Creating the Signals Series
My exploration of code all started with the book The Woman Who Smashed Code by Jason Fagone and Elizebeth Smith Friedman. As a pattern designer for over thirty years, I was struck by the idea that you don’t need to be a mathematician or a linguist to break code; you just need to look for the pattern.
This excited me and challenged me to begin hiding code in my artwork in a way that made it inherent within the design. I want the pieces to stand on their own as unique pieces of art but with an entire back story that provides multiple layers of exploration.
After reading about Elizebeth, I deeply explored all the women that broke code or spied in WWI and WWII.
This series is inspired by Virginia Hall, one of the top female spies in WWII. She was based in France and spied for Britain and the US. If you would like to learn more about her, I suggest the book A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell.
This group of bead weavings is based on sending signals during wartime. Sometimes, a simple plant in a window became a signal that it was safe to enter.
I chose Morse code because it lent itself nicely to the woven grid and the square beads. By choosing plants, the codes became plant idioms. It would be fun to incorporate all the plant idioms and pair them with the specific plant.
My process:
Researched plant idioms.
Created a gridded layout.
Determined the specific idiom based on the plant and converted it to Morse code.
Planted (pun intended) the code in various parts of the image.
Determined a color palette was tricky because I was restricted to existing color palettes.
Each piece took four hours to weave.
The piece had to be mounted on a small board and then mounted into the frame.
Finally, a matte board was added to the back with the color chosen to accentuate the individual weavings.
The pieces were created for my first solo show at Studio Place Arts in Barre, Vermont. They were designed to be hung in three sets of twelve, eluding to a window frame.
The titles of each piece are named after French numbers as a nod to Virginia’s time in France.
Below is a visual example of the process. You can also watch this video of how the pieces were created: Signal Series Video
