Metal Weather Vane: Glove c. 1941

Curator: Alright, let's dive into this rather peculiar piece. We're looking at "Metal Weather Vane: Glove" by Harriette Gale, estimated around 1941. It seems to be a drawing, potentially utilizing charcoal and watercolor on toned paper. What's your initial take on it? Editor: Eerily fascinating! It evokes such a quiet, almost haunting mood. It is ghostly still; you feel a narrative frozen, like a hand beckoning you to a lost era. I mean, a glove depicted as a weather vane is odd to begin with. Curator: Exactly! It plays with the concept of guidance, doesn't it? A weather vane, typically an arrow or a rooster, showing the direction of the wind... but a glove? It suggests direction related to action, to labor, to perhaps even gentility, and personal experience. It's wonderfully contradictory. Editor: And think about what a glove signifies symbolically. Protection, formality, even concealment. Gale’s rendering turns it into something almost...spectral, which then raises the stakes even higher. What are we trying to protect, what's concealed? What unseen force is causing this garment to turn, what hidden things do they feel? Curator: I'm with you on the concealment. And the pins used on the piece feel almost violent piercing a layer of skin, which is a direct violation of what a glove is supposed to do: Protect from harm! I wonder if the artist was perhaps thinking about an age of violence, the war looming over or even a commentary on personal and domestic spaces. Editor: The fact that the drawing itself appears aged, on toned paper… adds another layer, reinforcing this sense of a faded, possibly painful memory, doesn't it? The muted palette emphasizes fragility. The artist isn't only portraying an object, but also encapsulating a fading time and space. The gesture in the drawing points nowhere but inward. Curator: It's quite stunning how a seemingly simple object can be loaded with so much quiet, poignant meaning. Makes you pause, doesn't it? I will also say it takes some courage to break down tradition such as making drawings rather than paintings and breaking expected artistic gender roles and subjects. Editor: Absolutely! It becomes a meditation on how seemingly mundane objects can whisper complex narratives of protection, action, direction, and memory... I keep staring at this image as something in my soul resonates. The way a visual icon holds power in cultural memory is powerful; especially one of labor in what I perceive is a woman’s glove. Food for thought... or the eyes, I should say.