Wall Installations – Lyn Horton

Installation, 1981

July 13, 2021 lhorton20141 Comment

This installation image showing velvet going horizontally and lanyard vertically occurred at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA, in a Faculty Show.

This is also the only time it has been created and was a combination of the materials I had been working with since I went to CalArts and later used in my exhibits at Claire S. Copley Gallery and San Jose State University in the mid-seventies.

The velvet is far more expressively handled because it is soft and pliable and represents, in essence, my femininity.

The dimensions of the BCC installation are seventy inches high by sixty-six inches width and probably six inches at its deepest point, where the velvet was bent out into space in a curve shape.

Pushpins hold the elements to the wall.

And it is based on the principles of the lanyard piece originally created in the corner of Gallery A-102 at CalArts, whereby the vertical length plus the molding equals my height in inches and the horizontal length is equals sixty-six inches, the width of my arm span.

Installation, lanyard and pushpins, each side 70″ h by 66″ w, 1970

Laos Installation, Details, 2014

October 21, 2019November 11, 2019 lhorton2014Leave a comment

These images show the installation of the piece, Naga #2, at the Embassy of Laos in Vientiane, going down the wall from left to right. The textiles are all Lao from different regions of the country. They were gathered at markets and from mills on my visits there.

Many of the small pieces of woven cloth are often incorporated into clothing as borders on skirts or jackets. Some of the large tapestries are used as hangings. The horizontal center blue & Tai Daeng weave tapestry is an antique.

The black “line” is velvet cording, weaving in and out of the spaces between the tapestries. In some places, examples of the silk thread used in weaving the tapestries were stretched out to intertwine with the materials laid out on the wall. I used two thousand brass nails to mount the cording as well as the tapestries. At one point in the middle of the installation, I believed that I was going to run out of nails. So I decided to use the velvet in broad strokes taking it straight across the materials on the wall instead of curving it over or around the tapestries. To some, this falsely appeared as though I was holding up the tapestries when, in fact, it was a pragmatic decision to save the number of nails that I had left. The straight “lines” complement the angularity of the Lao designs; the textile version of the Naga is an example.

The title, Naga, is the name of the mythical dragon-like creature that protects the country. It lives in the Mekong River. Laos is not the only country which reveres the Naga.

These pictures are the only ones that were taken of the piece. I took them when I finished installing it. I take great risk in publishing them here.

Naga detail 1