“The Color of No”
Susan Iverson
April 12-June 2, 2019
The Color of NO presents more than 40 vibrant wool and silk tapestries produced by artist Susan Iverson over the last five years.
Iverson is an artist and master weaver, known for her innovative approach to tapestry. She taught in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Craft + Material Studies for 40 years, retiring in 2015. Currently, she is the president and director-at-large of the American Tapestry Alliance.
This concise body of work, striking in its clarity and power, explores the deceptive complexity of the word “no.” A loaded word, charged with potential energy, “no” often hovers on the edge of explosion. The word can be empathetic, even soothing; it can register surprise or delight, shock or disappointment. It can stand alone as a one-word sentence yet often requires context to be fully understood.
Iverson uses shifts in composition, form, scale and, perhaps most crucially, color to explore the word’s context and relay meaning. In this era of protest and polarization, as we ask questions about refusal and consent, the intimate, human-scaled tapestries that make up The Color of NO resonate with all of us.
Iverson has exhibited her work at the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, Poland; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C.; the Visions Museum in San Diego, Calif.; the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Va.; the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Smithville, Tenn.; the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Mass.; and the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., among other places. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery as well as the collections of the Federal Reserve Bank, Capital One, and others.
Iverson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She was awarded the Theresa Pollak Award in 2011.
Iverson earned her Master of Fine Arts from Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Colorado State University.
She lives and works in Hanover County, Virginia.
Video courtesy of LookSEE.