Textile c. 1938

Curator: Well, isn’t that just… comforting? Like a warm blanket, even though it's not! Editor: I see. Before we delve deeper, let me introduce the artwork to our audience. What we have here is a textile design by Lucille Lacoursiere, created around 1938. It seems to employ a watercolor technique, which is quite intriguing for a textile piece. Curator: Ah, watercolor for textiles! How delicious, like the dream of a material! And the colors—forest green and a kind of jammy red, with, dare I say, a secret smudge of something like black under some of them—almost Christmassy. Editor: Indeed. Formally speaking, it presents a balanced grid, a careful interplay of these colors that repeats predictably. It's essentially a pattern, but Lacoursiere disrupts any simple reading through slight inconsistencies, and the textures within those watercolor washes, to introduce dynamism within uniformity. What effect might you say those little inconsistencies, like the wobbly grid lines or imperfect color registration, have? Curator: Oh, those aren’t disruptions, they’re whispers! Like the fabric itself has breathed and shifted ever-so-slightly. To me, it brings a sort of…humanness, a trace of touch, a moment. I bet the making of it was meditative—precise and loose all at once. Like trying to catch smoke, almost… in a way. Editor: A wonderful simile! The very constraints of the grid emphasize this impression; it establishes a framework to showcase the inherent variability possible in this chosen palette of hues. I'm wondering if it evokes ideas around mass-production versus the singularity of each hand-crafted unit, ideas which were brewing intensely during this period. Curator: Yes! And thinking about singularity, it makes you ponder how much these repeating shapes are trying to resolve a feeling—the warm Christmas of forest nostalgia against the very rational attempt at infinite extension that the rigidness of the grid implies. So much in simple squares! Editor: I concur that Lucille has delivered here a fascinating and perhaps intentional confluence between tradition and modernity, through deploying this kind of grid arrangement alongside what feels like a uniquely individual watercolor application to the textiles of the era. Curator: What a fascinating and rather whimsical exploration we've had today! This art pulls you closer and whispers the memories in your ear... and what could be more enticing than that?