Review

"Swirl Dance," Hand-Woven and Mounted Fiber.

Sandy Cahill

10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Images Art Gallery
7320 W. 80th St.
Overland Park, KS
913.232.7113

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Runs through: March 13.

Artist's site: http://www.beweaveme.net
Gallery site: http://www.imagesartgallery.org

Of all the art media, fabric is the one most inherently subject to the laws of Nature.

Laid over a chair, fabric takes on that shape. When the wind blows, fabric ripples. When a wearer raises an arm, shrugs a shoulder or embraces a loved one, fabric follows.

Usually.

Not always.

There is plenty of conventional (and attractive) wearable art in Sandy Cahill's portion of the current group show at Images Art Gallery in Downtown Overland Park.

But the most riveting of Cahill's works are decidedly ... un-.

She creates wall sculptures which, seen in photographs or laid flat on the floor, would not at all seem out of any natural order. They appear to have just been draped or scrunched or blown into eye-pleasing curves or waves or twists, all subject to change.

In three dimensions, raised to the wall, the works still look like that ... and those twists, waves and curves aren't going away.

Take Swirl Dance, today's featured piece. In keeping with the work's title, the woven fabric seems to have fallen to the floor, perhaps cast off — intentionally or otherwise — by a dancer. (It falls to each viewer to make up the back story ... although the sinuous twists of the piece do suggest all sorts of possibilities.)

It's a lovely bit of lawbreaking ... and the seeming effortlessness of the effect belies all the work that goes into creating it.

Cahill, who is featured along with pen and ink artist Gary Mehl in the current group show, explains.

To create the custom designed Handwoven Wall Sculptures, I hand weave the fabric with yarn, stripped fabrics and wire; form the textile into a dimensional organic sculptural  shape; mount the piece onto a rigid backing; then hand sew the edges .

So Cahill flouts the ordinances of Nature (and in the process, contravenes the very nature of fiber itself). File that under "creative disobedience" ... but by all means, find her guilty of stealing the occasional breath.

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