December 2013 - CAMERON ANNE MASON

I installed Susurration in Bellevue in the Elements Complex on 10th NE and 112th. It is visible through the windows day and night and is quite lovely at dusk, when this video was shot.

Susurration means a whispering sound or murmur and evokes the sound of gentle waves as they wash up against the boulders of our Northwest coastline. Susurration, the installation, shows the sea bed, where waves cross and eddy, creating complex yet repetitive patterns.

The fabric for Susurration measures 12 feet in height by 40 feet in length is made up of 28 separate panels of hand-dyed shibori silk. The installation is scheduled to be up as part of Bellevue Storefronts, supported by Shunpike through mid-March 2014. Like all the storefronts projects, the installation time is dependent on availability and will be shortened if the space is leased. I am currently looking for other spaces to install Susurration. Let me know if you hear of an opportunity.

a big empty container to put art into

Back in July I posted about some shibori dyeing I was doing for an installation that was to be somewhere in Bellevue on a date to be determined for Storefronts Bellevue.

See those posts here:

Back in Seattle Again and It’s All Part of the Process

The project is coordinated through Shunpike, a local non-profit that helps artists and communities with the business of art. They manage Storefronts programs in Seattle, Bellevue, Auburn, and Mt. Vernon which match vacant storefronts with artists to activate the spaces. Artists get a small honorarium to create temporary (3 month) installations to enliven these empty spaces. I was juried onto the roster for Bellevue in late Spring but it’s been slow to get going. It’s a new program there and it seems that it’s taking a while to get all the cogs to line up.The coordinator I’m working with, Anne Blackburn, has been very helpful.

I finally have my location and my install date, December 18th, so it’s a good thing I got all that dyeing done this Summer!

Anne and I did a site visit last week. The space I’ve got is beautiful. Many of the vacant spaces are kind of grimy, or unfinished, but I lucked out. Apparently, the former tenant was a gallery, so it’s a clean open space with nice lighting. The main challenge of the space is that the ceilings are about 30 feet high. My original concept to hang my piece from the ceiling just isn’t going to work. I wouldn’t even want to be up that high on a scissors lift, even if I had the budget to rent one. Time to think outside the box. It was great to toss ideas around with Anne and I think we came up with a good solution. It involves cables, and no, I haven’t worked with them before, but it should work. Faith, remember?

Today my intern, Annie, helped out at the studio so I took advantage of the extra hands (and her young knees) to hang all the panels and determine their order. There are 28 panels, each 18 inches by 12 feet long, that will be sewn together into a single piece of fabric 12 feet tall by approximately 37 feet long. Because each panel is different, it took some looking and moving them around, and looking some more, to figure out the best arrangement. I think it has a nice flow.

Tomorrow, I’ll take a trip to the hardware store to talk about cables and connectors. Then, back to the studio, where I’ll set up my serger and start making a really, really big piece of fabric. It should work.