The Fiber Game

Fiber Art- "The Fiber Game"

This article includes ways how artists are using traditional processes to create sculptural work.  Weaving is a traditional process that they used, starting off two dimensional, then figuring out that they could create three- dimensional forms.  It was a difficult transition, but they figured out that just changing the structure of the warp would enable them to do so.  What became largely recognized and used in the 1970’s was, “An oft-lampooned popular craze for macramé knotting, the procedure used by many of the sculpture weavers attests to the degree of the fiber hangings penetration into public consciousness.”  Museum exhibitions called it “the first time” that fiber was equal to clay. 

         Rossbach used the cat’s cradle process to make works, describing it as a repeated rhythmic progression of movements.  Rossbach included breastbone and ribs, as well as bundles of wood to make the pieces. Rossbach talks about all of this in his article, “The Fiber Game”, and also discusses sticking to the basics for the process, and using materials that were stumbled upon, “food wrappers, garbage bags, newspaper, cardboard, masking tape, plastic tubing, and even kitsch plastic trinkets.”

         Also discussed in this article is works made by hand and tapestries woven to look like a painted cartoon. These weavers worked by weaving off the loom, knotting, crocheting, quilt stitching, braiding and knitting, as well as sometimes on the loom.  As well as “Women’s Work”, and the factors about and leading up to the Womanhouse. Finally, the article ends with discussing Anne Wilson and Fiber art as a dead end.