Elin Noble, a textile artist, will be the featured speaker at the annual board meeting of the Friends of the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery on June 5. Her talk begins at 3 p.m. in the Home Economics Building, Room 11, on East Campus.
The talk is free and open to the public. A reception hosted by the Friends will follow in the Hillestad Gallery. Visitors will be able to view “Vox Stellarum.”
“Vox Stellarum,” or “Voice of the Stars,” is Noble’s response to a copperplate engraving from the 1731 book “Physica Sacra” by Swiss natural scientist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. The book, and the particular image that inspired Noble’s installation, reflect the time before the Enlightenment period, when ideas about the nature of beauty were evolving and conflicts between faith and scientific questioning arose.
“Vox Stellarum” will be on view at the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery from June 6 to Sept. 16. The gallery is on the second floor of the Home Economics Building, 35th and Holdrege streets, on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus.
Noble is the award-winning author of “Dyes and Paints: A Hands-On Guide to Coloring Fabric.” She holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in fiber from the University of Washington, and over several decades has built an extensive portfolio of exhibitions, classes, lectures and television appearances. She lives and works in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Using hand-dyeing and clamp-resist techniques, Noble creates an environment in which the interplay of light, shadow, transparency and cloth allude to the mystical dimensions of a natural world that science has yet to fully explain.
Asked in 2007 to respond to a particular image in the Scheuchzer text for an exhibition at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Noble said she “wanted to create an expansive and flowing space, filled with darkness and light. The space [in the drawing] created by the multitude of lines, as well as the optical flickering, reminded me of the moiré patterns created by layering silk organza, and I knew I wanted to establish a repeat pattern playing opacity against transparency.”
The complete installation of “Vox Stellarum” or panels from the collection have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Ohio, Canada and elsewhere. The latest installation of Noble’s panels in the newly renovated Hillestad Gallery will be complemented by a video projection that she created in collaboration with Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design faculty member Michael Burton.
“We focused on the moiré patterns that were created in the overlap of the silk panels,” Burton said. “The result amplifies the visual dazzle of the moiré phenomenon for the viewer and adds another experiential dimension to the show.”
Noble will return in September to lead a dyeing workshop under the auspices of the Nebraska Fiberarts Initiative. The workshop will be Sept. 13 to 16 in the surface design studios of the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design. For more information, call 402-472-2911 or click here.
