Woven Bands No. 1

Bobbi Shorlidge

Hand woven double weave on a computerized dobby loom. Thick and thin yarns. Black and white yarns. My “Woven Bands Series” deals with illusion. From afar, each piece reads as many narrow bands woven separately, weaving over and under each other. Upon a closer look, one sees that I have woven a “tromp l’oeil illusion”– “fooling the eye”—these bands weren’t woven separately, but instead the entire piece was woven as one integrated piece of cloth with the illusion of many separate bands. I weave using a complex weave structure of Double Weave—that is, two separate layers of cloth woven at the same time one layer on top of the other layer. There is a black layer and a white layer. Depending on which color I choose to be on top, a design is created with areas of pure black, pure white, grays, or black and white stripes.