Charlene Marsh's Untitled
Art in the Classroom Installation 1994-95
Knoy Hall of Technology, Room B16
Artists Statement for "Purdue University / West Lafayette"
After visiting the Purdue campus and West Lafayette, I decided to create a "tufted, wool painting" incorporating the buildings and landmarks of the area, the indigenous, wildlife, and the animals from Wolf Park. The tapestry is created with metallic thread and hand dyed wool that is tufted onto a cotton backing. Working from the backside of the stretched cotton, the yarn is punched through to the front creating a "pile." Two and three layers of yarn are worked into the backing fabric before the piece is finished.
The current direction of my work has often juxtaposed civilization and wilderness, polluted and pristine environments, and, ultimately, good and evil. Recent Tapestries explore the struggle to balance a healthy, loving, spiritual lifestyle with an increasingly maddeningly fast-paced, destructive, materialistic world. I decided upon a long, horizontal format with the animals dominating the foreground and the man made structures nestled quietly and unobtrusively between rolling hills, with just a hint of encroaching civilization. Swirling, glowing stars fill the night sky. Hope, beauty, love, infinite possibilities, dreams, and the inter-connectedness oft the universe are the dominant themes.