Monumental Tapestries by Jacqueline Surdell Invoke Forests as Portals to the Divine

"A lifelong athlete, Surdell gravitates toward a demanding, physical practice that often turns her body into a shuttle as she weaves on an oversized loom from a lift. Monumental steel bars stretching more than 20 feet wide hold the resulting hefty compositions of industrial nylon and cotton cording, which the artist creates through repetitive movement not unlike that which goes into training for competition."

"Connecting nature to narrative, the artist also loops in her Catholic upbringing and biblical undertones, particularly as it relates to places of epiphany. She considers forests to be "sacred thresholds," and in this line of thinking, her dynamic works become portals to the divine. "Looking out into the forest is very different from a painting of the forest because it is more about storytelling and mythmaking," she shares in a video interview."

Jacqueline Surdell likens her looping and knotting of rope to painting, treating interwoven fiber as gestural lines that surge across a surface. A lifelong athlete, Surdell works physically on an oversized loom from a lift, using repetitive movement to weave industrial nylon and cotton cording into hefty compositions supported by steel bars more than twenty feet wide. Her solo exhibition The Conversion: Rings, Rupture, and the Forest Archive centers transformation and reverence, drawing on a cosmic connection to her great uncle Paul and on Catholic and biblical ideas about epiphany. Printed polyester photographs of sunlight and sunsets integrate nature as active participant in memory and transcendence.

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