Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito

orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworangebloodredroses&shit

Ecstatic in the growing sweat and wilt of the mid-morning sun. Gray snakeskin cement spewed with pink star flowers. Still optimistic, the morning-after field of crimson-made-orange in the gold cold of the midday sun blinding white garlands and cigarette butts.

Delirious already in the morning heat, we return to a garden that never was with knowledge we cannot forget. And we fall into color; its material an unraveling of the time and space compressed by the camera. Reveling in shit the flowers grow, their sweetness is trampled beneath as we tromp about in our own exquisite filth. Last night’s flowers, digitally apprehended/documented, are cast out of an Eden remembered, and brought home to the loom. The shutter’s click is joined by a wooden whir as the shuttle plies back and forth. Line by line, the digital screen is consumed by burning scarlets, acid yellows, and putrescent greens. Those wool threads, loose and tangled, are mired amongst the flowers (redolent with their perfumes and high noon sweat).

Petals are flattened, and perfume is swallowed into clumps of pink-becomes-yellow wool.

The image, what was a moment there is transcribed. Here and away, outside, to inside, that garden scourged to grow anew. Passed from hand to hand, wilting and brought to bloom again. Like the children’s game of words passed from one to the other; there becomes image becomes here, insistent now as material, albeit differently so.

Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito have been collaborating since 2013’s Stain Napkins project. Together, the artists explore the relationships between photography and weaving, using digital interfaces to bring these two material outputs into direct communication.

Laura Letinsky is Professor at the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. Her work has been widely exhibited and is part of numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, SF MoMA, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

John Paul Morabito is Faculty in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited at numerous interna- tional venues, including Dorksy Gallery Curatorial Programs, Long Island City, NY; Bakalar and Paine Galleries, Boston, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago, RabbitHoleStudio Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY, and Local Lore Museum, Kherson, Ukraine.