Evolving
the
Cloth
Rachel Meginnes
b y
K a t h r y n
G r e m l e y
An unremarkable length of cloth—plain
weave, simple cotton—lays across the table in
Rachel Meginnes’s North Carolina studio. On a
nearby ironing board sits a folded collection of
flour and feedsacks of paled prints and texts. The
loft is nearly devoid of tools larger than what will
fit in her hand. Works in progress are pinned to
the walls, mixed with pieces she hestitates to
identify as complete.
Meginnes’s initial training and skill as a
weaver are sublimely evident. Textile knowledge
and proficiency are at the core of her cloth
manipulations, and a grid of woven structure is
the foundation on which she builds each piece.
Although Meginnes now works from lengths of
industrially produced cloth, her process began
years ago at the loom. A reverence for traditional
textiles began with her pragmatic Vermont
upbringing and continued at Earlham, a Quaker
college in Indiana. She garnered a strong base in
functionality and workmanship with a rug
weaver in Maine. Work and study travels in New
Zealand and Nepal, followed by a six-year international venture in carpet design, further fortified the relevance of handwork in her studio
practice.
Living in Morioka, Japan, for two years
following her undergraduate studies, Meginnes
learned geometric and picture ikat, shibori, and
indigo dyeing. Her current work is unmistakably
infused with Japan’s architectural and cultural
interplay of wear and renewal in mended boro
cloth and sakiori rag weaving, its aged indigo
stains and faded prayer cloths. There is no artifice
in the subtle presence of Asian textile culture,
just as references to New England quilt traditions
come from the artist’s own genetic heritage.
Meginnes evokes an imprecise domestic
familiarity in Forum Quilt (Ticking II) through the
use of reclaimed mattress fabric and quilt patterns pieced from printed matter. The essence of
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the work, however, is embedded in her process
rather than an implied narrative. Text and images
borrowed from magazine pages deteriorate in
the image transfer, and this inherent loss of clarity is embraced by the artist. Primarily drawn to
these pages for color, she relates to the sourcing
of this material in the same way a traditional quilter pulls from a stash of old fabric. Introspective
and articulate, she possesses a discerning appreciation of both historic and contemporary textiles.
“Over time, my priorities shifted and I
realized that my actual impetus lay in wanting to
alter the structure of the cloth and to shift the
nature of my materials. The process itself became
a metaphor for what I think of as ‘daily life’—that
of repetitive action and effort over time.”
What Meginnes seems to value most is
labor of the hand in its most honest permutation.
The endeavor of constructing the work is of
prime importance and provides its underlying
structure, both literally and metaphorically. In
Drop Stitch (in White), the traditional technique of
pulled thread embroidery is used to methodically
cinch the structure, constructing a network of
transparency across the cloth. Meginnes deconstructs Drop Stitch (in Blue) with contradictory
logic—first utilizing the labor-intensive
pulled thread embroidery to open up the cloth
structure, subsequently cutting it apart, and
ultimately repiecing the textile before applying
gesso and ink to the surface. The laborious task
of manipulating the cloth is focused contemplative time for her, requiring both manual and
emotional perseverance.
Work of this magnitude is often categorized as obsessive, an adjective that is neither
appropriate nor evident in Meginnes’s creative
process. She feels liberated by these meditative
technical acts, as they allow a form of
spontaneous variation in the otherwise matrix-
Surface Design Journal
© Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.
RACHEL MEGINNES Ticking (II) Gesso, acrylic, ink, textile, pulled thread embroidery, magazine transfer, 72" x 63.5", 2012. All photos by the artist.
Winter2014
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29
RACHEL MEGINNES Jentel Gesso, acrylic, ink, textile, hand drawn threadwork in 2 layers, 28" x 54" inches, 2012. Detail RIGHT.
controlled structure of the cloth. This is a compelling idea—that a technique could appear
tedious but is, in fact, a mode that encourages
improvisation. Meginnes’s aesthetic points to
examinations of abstract and minimalist art,
where rigid strictures that seem confining actually provide a perimeter to focus tightly on the
freedoms that remain.
Meginnes began pulling threads from
her woven structures with symbolic intent in
graduate school at the University of Washington.
Her initial interest in this act of removal was to
record specific quantitative information, which
she used to represent a conceptual accummulation or loss. She began the piece In Silence by
pulling threads from panels of linen canvas to
represent dead or injured soldiers, in reference to
the casualties of the Iraq War. She worked
chronologically from the first day of the war
through the first day of her thesis show in May of
2005. After each day, she would ink the panel
using india ink to acknowledge her grief in hearing the statistics. In the following days, she
applied traditional whitewash on top of the
worked surface. The whitewash caked up and
cracked over the threads, thus filling in the holes
to reflect her process of “moving on” over time.
