Platteville, Wisconsin artist Katie Schutte uses a wide variety of techniques in this exhibition that explores the vagaries of memory. For the fifteen works from the artist’s Memory series in the gallery, Schutte sprayed paint over and through antique, vintage, and artist-made crocheted doilies, then stitched and crocheted found fibers onto the substrate. In the process, the hand-made doilies—themselves a vestige of an earlier time—are reconfigured and remade, “a mirror,” Schutte says, “of how we relate to the past.” In her hands, the transformation of these doilies, which were acquired from friends, families, estate sales, and travels, reflects our own subconscious transformation of memories. “We forget, remember incorrectly, recall certain pieces clearer than others, and evolve the event as we remember and retell it,” Schutte continues. “The inversion, distortion, and alteration of the doilies with paint and fiber illustrate how memories can be unreliable imprints that have been filtered and edited. The works in this series will never be actual doilies or even representations of one, just as our memories will never be the complete and entirely accurate version of events.”

Outside the gallery, Schutte presents two additional works: Barn Doily on the exterior of the building and Recursive on the Museum grounds. Barn Doily, which mimics a barn quilt, offers a large-scale version of her doily works. Schutte crocheted the largest doily, five feet in diameter, using a 7mm crochet hook. Similar large-scale hand work is the basis of Recursive, a sculpture composed of a mile and a half of manila rope crocheted using a 30mm crochet hook. Schutte made the sculpture in the spirit of natural and biological systems like coral and fungi, offering us an object in tune with its surroundings.

Combining concept with a dedication to craft, Schutte unites paper, paint, and fiber at DuMA to examine our relationship with our memories and the world around us.