Amanda McCavour @ Fibreworks 2014

Amanda McCavour, Black Cloud, 2014; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2014

Black Cloud is a radical departure from Amanda McCavour's machine-embroidered installations. It's very sexy in a playful S&M-meets-Kindergarten-art-class way.

Amanda McCavour, Black Cloud, 2014; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2014

At the opening, Amanda told me that she made this work while she was doing her MFA at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. She told me that at the beginning of her degree, her instructors would not permit her to use the sewing machine. They wanted her to recapture the mystery of making objects by hand quickly and directly. Her exquisite free-motion embroidered installations require a lot of designing and planning which can take the mystery out of the making process. They encouraged Amanda to experiment with basic materials and basically re-embrace the kinds of artistic activities that she did when she was in Kindergarten. Black Cloud has elements of construction-paper lanterns and crayon scribbles but her use of black removes all trace of childhood innocence. If she were to make this same piece in bright colours, it would read very differently.

Amanda McCavour, Black Cloud, 2014; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2014

Although Black Cloud is installation-based, like her much-lauded free-motion embroidery (FME) work, it is different in every other way. It is visually heavy and playfully ominous –– a contradiction. It is also opaque, whereas the FME work is light and transparent. I wonder if and how the essence of Black Cloud will be absorbed with her pre-MFA FME work. McCavour has built a reputation with her FME installations. Will she risk this by shifting the direction and tone of her work?

Amanda McCavour, Black Cloud, 2014; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2014

I love how the matte black materials reflect the light. 

Black Cloud, 2014, cut paper, toothpicks, thread, straws

Amanda McCavour artist statement: "This piece is a collection of lines, a drawing in space where materials become the mark. I am interested in a line's duality – its subtle quality versus its accumulative presence. This project came out of an exercise where I made a different work in my studio each day for ten days. I chose simple, readily available materials so that I could experiment more freely and openly. Paper, straws and toothpicks were among my many choices. Black Cloud is the result of gradually paring down, combining, altering, and then expanding the elements of my daily experiments within my studio. Within this work, I play with line, shape and surface."