Hanging By A Thread While Working Toward the Unknown --Pre-Fame
- stephaniewilson
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
I was certain I’d be a famous artist one day. Although, maybe you know — maybe you don’t — certainty is a state of conviction, not necessarily foreknowledge. I didn’t end up a famous artist, or even an artist, but I did try for a little while, and what that gave me was the huge thing hanging on my living room wall.
I’d just had my MFA thesis show at Hunter College when my classmate’s husband asked if I’d like to be part of the survey show he was curating for the Hudson River Museum across the river from Manhattan. A survey show in the arts features a span of a type of art, rather than a focused aspect or moment of it. In other words, there’d be well-known artists in the show as well as newbies like me. I was stunned and elated, so I set about like an inspired work-fiend on my submission.
The show would be called “Hanging By A Thread”, and maybe this was the inspiration for my piece. I’d visited London the summer before and saw the Canterbury Cathedral, where I fell in love with its monolithic stained-glass windows. Could I make a hanging homage to those windows somehow?
An idea hit me.
It took the better part of a year to complete, and after a few decades, I still love this creation. Straight away, I traipsed over to the Garment District in NYC, an area with a long tradition of garment manufacturing, to buy a used industrial sewing machine. I had a plan and did my research. What I needed was a way to sew with the heavyweight thread used to make boat sails, which can withstand forceful winds.
My idea was to sew rocks, shells, polished glass, beads, and pieces of brick into layers of lightweight tulle — ballerina-skirt material — to create a fabric version of the stained-glass windows. It was counterintuitive, I know, to ask a see-through, weak material to hold weighty rocks, but I had ambition — and certainty. Did I mention these five sewn “windows” would be ten feet tall, and they’d hang from the ceiling by their top, curved edge? No ripping, no tearing, just weighty, mid-air see-through presence.
It was a long process of experimentation. The thread would be the bones, the armature of each window. But it wouldn’t be one pass-through of sewn thread, which would be a thin bone, but several to make it robust. And there was the thread’s necessary partner in this robustness: sisal.
Sisal, or agave sisalana, is a plant native to southern Mexico, used to make rope and twine, and is quite strong. I bought some at the Garment District and brought it back to my art studio in Brooklyn, where I sandwiched it between layers of the tulle. It was like rough, strong hair — plant hair. You can see it peeking out from the tulle:
What I had now was a structure I hoped might withstand the weight of each rock-filled window. All I had to do was start building a window and see how it played out. It would be trial and error, and a whole lot of finger crossing, which I guess is the definition of trial and error — the hope of the phalanges.
I remember that part of the process so clearly. I’d sew a new section of encased rocks and glass, attach it to the growing window, and continue. The tricky part — or risky part — was that I wouldn’t know if the idea worked until I had a whole window finished, when I’d attempt the first suspension from the ceiling by the top edge of the giant fabric oval — Test Day.
I’d been using a ladder throughout the process because the growing window would periodically go back onto the wall of my studio so I could take it in and decide what I wanted to do next. What color beads would I use? What shape would the next section be? How would each next window fit compositionally with the ones already completed?
With each climb of the ladder, I’d hold the unfinished piece from its top edge in the air, letting it suspend from my grip. I was constantly testing the weight to see if it worked. It always worked. But I never knew if the next section I added to the window would be the final straw.
Test Day finally arrived. Guess who was nervous as heck?
My husband climbed the ladder while I stayed below directing, handing up rope and scissors, telling him to pull it higher or hang it lower. I kept glancing off to the side, looking for a genie in a bottle. My obsession for the day: What if the whole thing ripped in half?
It didn’t.
I kept on with the plan, window by window.
I had a big dream and luckily the journey to realize it was a lot of fun. I loved walking from my apartment to the studio and sewing for hours as mice did loops around the huge, grungy space. I loved the excitement as each window grew into reality. I ate meals as I sewed. Why not?
I had no idea then that this installation would be the first thing you saw as you walked into the museum. It would hang in front of a span of windows because the whole point was to be able to see through the piece. It was a series of stained glass windows, after all, or that was the reference.
I’ll never forget installing it, which took a team, then standing back to view it for the first time, whole and glimmering from the light. The glass beads reflected. The dark rocks grounded. The endless hours of planning, work, hope, and joy were all there, embodied in these five giant panels. Even after all these years, it’s still my friend. We know each other well. We spent so much time together. We don’t have to say a word. We just know.
On opening night of the show, I recall the governor of New York came, as did some congresspeople. It was splashy. I was nervous but also touched. My family came, some of my Hunter classmates, friends, neighbors from Brooklyn. How can you ever express your gratitude for such support?
By the time I took the piece down five months later, I was accepted into an international month-long art symposium in Ireland. I went there pregnant. When I arrived home, my first son slipped from my belly, and I became a mom. My plans for fame were placed gently on a shelf.
I walked away with the experience of working hard toward an uncertain outcome, and a giant wall hanging on my living room wall.
That was more than plenty.
A photo and excerpt from the program they handed out at the show:
“Wilson’s Cathedra was inspired by a visit to Canterbury Cathedral in England. The five large panels hang in a semi-circle, echoing the apse of a church. The viewer is overwhelmed by the intricacies of the work: myriad tiny stitches create hundreds of pockets that contain shells, stones, coral, glass and marble tiles. Suspended in front of a wall of windows, the panels sparkle like stained glass. Although each section of the work is extremely heavy, it appears light and ethereal.”
And: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/09/arts/art-review-messages-woven-sewn-or-floating-in-the-air.html
Have a nice rest of your week, friends.