Linda Hutchins



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Linda Hutchins: Pushing Boundaries

by Namita G. Wiggers
Unpacking the Collection: Selections from the Museum of Contemporary Craft, edited by Anjali Gupta. Portland, OR: Museum of Contemporary Craft, 2008, pp. 106-7.

Linda Hutchins' DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE is a humorous challenge to the processes, procedure and constraints of tapestry. Responding to a call for entries that stipulated a specific square footage for a woven and wall-mounted piece, Hutchins instead created an absurdly long woven strip that matched the square footage in linear form. The work raises questions about where meaning is found in tapestry. Does it reside in the tedious, repetitive process of moving threads or in the execution of a predetermined pictorial representation? Hutchins' tapestry addresses both questions simultaneously through the creation of a piece executed in a counted stitch process and the representation of common, easy-to-replicate letters used in signage. Pushing questions about tedium, meditative processes and banality to the forefront, Hutchins challenges the view to consider where the line lies, and why it must be crossed—both physically and conceptually.