Yesterday art historian Andrew Wasserman posted an extraordinary work by Lenore Tawney. Cloud Garment was made in 1982 during an artist residency at the Fabric Museum & Workshop. According to the artist’s foundation website, Cloud Garment is “a conceptual piece that evokes the feeling of wrapping oneself in a cloud.” An archival photo of Tawney wrapped in Cloud Garment shows that what here appears as a bottom edge has fabric printed with musical notation, like Ear Pillow, on the left.
The form here reminds me of one of the most perfect Richard Serra sculptures, To Lift, made in 1967 of a sheet of vulcanized rubber. Which is now more perfect by the associations the Tawney piece introduces. The mind suddenly reels.