Textile and Fiber
Judith Bell
Portland, Maine, United States
“A loose thread can tell you where the whole structure is breathing.”
Biography
Judith Bell has woven for more than five decades, first in cooperative mills and later in a quiet studio near Casco Bay. Her recent wall works reduce maritime references to weight, openness, and bands of weathered indigo.
Artist statement
Bell thinks of cloth as a score for tension. Dense passages carry visual weight, while open warps admit the wall and its changing light into the finished work.
In the studio
Bell dyes linen and wool in small vats, then works on a wide countermarch loom with deliberate changes in sett. Weighted edges and exposed selvedges are resolved by hand after the cloth leaves the loom.
