Linda Hutchins



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Hutchins' organza sculptures of family heirlooms and familiar objects are featured in the April/May 2010 issue of Fiberarts in an article by scholar Sue Taylor. This February, 2010 interview with Marci Rae McDade, Editor of Fiberarts, explores some of the emotional and conceptual content of these works.


MARCI RAE MCDADE: How did you come to use these specific objects (hammer head, egg basket, silver cup, goblet, rope) as the sources for your sculptures?
LINDA HUTCHINS: I gravitate towards certain objects because of a combination of qualities: their symbolism, their formal qualities, their personal significance, and their potential to be realized in organza.

MRM: Are they tied to specific childhood memories?
LH: They are mostly not tied to specific childhood memories. They do often have personally significant histories: the hammer-head belonged to my father's father, the egg basket to my mother's mother, the silver cup was my own baby cup, the goblet was my grandmother's, the rope came from my in-laws' barn, etc. I think it's the connection, the lineage that they represent that's important to me rather than any specific memories.

MRM: What is it about these items that inspired you to reinterpret them in fiber and thread?
LH: It's their universal qualities that are compelling. The hammer-head is every hammer-head, the baby cup is every baby cup, the rope is every rope. If I'm compelled by a particular object for symbolic and formal reasons, it doesn't have to come from a personally significant source. For example, I'm thinking about making a mortar and pestle based on one I use in my own kitchen. It's store-bought, not one that was handed down to me. The pieces take a ridiculously long time to make, so I have a lot of time to consider what my next one will be. But when it's time to start that next piece, it's almost a spontaneous decision: What is most compelling to me right now, in this moment? That's usually a very intuitive choice, which I then come to understand in a more analytical way as I work on the piece.

MRM: What does the life-size organza form symbolize to you?
LH: In the material quality of these sculptures, I'm trying for something that's barely there, that's as close as I can get to making something completely immaterial. It's like taking a mental image and giving it just the barest minimum of actual presence. In even that barest physical manifestation, imperfection arises. I'm interested in the difference between a mental image and an actual object. The viewer doesn't get to see the actual object I've worked from. They're comparing the sculpture—an actual object in its own right—with their own mental image of the iconic object it refers to. That mental image has a perfection that doesn't exist in reality. There's always a slight deflation and disappointment in the imperfectness of the real compared with the ideal. I want to honor that imperfection, to savor its poignancy and its beauty. This does have something to do with the quality of memory in general—memory as a form of mental image—but not with my own specific childhood memories.

MRM: Do you consider your work a way of honoring and preserving the past?
LH: That might be something that comes along with what I'm doing. I think I'm honoring the present, and it's the past that brought us here, so that's part of it. I hope I'm honoring life, the way things are.