Jackie Abrams & Deidre Scherer: Connections

March 9 - June 16, 2019

Individually, artists Deidre Scherer, who creates sensitive fabric portraits, and Jackie Abrams, who weaves complex baskets, are celebrated for their unique artistic visions and rigorous studio practices. Working together for BMAC’s “Dialogue” series of occasional collaborative exhibitions, they shape Scherer’s two-dimensional imagery into sculptural expression.

By virtue of Abrams’s weaving, Scherer’s pictorial faces and hands become abstract as well as representational, the sitters both present and absent. A basket is, of course, a container; and its fullness may even call to mind the expansion of the sitters’ inhaled breath. Scherer and Abrams’s portrait baskets thus metaphorically become repositories of experiences and memories.

— Mara Williams, Chief Curator

Age, wisdom, the accumulation of experience, and their imprints on the vessel we call the human body have interested each of us for decades. The fabric-and-thread portraits of elders and the sculptural baskets representing aspects of women’s lives made it seem natural for us to collaborate on a series of three-dimensional objects that reflect the human form.

To create each object, we agree on the general shape and size of the vessel. An image of the original fabric portrait by Scherer is printed onto heavy cotton paper. The printed image is cut into strips and carefully woven back together by Abrams as a three-dimensional vessel. Sometimes other materials, such as copper wire or transparent plastic film, are incorporated into the weaving. The resulting vessels’ strong forms and subtle textures reflect the character that the human body acquires with experience and time.

— Deidre Scherer and Jackie Abrams

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RELATED EVENTS

April 24, Wednesday, 7 p.m. – Artist Talk: Jackie Abrams & Deidre Scherer