DETROIT – The word “tapestry” conjures up medieval constructions in dark, simple palettes that convey religious rites and hunting motifs, but modern practitioners such as Ebony G. Patterson have demonstrated that the form belongs to the (second) Renaissance. Following the call of his textile practice, Detroit fiber artist Sam Dienst makes tapestries from small to large, deploying an arsenal of industrial threads to create playful, bright and unexpected compositions that give the medium a pleasant new face.
“I went to Arte Masso [Massachusetts College of Art and Design] in Boston in 2012, and at first I thought I wanted to do fashion,” said Dienst, who was born and raised in Connecticut. “And then I realized that I’m not into fashion, I like fabric, and clothing was like the most obvious thing you can do with fabric that looks like work.”
Dienst discovered textiles his junior year, and was initially challenged by the extensive setup, measurement and preparation work required to begin the manufacturing process, as well as the inevitable reluctance to tackle the rigidity of a mesh system. relationship between plot and deformation.
“The initial structure of textiles was not for my brain, but I took up textiles anyway,” laughed Dienst. “And then we had a little unit one of our semesters where we learned about tapestries and figured out how to weave a circle, which is the opposite of the loom, where everything wants to be rectangles and squares, or maybe triangles at most. . . . so to make something round. , you really have to go online.’
Suddenly able to hack the matrix, Dienst became obsessed.
“I was always painting and drawing,” she said, “and then I also loved textiles. This was like the perfect wedding, where I could be photographing, but also touching things.’
Dienst’s current output evokes the opposite of nets: the tapestries are painterly, dynamic and surreal. The movement that Dienst is able to bring out of the static rows of intersecting lines, often overlaid with touches, pearl embellishments and small areas of paint applied in the finishing stages, enhances the depth of field of the works. From one room to another, they could easily be mistaken for Pop Art paintings; only one edge of the twisted ends passing through the lower or outer edges of each finished piece shows the weaves. These threads could easily be tied, but Dienst takes them as a hint of the tapestry’s materiality, which can cause the viewer to come a little closer.
This may be the first reward for the long look It’s working, but it won’t be the last. Unlike the epic theme of traditional tapestries, he prefers to present paintings that are an amalgam of everyday objects, with whimsical touches, inside jokes and oblique cultural references spread throughout the still lifes of surrealist fibers.
“Most of my work is my stuff, anthropomorphized or Frankensteined together,” Dienst said. He doesn’t pull images from databases, preferring to pull his reference photos from objects collected through everyday interactions.
“So when I’m cooking dinner, and I really like the look of a bunch of vegetables, I’ll stop and take a picture of it, and then I’ll keep cooking because I like the way the shapes come together.” Dienst said. “I don’t want to take other people’s pictures, they don’t resonate as much for me. It’s a kind of self-portrait, because they are all my things, and I have these relationships with my things, especially with the things that are part of my rituals, with the habits I do every day.”
He gestured to a piece of work being done on the loom.
“I’m weaving the half-and-half box container that goes into the coffee every day right now,” he said. “Other people’s things don’t have that energy in them.”
Food is a recurring theme in Dienst’s work, along with plants, electrical outlets, kitchen utensils, make-up materials and art tools. Using his reference photos, Dienst begins by digitally assembling loose sketches for the composition, which he then translates into large freehand drawings on butcher paper, which he calls “cartoons.” The cartoons are magnetized behind the deformation, giving rough guidelines that hold his compositions, line by line, block by block, beginning the process of materializing the finished works, which can often take months.
In the act of weaving, Dienst’s gift for improvisation begins to shine again, as does his uncanny knack for surprising color combinations.
“All the colors are natural,” Dienst said. “If I chose my colors in advance, I would do a type of painting, and then I check. I have to play a game with myself.’
It’s a complicated game! Dienst loads his warp in a layer of bright colors, currently yellow, purple and blue. This detail, which is rarely seen in the finished work (except in the expressive bottom edges), helps her distinguish the white wall behind the loom as she weaves, offering her own visual search in her compositions. She also loves using thread to change colors, which leads to surreal gradations and deeper visual complexity. The results are attractive, visually dense, and also somehow childish – an effect that complements the way Dienst talks about his use of preset colors.
“I think of it as a Crayola palette,” Dienst said. “You have 24 crayons, and you’re working with them.”
“However, I have more than 24 crayons,” he added. laughing and gesturing to the storage bins of strings arranged in loose chromatic order. “I got a big set, but it still has this logic to it: you have these shades of blue to work with, and you can draw them together, but you still have to get so much out of it.”
Dienst came to the Detroit area for an MFA at Cranbrook – a place with a long history of textiles and looms. It’s heartening to see a graduate of a traditional craft-based institution emerge with such a fresh and forward-thinking spin on tapestry, even though Sam Dienst seems to have always forged his own path in fiber art, before and after. Cranbrook. Definitely a must-see – he’s creating a compelling portrait of a bold artist, sharp line after line.
