Web of
Europe

Concept 1
Concept 2
Mercury...
"Map"
Paraphrases
Exhibitions
Sponsors
Links

Home
Contact
Copyright
Ieva Krumina
 
Please, wait for the image to be loaded! Work of Ieva Krumina
25. Ieva Krumina Latvia

Previous artist     Next artist

Tapestry is something very personal: it accumulates its weaver’s attention, energy, and thoughts in a peculiar way, sometimes keeping them inside itself, sometimes giving them back. I feel this at the moments when the work in progress seems to be taking shape by itself: suddenly various technical problems are solved or particularly difficult areas ‘get woven easily’. In tapestry, the most essential thing for me is its capacity to embody a lot of time, history, and stories, plus its concentrating of the artist’s energy, which continuously interacts with the viewer.

      I think that the artist should be together with his or her work all the time: from the moment the idea is conceived to the time the ready work is taken off the loom. I think highly of tapestry workshops and their contribution to the development of this branch of art, but I do know that it is only I who can impart meaning, tonality, and nuances in the execution of work that I have conceived. And, furthermore, in the work process quite often both the tapestry and I myself alter. That’s why I still find tapestry-weaving so fascinating. Weaving has some parallels with performance of a musical piece: a composition can be interpreted much more easily by its creator. Other performers will present only their versions of it, which, of course, can be successful and brilliant, albeit different.

      Never before had I had such a direct and personal contact with eighteenth-century tapestry. The chosen motif itself offered the direction to follow: a woman’s portrait on a vase became the portrait of Bacchus’s (Dionysus’s) mother Semele in my interpretation. As we know from Graeco-Roman mythology, she was dazzled and burnt by Zeus’s (Jupiter’s) divine brightness. The portrait is framed to remind us of our origin: even if our father is a god from Olympus, our mother is a mortal woman. And little Bacchus will remember that. The myth has it that as an adult he descended into Pluto’s underworld of the dead and led his mother out of it to be with gods on Mount Olympus. (...)