Striking Somewhere

About

The Flower Paintings differ from the Woven Paintings in terms of material, yet also serve as a timeline. Rather than being hand-woven, the Flower Paintings are machine-woven cloth the artists treats with an ambiguous mix of natural floral dyes and accents of acrylic paint.

The floral dyes are derived from seasonal flowers and the synthetic materials
further indicate the passage of time, as they nod to technology and the artist’s evolution in her process. This is the first time both the Woven and Flower paintings are being shown together, and they provide an interesting juxtaposition in their material and creative differences.

Manganiello is involved in every aspect of the production of her paintings from start to finish. Spinning the raw wool, cotton, or silk. Dyeing the yarn with natural or synthetic ingredients on hand, whether they be the avocado pits she has saved from her meals or a paint tube of Fiber Reactive Procion Dye PRST17, the number for “avocado” color .

Physically weaving each thread on a floor loom, each laborious hour marked by a new swath of cloth being created. The paintings become a geographical map and timeline. Each thread is an axis. Each weave is a fixed coordinate, or a fixed moment in time, striking somewhere.

As it has been for thousands of years in the ancient practice of handmade textile production, this process is linear and methodical. The artist’s final act of transforming the cloth into paintings is not. She cuts and rearranges the material, disrupting the careful order in her process. Her paintings become a patchwork of time; different pieces of cloth, created at different moments in her process, join together so that beginning, middle, and end are no longer distinguishable.