But what is not necessarily guaranteed in a fiber show is content.  Yet, when we attend to objects in a contemporary gallery space, more often than not, we approach them as art and, hence, as creations ripe for interpretation.  As such, merely decorative work often disappoints.  But “Four Women” again delivers.  Themes of biographical and highly personal significance, quasi-political and global import, and broadly humanistic and universal meaning are all there. 

Installed in Portlock’s two large open galleries, the work makes the walls, especially of the second gallery, fairly glow with color.  In that space, the hues are warm—hot even—deep and luscious.  The initial impression is almost breathtaking.  But walk closer and you will be rewarded at a different level still with both machine and hand-stitching and techniques so intricate, complex and fine that it boggles the mind. 

The sheer inventiveness within fairly traditional formats that these artists demonstrate with their materials of thread, fabric, dyes and more is humbling.  Their joy palpable.  But so is their restraint.  For as much as these women revel in the flexibility of their media and their facility with it, they contain what could become phantasmagoric within stabilizing structures and forms.  Often this structure takes the shape of a rectangle or a grid, as seen in Julia E. Pfaff’s work, but sometimes the form of a vessel or even a stylized figure, as in Lynne Sward’s more sculptural pieces with their personal and spiritual content.

Pfaff’s big beautiful wall hangings address the personal as well as the environmental, exploiting both the organizing and symbolic potential of the rectangle and the grid.  In pieces like “My Year at the Bus Stop” or “My Year in Carpool,” which are divided into two-part geometric quadrants with colors evocative of the four seasons, she seems to use her work almost as a diary or journal.  While in other work, like the “Thin Green Line” series, she employs an adaptation of that vocabulary to seemingly react, albeit in a formal and non-didactic way, to local eco-battles.  Other environmental pieces explore islands, sunspots and gravity through imagery that appears to be a translation of topographical and geological maps.   

In the front gallery, the tones are cooler overall and more of the imagery pictorial, largely due to Cynthia Harrison’s predilection for floral images, though these are not her most successful pieces.  Rather, her unique contributions are best seen in two works in which she exploits the translucency of her materials in ways that none of the other artists do. 

One, suspended from a black stand in the center of the gallery and entitled “In Retrospect,” is stunning in its deceptive simplicity.  Very simply hand-stitched with white thread inside each of the squares that establish this ephemeral grid of filmy white silk is a white motif with an earth-toned center.  Ambiguous in meaning, the piece weaves together references to vintage nostalgia and universal symbolism with an utterly modern sensibility.  

Kat Allison’s work is, at times, somewhat referential and, at others, largely non-objective.  A mixed-media piece entitled “Crest” is an especially fine example of hovering at the cusp between the two.  In it, sticks are overlaid and attached to form a kind of indeterminate symbol atop what appears to be an interpretation of a map of waterways and land formations.  She has filled the spaces formed by the intersecting sticks with a most dazzling confluence of varied patterns and textures, some repeated for the sake of visual unity. The exquisite color palette is a harmonious blend of soft, yet rich, warm and cool tones.

Lovely and layered, both visually and conceptually, this show is worth a drive to historic South Norfolk (SoNo) if you don’t live nearby.

Four Women Working in Fiber:  Lynne Sward, Kat Allison, Julia E. Pfaff and Cynthia Harrison

Through April 11

Portlock Galleries at SoNo

3815 Bainbridge Boulevard

Chesapeake, VA  23314

757.502.4901

www.portlockgalleries.com