Material Memory - Francesca Capone

MATERIAL MEMORY

October 7 - November 9th, 2022

Nationale,

Portland Oregon

Feature in The Oregonian Fall Visual Art Spread & Portland Textile Month

Each piece in this series is an assembled material memory: cut from fabric that carries history from former lives. Focusing on a zero-waste practice, these works utilize scrap to create visual/tactile objects that take on new identities and narratives in their combination. A magical property of textile is its ability to be reconstructed, cut apart and put back together. The reassembled forms come purely from intuition, there is no precise pattern to their combination, and the process is guided by feeling. Coming from a multigenerational family of Sicilian American fashion industry workers, the works include portions of a large collection of maternal fabric scraps that have been passed down. Each cut of fabric has provenance from a former function: ribbons and fabrics that have been passed down through family, offcuts from former studio projects, discarded or cut clothing overdyed scraps, hand towels, napkins, and good will finds. The scraps of textiles have their own silent stories from Capone's personal history and beyond that, a place where they were made, and people whom they were made by. The process of their assembly has involved intuitive sensing, Capone thoughtfully uses her hands and eyes to puzzle out what should be placed where, as though guided by spiritual external influences. As the compositions are created, new arrangements are revealed through the process of making.