Erica Diazoni

Erica Diazoni, born 1986 in California, now lives and works in Switzerland since 2011. 

 

Her chosen media is tapestry, or rather, it chose her. 

 

Tapestry is the simplest of weaves, warps are stretched and the weft follows a simple under-over, under-over pattern. Yet it can create the most complex designs because each pass, -over or under and in which color is decided and made by the weave, thus the structure of the cloth and the image are inseparable. 

 

Tapestries have traditionally been used in Europe to tell great stories- epic poems or myths upon which western culture has been constructed. Most cloth was not woven to tell stories but to be utilitarian. From cradle to grave a human life is contained in textiles. Clothes worn, sheets slept in, eventually it all became rags to wipe down the kitchen table.

 

My work combines these two disparaging lineages- the mythic and the mundane. To turn each small moment of each day into its own poem worthy of remembering and telling. 

 

My drawings and tapestries are about the beauty of the world around me, as I experience it. It is about this purple flower I found crushed upon the ground, the absolute stillness of a forest freshly blanketed with snow, the cold stars in their silent rhythm and the warm steam rising from my morning cup of tea. 

 

When it is about the blue skies and yellow wildflowers, I want you to feel warmed by the sun and hears the hum of bees. When it is about a forest, you smell the damp earth, and shiver a bit from the ever-moving shadows. When it is about the sea, you will taste the sea salt air mixed with - what is that? can you name it? - rosemary.

 

I start by exploring a place by walking through it physically. There are different walks I take. On some, I just get to know the place. Sometimes I take notes, photos and weather permitting, sketches. Flowers, leaves, pinecones and such often find their way into my pocket and return with me to the studio. There I draw carefully studied still lives which give way to more expressive pieces. At some point a drawing or piece of a drawing will need to be articulated further through weaving. 

 

Once I have become reasonably acquainted with the landscape, I will go out looking for specific plants that will give a good strong color in the dye pot. I draw upon my own years of experience with natural dyes, a number of resource books, and my intuition on which plants to take and how to process them. 

 

The sensations I feel interacting with landscapes or objects, both sensual and emotional, are caught and distilled into something soft and beautiful, a tangible poem, a fragment, tapestry.