Kari Dyrdal has deep weaving experience. Years of craftsmanship honed on handlooms give her the experience to understand how warp crossing weft can be used powerfully and evocatively. In the short film, “A Meeting with Textile Artist Kari Dyrdal,” she said she now responds to questions of how much time she spends on her work with “It takes a lifetime.”
To me, the flat, machine-woven plane of a digitally-produced weaving needs an especially strong image to compete with beauty and interest of a handwoven tapestry surface. Impressive size and strength marked my two favorite pieces in the largest exhibit room, “Wall Sevres I” and “Wall Sevres III.”
In this series, Dyrdal worked with photographs of walls in the ceramics factory in Sevres.
It was brilliant to hang this enormous piece far enough away from the wall to allow examination of the back, to see that panels are sewn together.
While the major impression is of black and white, close examination shows that red and blue threads are important to depth of the piece. Here are a few close-ups.
This photo of Wall Sevres III shows how well the wonderful ceramic sculptures of Torbjørn Kvasbø work with the weaving.
Several of Dyrdal’s water-themed pieces are included in the exhibit.
This one is set off by another of Torbjørn Kvasbø’s ceramic pipe-shaped sculptures.
And now for something completely different from the shiny synthetic yarn shining through Dyrdal’s weaving, and the delectable matte and shiny surfaces of the ceramics. Another amazing part of my weekend in Bergen was baby sheep! I must have seen hundreds of frolicking lambs in green pastures on the drive from Stavanger to Bergen and on an outing on Sunday.
