Red Graze 1967

Sonya Rapoport made this mixed media piece, "Red Graze," by cutting and pasting floral patterns and toile imagery. The way she layers and crops these patterns makes me think about artmaking as a process of collage, a kind of conversation between different surfaces. Look closely, and you can see how the toile pattern creates a central shape, almost like a silhouette, against a background of white space and other floral designs. There is a tension in the work between the flatness of the surface and the illusion of depth created by the layering. My eye is drawn to the scalloped edges where the patterns meet, as they create a rhythm that moves around the composition. I'm reminded of the work of artists like Hannah Höch or even some of the later Pattern and Decoration artists, who also used collage and pattern to explore ideas about gender, domesticity, and representation. It’s this embrace of ambiguity and multiple meanings that makes art so engaging.