SOFA GALLERY

May 1 - May 20, 2011
Kara Braciale
The Repeat

In The Repeat, Boston artist Kara Braciale presents a series of gouaches that mimic the weft and the weave of Ikat styled tapestries. Through the careful marking out of patterns and the repeating gesture of filling-in lines with color, Braciale combines the act of weaving with the act of mark making. And it is possible to approach these paintings the way one might approach a tapestry; that is, to see the “threading,” process and information, while also experiencing the pattern as a work created through the accumulation of time.Braciale began these paintings right before the birth of her first child and continued them throughout her daughter’s infancy. She was drawn to weaving due to its lineage as women’s work,  “I was feeling (and still do feel) very connected to the idea of cottage industry- of pre-industrial revolution means of production happening in the home.” The repeating nature of the process of painting the patterns allowed Braciale a consistent way into her studio practice while balancing any number of activities that are attached to early motherhood.The hand-loom is often referred to as “the first computer on earth,” so it is no surprise that Braciale’s paintings could be likened to computerized motifs—pixelized slots of color that, when viewed from afar, coalesce into a pattern that recalls modernist abstractions such as Anni Albers’ prints and textiles created at the Bauhaus. The resultant design in Ikat weaving is often random, as variations of the weft and the weave can create different patterns. For Braciale, these inconsistencies are what attracts her to this method of making: “I think the process of painting the warp and the unpredictability of the emergent pattern seemed to me an appropriate metaphor for the process of painting in general.”Kara Braciale has held recent exhibitions at The Artist's Foundation Gallery in Boston, MA;  The Riverside Arts Center in Riverside, IL; and at Lisa Boyle Gallery in Chicago, IL. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Braciale lives in Boston and is the director ofProof Gallery.