Café Gallery
John Hess: Permutations
John Hess is a mixed media textile artist with an interest in exploring dimension, either with double woven cloth shaped into relief with an armature for stability or flat woven fabric using pattern and fabric paint to create illusions of depth. Using patterns, either woven or painted, he expresses color modulations while repeating with scale changes and mirrored effects.
Depending on how the patterns evolve, the configuration of many of his pieces changes during the weaving process. He lets the fabric suggest ways to proceed from one motif to the next. Drawn to geometric abstraction, he likes to play with variations by shifting repeats with subtle scale changes and inversions of motifs.
John often works with a series of similar ideas, each playing off a theme of sight, fractal breakup, dimension ambivalence, and maze diversions. He finds he can explore a concept more fully if he does repeats to fully grasp an idea. Color, for him, is a never-ending journey to grasp its nuance.
John has completed numerous public art commissions, the most recent two being the Magna Library, Copper Veils, a two-section double woven wall sculpture of metallic yarns with reflective inserts and the Flying Birds Tapestry at the Riverton Senior Center, woven of metallic yarns with painted geometric motifs and flying birds.
