The Way Forward, Recent Work by Meg Little

Opening Thursday, October 8, 6 – 8pm

Gallery Hours Wednesday – Saturday, 10am – 2pm through November 6

Rugmaker Meg Little has been conceiving and creating art for the floor for 25 years. She has spent that time digging into other eras and civilizations, finding the archetypal pattern language that transcends distance and culture. The work begins in her sketchbook, which functions as scrapbook and incubator. There Little sifts through fragments of decorated objects, bits of magazine clippings, paintings, and other art, looking for new variations of her pattern vocabulary: the dot, stripe, circle, and square. While not specifically referential, some of her recent work does have a botanical quality to it, but this is bound to change as she continues to poke around in books and museums. Like the notes on a scale, the simple shapes she loves can be endlessly rearranged and reimagined. Because she is known for her complex and rich use of color, many people have been surprised that Little’s initial ideas are always rendered in pencil. She’s also particular about the pencil: a number 2 Ticonderoga usually in the customary shade of yellow. For her, no other medium allows for the depth of color achievable in the intertwining of hundreds of colors of yarn. Because of this, Little has always created smaller rugs as an extension of her sketchbook, trying out new forms and color combinations in a way that will move a design forward. Some patterns will be repeated and reused in larger works and some will stand alone as interesting experiments. She takes her cue from an artist she reveres, Pierre Bonnard, who said, “When one covers a surface with color, one should always be able to try any number of new approaches, find a never-ending supply of new combinations of forms and colors which satisfy emotional needs.” At the Jamestown Arts Center, Little will demonstrate this thought process as well as recent work born of it.

Bio

For the past twenty five years, Meg Little has been creating rugs that are “vibrant, joyful, and unique,” as Hunterdon Art Museum co-curator Hildreth York has written in Fiber Arts Magazine. “She brings the soul of an artist and the skill of a superb designer-craftsperson to her highly original work.” Little trained in Fibers as an undergraduate at Tyler School of Art and as a graduate at Rhode Island School of Design.

She has shown extensively both locally and nationally and was included in the “Networks” project featuring the best of Rhode Island artists. She has also been featured in the newly released book “Masters of Craft: Portraits by Paul J. Smith”, Director Emeritus, Museum of Arts and Design in New York City which includes 224 makers who share a belief in the importance of the handmade object.

Meg lives with her husband and a menagerie in a converted dairy barn in Middletown.