Catching Up with Valerie Sobel

Ever since I met Mara Galvao, amazing artist and former member of FSFA, I have wanted to take on weaving. I was inspired by the multitude of textures she combined into a vibrant, almost sculptural tapestry. 
I first tried basic circular weaving a couple of years ago for an installation I designed to add a bit of pizazz to the exterior walls of the gallery during the 2018 holiday season.

Then this summer, after I volunteered to participate in a show dedicated to fiber arts with artists Celena Peet and Noemesha Williams, I decided to experiment with a real loom, if a very simple one. ​

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I approached weaving with the same commitment I made in my other projects, that of utilizing what I already have, as well as discarded or recycled materials and tools whenever possible. So I dug out a refurbished frame loom from the depths of my garage. As for the materials, I started with the green plastic netting saved from months of purchase of avocados bags. Once the top and bottom parts of the bag discarded, I stretched its sides, creating long thin loops, that I attached to each other to form a long chain. With it I created a pattern that became the structure of the piece. I filled in the “boxes” with a bunch of ribbons recovered from an old project stored in my garage, as well as roving and ribbons gathered over the years.

The green netting inspired the color scheme of the work. More importantly, it pointed to its general theme: the Ocean, and our paradoxical relationship to it. It is essential to our very existence, and yet we, as a species, have so far failed to care for it, asphyxiating it with plastic, from literal floating islands of agglutinated plastic bags all the way to microscopic particles absorbed by everything living in and from the ocean, including us!

Ultimately, though, this piece is about hope, a minute example of the numerous solutions to this existential problem that everyone of us, at every level of society, and anywhere in the world can produce and promote.