Twisting Wool into Thread: Works by Marcy Chevali

In Marcy Chevali's work, glass expands and contracts. Thin and transparent borosilicate glass rods are bent into shape with a torch and adjoined to form an irregular grid. These grids appear to swell, as if created around an invisible, dimensional form. Chevali refers to the structures she makes out of glass, metal, and sometimes mohair as "nets." No matter the material, the treatment is similar; wire and mohair are likewise knotted or interlaced. Knotted mohair stiffens and becomes suspended in or imprinted on handmade abaca paper. Undulating wire nets anchor to the wall like spider webs or fishing trawls. Woolen veils, the length of the human body, trail from suspended ovoid vessels, pulled into funnel shapes under the force of gravity. Chevali's work develops slowly and methodically, calling to mind the story of Penelope's web in Margaret Atwood's novella _The Penelopiad_, from which the title of this exhibition is borrowed. According to Atwood's reimagining of Homer's _Odyssey_, Penelope must weave a shroud for her father-in-law Laertes, "twisting wool into thread." She announces that she will select a suitor to remarry once the shroud has been completed. As part of her ruse, every nightfall, Penelope unraveled all of the threads in order to postpone her remarriage and control her fate. Each natural fiber Chevali manipulates represents a calculated decision to fix material in place, allow it to move freely and respond to the environment, or remove it altogether.