Painted Weavings that Connect Boisali’s Home with the World

Boisali began her journey many years ago at Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan. Even though she majored in textile designing she found her calling in creating Art with textiles as a medium. With a reasonable body of work, she held her first solo exhibition at Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata.

After moving to the US, Boisali was introduced to floor looms at a nearby art center, which eventually inspired and led her to complete an MFA in Fiber Art. She could sense that the possibilities were endless and yarns and fabrics could take her a long way.

Gradually her world of art became an adventure in her home studio. Weaving, dyeing, printing, shibori, embroidery, painting, quilting and many other techniques were integrated using a variety of materials like yarn, fabric, twigs, paper, ceramic pieces, copper strips, reeds, plastic etc. She was convinced that as much as she loved to weave on a loom, she also liked getting her hands dirty with dyes and paints on fabric. And with that, evolved her mixed media fiber art.

Color and texture became the main components in her work, woven together with her life experiences, surroundings, feelings and intimate spaces of her mind. She would start with a preliminary subject in mind, but – unlike starting a painting on a blank canvas – she works with a stack of previously dyed, printed, painted and woven fabrics  to conceptualize new assemblages. Along the way she also creates new fabrics as required.

Few years back, she came up with an unusual medium of combining painting and weaving.  She started painting on paper, cutting them up into strips  and weaving with those strips. She christened them Painted Weavings.

One constant element in her work has been her bonding with her roots. By now she has spent more than half of her life in the US; nevertheless images, corners, moments, people, landscapes, experiences and cityscapes of India show up in her subconscious now more than ever. The soul searching continues.

The work included in this issue of Antonym shows some of her painted weavings and bears that imprint.

 

Boisali’s studio is in the greater Detroit area, Michigan, USA