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Taylor Dabney
Blot #1: Intersection with Anomaly (2009)
66” x 38”
handwoven cotton, painted with textile pigment
Photos by Taylor Dabney and David Hale
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Blot #4: Partners (2012)
66” x 54”
handwoven cotton, dyed and painted with dye
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Taylor Dabney
Body Blot #1 (2011)
77” x 108”
handwoven cotton, painted with textile paint
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Body Blot #3 (2012)
132” x 102”
handwoven cotton, dyed and painted with dye
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Comfort (2010)
100” x 115”
handwoven and dyed cotton, painted with textile paint; quilters flannel, painted with textile paint
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Holding In (2009)
210” x 102” x 24”
handwoven and dyed cotton, painted with textile pigment
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The Veiling #1 (2012)
132” x 102”
handwoven and dyed cotton, painted with textile pigment
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Installation of The Veiling Series
Left to right, #1, #2, #3
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The Weaver’s Bench (2010)
130” x 192”
handwoven cotton, painted with textile paint
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Installation
Body Blot #3, Comfort, Body Blot #1 (left to right)
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Installation
Blot #1: Intersection with Anomaly, The Weaver’s Bench, Peer (left to right)
15th Annual Pollak Prizes
Woven Universe
The selectors said: Andrea’s large and intricate works are imbued with a psychological depth that alludes to deep personal and cultural meaning in her labor-intensive craft. We are impressed with her dedication to weaving and her ability to push it to such an impressive and affective scale, and we are glad that she has chosen to live and work in Richmond.
Growing up in Raleigh, N.C., Andrea Donnelly consumed the series of small-town animal surgeon books best known for All Creatures Great and Small. Despite an enduring interest in art, she thought that the life described matched her ambitions. But there was little in the biology building at North Carolina State University to lead the way.
“That side of campus was paved over, no grass, no trees,” she says. The woodsier, older brick buildings side of campus held psychology classes. While interesting, this didn’t satisfy either. Home for Thanksgiving 2003, in her sophomore year, Donnelly told her father, “I think I missed the boat. I think I should’ve gone to art school.”
He replied, “Why don’t you?”
She took classes in painting and photography, and then in textiles, not out of great desire, but because it was next. Like falling in love, however, she discovered what she wanted without really looking.
Professors Vita Plume and Susan Brandeis encouraged her, as did painting instructor Lope Max Diaz, who considered Donnelly’s weaving a form of painting.
She first saw Richmond on a gorgeous Ash Wednesday in 2008. She decided to pack up her looms and move here for graduate school. The devices she uses in art making are individual, like a musician’s instrument. “I refer to them as if they’re creatures,” she explains. “They have personalities. That one’s squeaky. This one’s temperamental with the braking device.”
When preparing for a show, she spends hours in front of the looms. “I made myself sick putting the Visual Arts show together,” she recalls of her solo exhibition earlier this fall. While she loves the work, she adds with a laugh that she doesn’t always like it, nor could she do without it, nor the support of her partner, Jordan Matthews.
The human figure will for the time being remain a motif, though she’ll be experimenting with motion in the veiling, blurring and using denser cloth. One piece titled Peer is 13 feet long. But she doesn’t want to lose the sensation of the handmade. “It’s not a banner,” she says.
