Bio
Louise Pappageorge is a native of Chicago and a graduate of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Her work is included in many national and international private and corporate collections including the City of Chicago Merlo Library. Publications include American Craft, Fiber Arts and Home Magazines. She currently divides her time between Chicago and Michigan. Early on through the women in her life, Louise was exposed to many types of “domestic crafts” sewing, crochet, knitting and embroidery. Although her artworks have little to do with the utility of these crafts, she retained a profound interest in the mediums and sensibilities of those domestic crafts and their implications to feminism and women’s work. Her first investigations into fine art that employed “craft works” were loom woven wire sculptures. These woven structures employ light, color and two dimensional relief to accentuate a dynamic and changing surface much like the soothing ethereal nature of water. These ephemeral and light loving surfaces continue to be prominent in her current works and explorations. She has worked with constructions of found objects, bones, branches, thorns and wax creating sculptures that mirror forms and rhythms of the natural environment, combining one or more objects to re-contexturalize their relationship to one another. Her graphic works employ weaving and collaging of imagery scoured from the pages of women’s periodicals. They scrutinize and examine ideals and values of beauty, perfection and objectification imbedded covertly and subliminally into the pages of magazines, on billboards and in advertising. These commentaries on conditioning and conformity of women’s behavior linked to those expectations and societal norms culminated with her self-published book “Tina”. “Tina” is an exploration of some of the results of these assimilations and the expectations and behaviors they bring forth.
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Artist Statement
The word ‘thread’ is often used to represent continuity, of an idea, a theme, a life. The simple repetitive action of interlocking threads and joining pieces and sections together to create something whole, repeated among generations, handed down and shared, chronicles the continuum of life. These sculptures focus on both our relationship to thread and the larger contemplation of the role of work in culture and the art world and how historically the value of an artist’s work is determined by gender, race and class.
Our relationship with thread originates when we are born and maintains us through life. Thread swaddles, warms, heals, is with us until we are buried and then, shrouds us. Historically, with few exceptions, the products of thread are the work of women, craft not art, utilitarian not precious. Spun threads are woven, knitted, crocheted, sewn. Clothing, quilts, tapestry, tablecloths. These everyday manifestations have a power beyond their value. They connect us to our past, our family, to events, and eras. Commonplace objects with a hold on our memory and subconscious.
