A Spider and Its Webs

 

Spiders date back to almost 380 million years ago. All spiders produce silk, and even in non-web building spiders, silk is intimately tied to courtship and mating. Furthermore, spiders use silk for many purposes, including the trailing safety dragline, wrapping eggs for reproduction, protective retreats and catching prey.

 

However, only about half of the known spiders catch prey by means of webs. Other actively hunt for prey, or sit and wait for prey to come to them. Web-building spiders are like patient weavers and architects. They produce different types of proteinaceous silk from their spinnerets based on their surrounding and purpose of use. Even a single spider web contains several types of silk fibers.

 

The complexity of spider silk types and its webs reminds me of fiber art knowledge. Different combination of materials and techniques can create millions of combinations of possibilities. Threads and yarns to me is like a three dimensional painting brushes. I can paint freely with skills like spinning, weaving, crocheting, braiding and knotting.

 

To pay tribute to spiders, I create a giant spiders and several webs. I used white purely thin thread and fabric strips to create different webs like orb web, tangle web and funnel web. I expect that knitter as me could create varieties of artworks and could connect new links within repeated cycles as spiders.

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Monster Haunted in THAV, mixed media exhibition

 

Curated by Silver Plants Studio, the exhibition “Monster Haunted” is, focusing on mixed media material art pieces with a theme of monsters. 8 artists were invited to show their crafts in different field as pottery, ceramics, metalwork, textiles and bamboo carving.