Circus and Slapstick
1996
Ethel Stein (American, 1917-2018) United States
United States
In the mid-1990s Stein started to weave double cloth. She wanted to continue the theme of the color grids woven in series in 1995, but she didn’t know an effective way to show both sides of each weaving. One day driving home she saw an outdoor sign supported by a cubic framework, a structure made in Germany for store displays. She obtained one and made these six double-cloth panels to fit. One panel, featuring a splatter of color, stands apart from the rest. Stein tried to create a suitable splatter pattern by breaking egg after egg in the bathtub, but the effect was never right. Ultimately the splatter pattern used came from her imagination.
Six panels configured into a cube: cotton, plain weave, double cloth; woven on a loom with a drawloom attachment fabricated by the artist