A D B | M A R Y L I T T L E
70 DIGS.NET
|
12.14.2018
A
rtist Mary Little is not cut from the usual cloth. Her canvas
is canvas, panels of a historically humble material that she
manipulates into sculptural wall hangings that adorn the walls of
homes, galleries and museums across the globe. Her furnishings, in fact,
are part of the permanent collection at the prestigious Victoria & Albert
Museum in London.
Little's studio in Downtown L.A. is a long way from her native Northern
Ireland, though in distance only. One finds in her fiber forms a storytelling
quali ingrained in her homeland. In telling stories, she evokes a swelling
emotion, the sort that seems to expand. "I think that people love stories and
they love to be told things," says Little, who comes to her current medium
from a pragmatist past, in furniture making, but brings the romantic, even
poetic sensibili of the Irish to her three-dimensional forms. "Fabric lets
you do something that really touches a lot of people. I have a real feel for
working with cloth, and have been working with it all my life. It's a very
gentle aesthetic." And in the right hands, something absolutely magical,
equal parts contemplative and expressive, minimalism with maximum
impact. An art. Something that feels good when you look at it.
In recent years, Little has spent more time in Ireland, taking in the
landscape, the lighting, and the abstracts of land. "It's more my sensibili,"
she explains. Her work evokes the textures of this terrain, one widely
celebrated for its color. Little prefers neutral territory—no color at all, which
is all the more affecting somehow. Structure is the tool of her trade, she says,
pattern over palette. Precision is terribly important, as is unpredictabili.
Her meticulously finished pieces, all of which share a certain strictness,
belie this rather fascinating fact, but Little will oen put months into a piece
without any reassurance it will work. Sometimes it won't. Hers is an erratic
medium, the fold and tuck of canvas a remarkably capricious thing.
But how canvas can call to the soul. "Sometimes you just enjoy things on
a depth level," shares Little. "My works hits some people that way." Some
people? Many people, including reviewers from e New York Times and
Architectural Digest, along with those who recognize in Little's art, a truly
tremendous cra—fashioners, costumers, architects—the work in the work.
Little's gi is that she makes it look so effortless. marylittle.com
W R I T T E N B Y J E N N T H O R N T O N
MATERIAL
In creating striking sculptural
fiber wall hangings, Mary Little
reinvents the artist's canvas
SENSE
(clockwise from top le) Process is paramount to Mary Little's work; one of the artist's fiber
forms; Mary Little; hanging sculpture.
PHOTOGRAPHS:
COURTESY
OF
MARY
LITTLE
(PORTRAITS)
AND
SYDNEY
BROWN
(SCULPTURES)
