Art I'd like to see more of - Jennifer Bowes

Jennifer Bowes (who lives in British Columbia) makes collograph plates that are constructed by repetitively winding and tying small units of materials until they form a densely woven surface from which she is able to print a near-photographic impression of the textured mass of material. (She's showing at Malaspina Printmakers on Granville Island, Vancouver, till 11 April, along with Denise Hawrysio, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Niall McClelland, and Joyce Wieland.)

"Woven Knots" (detail above; see some other works here) is one such. “Suspended” is slightly different: at first it appears to be an enormous knitted garment, but it's made of thousands of strips of shredded text - ten books cut and reconfigured, it "remains in contention between the arbitrary contexts of texture and craft art."

I'd love to see "Dream of Scipio", which she made for her MFA show and is described as "a book of over 100 pages where each line of text was double stitched in white thread rendering it illegible. Taking over 600 hours to complete, the book becomes heavily texturized, proposing an aerial view point if not a tactile one, re-inscribing the act of reading and interpretating with our hands more than our minds. The sense of touch triggers points of memory, prompting another entry point into the text beyond the hermeneutical. Bowes sees her work as a colloboration with the writer, imposing a silence to the words that can now be accessed haptically. "

"With slight variation, each seemingly repetitive motion--whether in knotting, knitting, or carving--is in fact a new point of connection. Bowes references her method of working as influenced from the motions in walking and hiking, a perpetual repetition and rhythm of breathing."