Coil & Cloud

Exhibition on view: February 25-April 8, 2017
Opening reception: Saturday, February 25, 5-8pm
Featuring Aranda\Lasch and Terrol Dew Johnson

Building off their recent show at the MOCA Tucson, Aranda\Lasch presents baskets and furniture that connect the weaving practices of Native American tradition with contemporary design. Weaving is a material practice performed through ritual. It is an iterative and social activity. Through repetition it forms pattern and structure in simple materials to yield complex cultural artifacts. For Aranda\Lasch, architecture can be understood in much the same way.

In Coil & Cloud, they work with weaver Terrol Dew Johnson of the Tohono O’Odham tribe to explore the practice of coiling. Coiling starts with one central point around which a material is wound, spiraling outward and upward in concentric circles until structure is created. Extending this, the works in the show are built around the idea of a three-dimensional coil, a form both practical and symbolic. For the Tohono O’Odham, baskets employ coiling as a structural strategy to create everyday objects, but also as a ritual which connects the maker to the community, their elders and the desert.