Andrea recently, ahead of her new solo show, Theorems and Poems, now on view at the Reynolds Gallery in Richmond.
“Weaving is about carving into a memory. It’s a really physical thing. . . . I’m just so in love with the wildness that is a human being. Somehow, doing those physical actions is a kind of performance in which I am the subject matter and I’m the observer. Being that, I’m drawing conclusions not just about myself but about being a human being. That inkblot is the record of every thread I pulled out and put back in.”
Paige hosts the LookSEE podcast and is a freelance audio producer, an art lover, and a lifelong Richmonder. Her favorite place to be is in a museum. A close second is a bookstore.
