An interpretation of elements

in the work of Gail Grinnell

Line

Floating, flying, drifting as if underwater, the lines in Gail Grinnell’s work follow movements, paths and relationships.

They are driplines, trails, roots, filters—meshes of stitching, networks of pulsing veins.

A lifetime mass of silent gestures.

Metaphor

Vision in the architecture of a garment: dashes, arrows, folds, darts—topography revealed in the shadows of a body.

An inventory of work: washing, mending, tearing, lifting, tucking, touching, bearing.

Identities hidden in clouds of tinted water.

 
Texture

Repetition: fold here, cut there, loop underneath, begin again. Limp threads divide then entwine like cells creating new skin.

The accumulation of experience falling on its own weight.

Texture in the ridges of flesh, in the unfolding of another day.

 
Layer

The infinite caught in divided moments. Time expanded through recollection, retelling, reliving. Time trapped in absence.

Individual lives affecting the whole.

History salvaged in a remnant of tissue.