Haley Wood on making "Hawthorn 8," in her solo show at Abigail Ogilvy in Los Angeles
“Each fairy tale is a magic mirror which reflects some aspects of our inner world, and of the steps required by our evolution from immaturity to maturity,” Bruno Bettleheim wrote in The Uses of Enchantment. Throughout our lives, we get pulled back into the realm of fairies, and monsters. We set out on heroic treks again and again. Loss, for instance, drags us into an underworld on a journey that can be long and arduous. Everyone’s path is different. But artists, who are alchemists, create structures that may point the way and provide gateways to understanding, softening, and acceptance.
Cambridge fiber artist Haley Wood’s tufted rugs are vessels of grief and magic. Haley’s solo show Hawthorn is on view through Dec. 20 at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Los Angeles. She creates multi-panel series of rugs that could easily adorn the floor of your baby’s nursery. Her work in this series – the folktale-like trek of a bear lost to itself – has been her means of coping after her mother’s death. As with her previous series, Woad, Hawthorn features simply rendered animals taking on weird, uncanny, and painful human archetypes.
Haley researches rich old narratives such as folktales and illuminated manuscripts. Hawthorn also dips into herbal medicine. These old structures of knowing spring from a viewpoint more rooted in the earth and in the spirit world than we are in the U.S. in the 21st-century. Like Haley’s wandering bear, we are split off from solace and sorcery. Haley’s work is the epitome of why we need humanities and the liberal arts – which are slowly being leached from our educational landscape. After all, story, art, and music are what hold and heal our hurts.
If you’ve ever tufted, you know it’s not a quiet task. It’s perhaps one of the more violent textile arts; the tool is called a tufting gun. I forgot that, being a rug-hooker and not a tufter, so I asked Haley if the process is meditative for her.
But her style isn’t exactly one of quiet surrender. She wrote back, “I feel more in ‘factory mode.’ Then I zone out and listen to really aggressive music, haha. It is pretty meditative, but with the added element of heavy machinery. It’s a good time for me to process a lot of feelings.”
