Kayaks As Art

Last year, fiber artist Moira Bateman purchased the drawings for the 1888 West Greenland Kayak. Her plan wasn’t to turn the drawings into a usable kayak. Her plan was to turn it into art. The artwork that she created is on display in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA until April 8th, 2023.

The silk and wax kayak is called Vessel No. 1. It was made with two long strips of birch for the gunwales to support the silk and waxed fabric.

Bateman creates her works from waxed silk that you stains using sediments from various Minnesota waterways. On her website, she writes:

I create assemblages from silk that has been stained with waterway sediments. For my textile abstractions, I leave silk to soak (for weeks, months, or years) in the waters, mud, and sediments of rivers, lakes, and bogs throughout Minnesota. Sediments carried in the waters of these locations dye the silk and imbue the cloth with many types of startling markings. After I retrieve the silk, I cut it and place the cut shapes into patterns, which I join together with wax to preserve and transform the silk into skin-like, large-scale, cloth assemblages. As an abstractionist, my hope is that the organic shapes, earth colors, stains, and textures of my assemblages evoke a strong sense of place as well as the movement and condition of water and time.”

Exhibition information: 2022 McKnight Fiber Art Fellowship Exhibition – Etudes: Watersheds, Bogs, Kayaks January 17-April 8, 2023 Textile Center 3000 University Ave, Minneapolis MN. The artist reception is Tuesday, February 21, 5-7 pm.

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