Multidisciplinary artist Michelle Yi Martin has been connected with textiles all her life.
“I grew up in a family where everyone in my family touched cloth,” says Yi Martin, whose current exhibit at the Monterey Museum of Art displays stunning examples of her fiber works, which connect with her Korean ancestry. “My grandmother was always mending something. She was an avid bojagi patchwork quilter, which is a very Korean type of textile.”
With bojagi, pieces are sewn together by hand using very fine stitching, a process reflected in Yi Martin’s delicate hanging pieces. “For Survival” is a long, ethereal, net-like piece woven from copper and nettle on a floor loom.
“I’m such a sucker for materials, so I tried copper wire. Then I tried nettle with copper, which is also really ridiculous,” says Yi Martin, because nettle is fragile and therefore harder to thread on a loom.
Lit from above and surrounded by a halo of light, vertical strands of copper bounce radiance back at the viewer – but it’s the play of shadows looming at the bottom that recall one of Yi Martin’s artistic influences.
Careful observers may recognize similar concerns in that of another well-known California artist, Ruth Asawa, whose permanent installation at the de Young Museum in San Francisco also plays with concepts of light, transparency, shadow and depth.
“Spectrogram 1” and “Spectrogram 2” are examples that showcase light weaving – a process in which Yi Martin creates a colorful woven panel and then documents, via photography or videography, what happens when woven materials catch sunlight.
“I’ll try to weave with whatever’s available,” Yi Martin says. Another unusual example is when she started weaving light strips from the old acrylic light shells that her photographer husband had on hand.
“I often notice there’s a completely different reflection happening, and the reflections take on a different shape. It gets me excited about something not that you can hold on to, but experience.”
Weaving also connects Yi Martin to her family in a metaphysical way: “I really feel transported and more connected to the universe – it’s more than pretty to look at. It’s awe-inspiring.”
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.