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When asked about the origins of this
deconstructivist method, Meginnes refers to
herself as an inquisitive observer looking to
reconfigure objects in her path. “X, y, and z have
already been decoded—now what can I do with
it?” Her instinct to abrade the textiles with sandpaper is a consequence of this untethered curiousity. Meginnes began sanding down through
the layers of cloth, both uniting fibers and
embedding pigment, while also discovering the
inherent fragility of the woven structure. The
introduction of this unorthodox technique signaled a pivotal shift for Meginnes, away from the
finished piece being the primary motivation to
her process becoming increasingly paramount.
“The sanding element came in years
later as an attempt to expose the layers I had created and covered up. After letting go of my rug
business and coming to terms with that difficult
decision, I vowed to return to my work in a way
that gave energy back to me. That meant making
work for myself rather than for what I thought
other people wanted. When I picked up cloth
again, I took a different approach and focused
solely on the acts that I enjoyed—manipulating
structure by hand and sharing evidence of my
process using layers of paint and ink.”
Surface Design Journal
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Jentel deliberately reads as a dichotomy—
a double layer of cloth, representing the
desolate landscape and the disquiet blaze
of hunter’s orange…
The inclination to further disrupt the grid
is unmistakable in White Blanket. Here she reconstructs the remainders of previous pieces, using
seams and margins to break with linear rigidity.
While researching the structural use of hides in
Native American Indian dwellings, Meginnes
began extracting and breaking down the design.
The hides stretched taut and released, the organic
edges sewn and bound. She examines the use of
these traditional elements and places them into a
contemporary context. Referencing historical
objects has deepened her understanding of the
relationship between handwork and the resonance of the finished piece.
Meginnes’s evolution of the cloth and
the lean toward a more painterly approach has
loosened her self-imposed controls, now consenting to use fewer formal structural conventions,
such as right angles and discernable grids. The
resulting work is exquisitely honest—mapping
her technical process and meditative practice. “I
became willing to risk more, taking away cloth
through pulling, cutting, and sanding to deconstruct and reconstruct new relationships using
commonplace materials and techniques.”
The physical act of breaking down the
cloth requires a disciplined trust. The possibility
of destruction fuels her attention, targeting the
moment when she must lift her hand from the
cloth. She seems to thrive on these games of risk
and skill, as in the momentary but irreversable
act of applying ink in the final stages. Prepared
for loss, either through the dissolution of the fiber
on a small scale or the loss of the entire piece,
Meginnes pushes past what she already knows
and where she is comfortable in the search for
unfamiliar, unexpected interactions in her
materials.
Sensitive complexity is achieved in
Meginnes’s work through a minimalist vocabulary, raw vulnerable surfaces, and a calculated use
of color. Jentel deliberately reads as a dichotomya double layer of cloth, representing the desolate
landscape and the disquiet blaze of hunter’s
orange revealed in the open gridwork. The equilibrium of color and translucency, the fragile bond
between whole and fragmented cloth, speaks
specifically to the location and time that the work
was created. She identifies the color choices in
Jentel as refering to her experience with the
Wyoming winter landscape surrounding her temporary studio at the time. This connection to
place, albeit subtle and abstracted, is present in
all of Meginnes’s work.
A current three-year residency at
Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North
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© Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.
© Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.
ABOVE: RACHEL MEGINNES Untitled (White Blanket) Gesso, acrylic, ink, textile, hand drawn threadwork,
machine stitching, 38" x 34.5", 2013. LEFT, INSET: RACHEL MEGINNES Drop Stitch (in Blue) Gesso, acrylic, ink, textile, pulled thread
embroidery, machine stitching, 48" x 41", 2013. With detail.
Carolina, has offered Meginnes an opportunity for profuse experimentation and an occasion to embrace unpredictability. This is her
time—to address the path of the work, confront the doubts, examine the strength of her
intuition, and respond accordingly. She
speaks both of being present in the work and
during the work. Without doubt, Meginnes
will continue to disassemble and redefine her
personal matrix in a cycle of wear and mend.
She refers to this as “a balance of give and
take, fix and break, start and stop—all culminating in a simple and unified act of beauty.”
Rachel Meginnes’s website is www.plainweave
studios.com. Her work is included in Fiberart
International 2013 at the Franklin G. Burroughs–
Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, SC
(through April 24, 2014), www.fiberartinternational
.org; and Fail Safe: Discomforts Close to Home
(curated by Surface Design Journal editor Marci Rae
McDade) at Craft Alliance Grand Center Gallery in
St. Louis, MO (February 7–April 20, 2014),
www.craftalliance.org.
—Kathryn Gremley is an arts writer, curator, and
gallery director at Penland School of Crafts in
Penland, NC. www.penland.org
Winter2014
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© Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.