Historical Printed Cotton c. 1940

Arlene Perkins made this study of Historical Printed Cotton, and I imagine her with gouache or watercolor, trying to figure it all out on paper. I feel a lot of sympathy for Perkins, who was tracing and copying a piece of old fabric: a burnt sienna motif on one side, some white barber-shop stripes on the other, and then, in between, a terra-cotta column of– well, I don't know what that's meant to be. You can see the artist puzzling over how to record the pattern and the texture of the cotton. And it makes me wonder, what's the right way to register the image in your mind? How do you translate the three-dimensional world into two dimensions? This work makes me think about how much we, as artists, depend on the work of other artists, both past and present. Perkins took cues from the original fabric maker, and I'm now taking cues from her. It's a conversation across time. These exchanges are so inspiring. Each mark contains the possibility for multiple meanings; fixed and definitive readings are boring anyway.