Keywords: haverstraw, installation, metals, netting, new york, patricia hickman, thread, usa, cocoons, cricula, metallic, silk

Constellation

Patricia Hickman

Dimensions

1200 x 1000 x 125 mm

Materials

Installation: knotted netting using fine metallic gold silk thread and cricula silk cocoons

Artist statement

‘I have been creating sculptural forms using various kinds of netting for some years. In 1994 this work brought me a commission to design the entrance gates for the Maui Arts and Cultural Center in Hawaii. For Hawaiians the stars represent the knots of suspended nets. During the rainy season, when these nets in the sky open, blessings pour down upon the earth. It is a time of renewal, when wars cease, games are played, and nets are mended. Constellation also makes reference to this Hawaiian story, which has become part of my story.

My thoroughly non-traditional lace-making allows me to work with light and shadow, with breath and air. Lace-like structure — with its repetition, its openings as essential as the knots holding tight — is a natural for my themes of cycles and seasons, memory and loss, ageing and mortality. What is absent is as vital as what is present.’