Layers of Meaning

Devorah Sperber - spools of impressionism

"A life sized rendering of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper constructed from 20,736 spools of thread strung onto aluminum ball chain. When seen with the aid of optical devices, the spools of thread coalesce into realistic images of Christ and his disciples..

When seen with the naked eye, the spools of thread appear as an abstract arrangement of multi-colored blocks/3D pixels, further abstracted by the fact that The Last Supper imagery is upside down and backwards. The clear acrylic viewing spheres rotate the imagery 180 degrees back to the correct orientation and condense the individual pixels/spools of thread into recognizable images. In addition, the spheres offer monocular views of the work, accentuating the illusion of 3 dimension as it exists in flat paintings. Leonardo da Vinci understood that the illusion of 3D in paintings was derived from monocular, not binocular, vision." This is the description of After The Last Supper, 2005. The work measures 85"h x 29'w. Yes, 29 feet wide.

The works are part of a series by NYC installation artist, Devorah Sperber. An article in the Art Institute of Colorado's alumni news elaborates on her technique

"The imagery is derived from photographs, which I digitally manipulate and translate into low-tech pixels," says Sperber. "I am interested in the effects of digital technology on issues such as what constitutes reality, the effects of scale on perception and how the eyes prioritize. While many contemporary artists utilize digital technology to create high-tech works, I strive to 'dumb-down' technology by utilizing mundane materials and low-tech, labor-intensive assembly processes."

..."I often install the work so that viewers cannot back up sufficiently to see the photographic images directly," she says. "The photo-realistic imagery is only visible when seen reflected in strategically-placed convex or cylindrical mirrors, through reversed binoculars or viewing spheres. This shift in perception functions as a dramatic mechanism to present the idea that there is no one truth or reality, emphasizing subjective reality versus absolute truth."

Her inspiration for doing this manipulation? From The Wichita Eagle:

"Sperber got the idea of using spools of thread to make art in 1999 after seeing paintings by Chuck Close at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Close is famous for large portraits which are created by painting a grid of hundreds of small color-filled squares.
Sperber fed an image of a lake into her computer, then blew it up 1600 percent so that the image became a series of tiny, separate blocks of color, or pixels.

She then matched each of those pixels to a shade of sewing thread made by the Coats & Clark company, ordered 5,760 spools in the various shades, and then strung them on plastic tubing to recreate the original picture.

She discovered the reverse binoculars reduced the scale of the 6-foot by 10-foot curtain of spools when she was trying to determine if she had strung the colors in the right order. Just like the gallery at the Ulrich, her New York studio was confined; she could not get far enough away to let the picture come into focus.

"I couldn't tell if it was working and this was the first piece, so I was getting a little concerned," Sperber said. "Did I now own 5,760 spools of thread that I should now be selling at the flea market? And there was a pair of binoculars in the studio and I picked them up and flipped them around just to see if I could see, and I literally went, 'Wow!' "

Sperber has documented all of this magic on her web site. Her works are not limited to thread, but include compositions of marker caps, map tacks and chenille stems.

Thanks to Kim LaPolla and the quiltart mailing list for citing this artist!