Tina Cassara and David Sapp:Threads, Lines, Traces

Opening reception for exhibition Threads, Lines, Traces on Sept. 18 from 5-8 pm with talks by artist Tina Cassara and artist, poet and novelist David Sapp at 6:15 pm. Threads, Lines, Traces draws upon a subtle interplay between the line of a fiber construction, a graphite line drawn on paper and line as word. Tina Cassara\u27s most recent fiber-based work directly influenced David Sapp\u27s 2014 graphite on paper drawings. Cassara, with computer aided embroidery and subsequent handwork, always in black thread, creates exceedingly delicate, three dimensional, wall hung pieces. Earlier work is made up of complexly interlocked, densely stacked, delineated words from immigrant working women\u27s songs. In her current work, Cassara is moving to abstracted, open, subtly repeating, interlinked forms that drape away from the wall into space, swaying in the slightest current of air. Cassara\u27s current fiber artwork joins her art making interpretation of women\u27s labors in textile mills with the relationship between drawing, writing, and thread as line, text and textiles. She has been considering the semiotic relationships between words and fiber and their revelation in her own work. The word line is related to the Latin linea, which originally meant a thread made from flax (linen); the word text derives from a Latin word meaning something woven. Cassara notes, When we write to record a story or idea we draw lines. In textiles the thread, a physical line, moves and turns, building a surface that is, at one and the same time, surface and substance