Times Union
Artist duo weave their talents for UAlbany exhibition
Julian Silva-Forbes
ALBANY — For 15 years, artist duo and real-life couple Mark Barrow and Sarah Parke have painted on a woven canvas.
After meeting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, the duo soon discovered a symbiotic artistic relationship — Parke would hand-weave fabric into canvasses on which Barrow would paint intricate designs. Before long, they married and adopted the joint moniker “Barrow Parke.”
In the decade and a half since their first collaboration, Barrow Parke has seen their art exhibited at museums around the world, including the Yale Museum, the Paris Museum of Modern Art, and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, among others. The New York Times described a 2010 Barrow Parke show as a “wonderfully complicated” fusion of Americana, modernist geometry, feminism, and Neo-Impressionism.
Now, their first solo exhibition is set to debut on Aug. 7 at the University at Albany Art Museum.
“Barrow Parke: Systems and Mythologies,” the upcoming exhibition, will explore the intersection of weaving and other scientific and anthropological systems. One painting at the exhibition, “Shapes in Time,'' associates the numbered shafts of an eight-harness floor loom with the root directories that underpin computer science. Another painting, “The Universe,'' associates woven and painted Zodiac patterns with imagery from a Japanese creation myth.
“I’ve always been interested in weaving,” Parke said. “I like the idea of making something tactile and making it from nothing, (from) just a thread. Using this system, you can make all these different structures (and) patterns.”
“Weaving and textiles have informed so much of our culture and society — some of the first abstract thinking was from early textiles of early indigenous communities,” Barrow added. “As you progress forward in time, the logic of the loom informs how computers work… It’s something that’s interesting as an artist to have your hands on, to be able to create this thing.”
When asked to describe the method behind their art, Barrow and Parke said they have used weaving to reduce other systems to their basic units. Pixels on a computer screen become colored threads in their paintings; imagery in creation myths becomes woven patterns.
“We’re viewing one concept through another concept, and reducing each of those concepts to their basic building blocks,” Barrow said. “When you look at something through something else, what does that tell you about it?”
Barrow and Parke said the exhibition will include previously commissioned work like “Shapes in Time” alongside new work like “The Universe.” They hope that juxtaposing their old and new pieces in the exhibition can trace their development as artists.
“The way we approach anything is through the lens of weaving as a metaphor. From series to series, things change, (but) it’s always coming from that point of view,” Barrow said. “Part of the reason we wanted to do the show this way is to show how what we’re working on currently… traces back all the way to the beginning and how it’s grown over time.”
The “Barrow Parke: Systems and Mythologies” exhibition will also feature work loaned by artists Anni and Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, and Agnes Martin. Additional pieces from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections will also be on display.