A year ago I created these first versions of woven portraits I called Pixels. They were made by weaving two similarly proportioned pen and ink portraits together after having cut them into strips. I have added light washes of color to enhance the definition of the features, hopefully without compromising the dissonance that I had originally attempted.
In my quest to weave I found a bag full of paper scraps that I had used in other projects . (Me, throw anything away?) Usually in various stages with no specific order I cut, paint and weave strips into
8”-10” squares and rectangles. Adding more washes of color and affixing the pen and ink features I create the portraits. Another source of material came from kids’ (classroom) rejects, mess ups, that would have ordinarily ended up in the trash. I collected them and cut them into strips to be woven as well.
I liked the rawness of the pieces but still something was missing. I had been basically following the same routine for about a year and a half, randomly weaving the strips and adding the features without any embellishment. Then on a whim and in a fit of spontaneity I decided to experiment on a couple pieces adding highlights and color for more definition. I liked what saw and within moments I began to attack entire batch of weaves, all 130 of them. Within a few hours I had finished. It took me another bunch of hours to photograph and upload them. But the results speak for themselves.
