| Arts & Entertainment - Friday, June 26, 2009
Wired world
Artist's work is an unusual tapestry of metal and plastic textures
by Rebecca Wallace
A 72-inch-wide American flag is one of the wall hangings in Pamela Drury Wattenmaker's new exhibition. Among the white stars, she has stitched the word "HOPE."
Betsy Ross would have approved — and Rosie the Riveter would be grinning. The flag is made mostly of wire, which Wattenmaker has stitched and knitted, linking it up with plastic cable ties and panels of aluminum mesh. For that rustic touch, the flag's white stripes are chicken wire.
A child could lift these light pieces now on exhibit at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, and yet there's strength in every metallic tapestry. Miles of wire run through the collection. Wattenmaker is simply taken with textures and angles and the sturdiness of metal. In another life she might have designed the Eiffel Tower.
The roots of these wall hangings may be found in the knitting Wattenmaker learned to do while she was young, just as her mother and grandmother did. Then one day she was struck by the idea of knitting with wire, the weight of it.
In her home studio in the hills near Redwood City, a large space with broad windows and a glossy gallery, Wattenmaker pulls out a bag of looped-up wire and knitting needles. While she's working on a new wall hanging, she can take sections of it anywhere. Elderly ladies chat her up, expecting to see yarn.
Wattenmaker uses metal needles, of course. "The wood ones splinter and the plastic ones break." On airplanes she brings business cards to vouch that she's an artist, and crosses her fingers that security will let her keep her needles.
On a shelf in her studio, rolls of window-screen mesh are arranged neatly. There are small hammers, pliers, rivets, cutters. Some of her wall hangings and steel-and-mesh sculptures have objects such as photos, tin panels and clock parts woven into them; fat cubes of glass from a 1960s lamp await another project.
On a table, a wall hanging of a paper doll is taking shape in mesh screen. For art that is so durable, the work is often whimsical. "It'll have three sets of clothing that you can change," she says of the doll.
The outgoing Wattenmaker likes her studio because of its space and its proximity to the rest of the house. She can take a break and run upstairs to visit with her kids or her programmer husband, Jeff, who also works at home.
Her husband's interest in bicycling shows up in Wattenmaker's art as well. Bike chains and parts pop against mesh. In the wall hanging "Winter 2009," one of about 15 pieces in the Mountain View show, white sprockets look like snowflakes with their cut-out shapes. Strips of photos that the artist took in Midwestern towns, with images of forests and shuttered factories, add a misty quiet and sadness.
In her work, Wattenmaker softens the mesh and metal pieces with a powder coating that adds color and smoothness, and helps a screen hold its shape and a sprocket gleam like candy. It's a bit like painting a car with a sprayer. Wattenmaker takes her metal bits to an industrial shop to have the process done. "I'm their only artist," she says.
In her gallery, wall hangings keep company with her perky steel-and-mesh sculptures of clothing and purses, an earlier series. In "Pink Pants," an empty pair of see-through pants stands upright, on cowboy boots. "Pink Bra" makes use of vintage ski and snowboard bindings (quirky, but perhaps not comfortable), while "Purple Jacket" has glittery metallic scouring pads at the wrists, hood and waist. Now that's a fashion statement for the slopes.
Titles of works are often simple or nonexistent. Wattenmaker says of her pieces, "I have a need to create these, but I don't always know what they mean." She adds later: "Unless a name comes to me, I feel I'm not supposed to name it. This is more a study of texture and use of color."
Also on display in the home gallery are more traditional figurative bronze and steel sculptures. Wattenmaker started in this heavier medium during college at the University of Colorado at Boulder and thought about becoming a sculptor. It seemed a difficult way to make a living, though, and she ended up working as a commercial illustrator for many years, with clients including Sunset Books in Menlo Park. She also designed window displays at businesses on University Avenue in Palo Alto. In 2000, she decided to devote her time to her real love, fine art.
Fellow Bay Area artist Janet Strauss, who owns two of Wattenmaker's metal sculptures, praises her work as "extremely creative, totally unexpected and unique."
For a while, Strauss also had a piece of Wattenmaker's "tree art," a small work in mesh and rivets that filled the negative space between the trunks of a tree at her home. "They're cool any time of the day, the shadows they cast," she says of the tree-art pieces.
Back at Wattenmaker's house, several of her trees also have panels of mesh in different colors spanning the air between branches and trunks. It's an art form that makes sense from a person who can find inspiration in the feel of a coat or a freshly mowed lawn.
The mesh catches the sun during bright days and the mist when it rains. For a moment, when you stop and look through it, you see the world through a different prism, the way an artist does.
What: Pamela Drury Wattenmaker shows works of "industrial fiber art" made from wire, mesh, plastic ties and other materials.
Where: The lobby of the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts at 500 Castro St. (with a few pieces in the neighboring City Hall).
When: Through Aug. 24. The lobby is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from noon to 1 p.m. and one hour before each public performance in the center.
Cost: Free
Info: For more about Wattenmaker's art, go to www.wattenmaker.com. A schedule of events and exhibitions at the Mountain View center is at www.mountainview.gov/mvcpa/mvcpa.html.
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