Stitched webs and gossamer threads are the spiritual skeletons that hold fiber artist’s Ketty Devieux’ fragile, at times disintegrating works together.
The abstract surrealism and trance like qualities of her meandering threadwork and nearly transparent materials stand, however, in balanced contrast to her other surprisingly durable elements – unstretched, unsized canvas, upholstery, curtain scraps - that lend her works their structural hints of permanence.
Some elements look planned. Others are dreamlike and too elusive to categorize. “Sometimes I do things here that I don’t understand,” Devieux says. “These pieces explain what I am trying to say, because I have no words. “
Sheer Chinese tissue papers, shimmering Indian cheesecloths and shredding cotton fibers are Devieux’ partners, stained and painted with ethereal blends of coffee, tea, wine, inks of all kinds, and gouaches and pale washes. “These materials are not too sturdy,” Devieux says. “They are delicate, very fragile. Beauty is what is fragile and weak. You must have patience with these things, and treat them with respect.”
Sometimes, when her pieces meet at that intersection between abstract surrealism and abstract expressionism, Devieux’ fiber art is reminiscent of art historical canon,
Ketty Devieux, "In the Depths of Silence," 2016
Roberto Matta, “The Bachelors Twenty Years Later,” 1943
Ketty Devieux, "Mixed-Media on Paper," 2016
Jackson Pollock, "Ocean Greyness," 1953
but without exception, her finished work is unique and timeless.
And everywhere, there are her stitches, the map-like umbilical cords, the webs of ghostly beings, the faint bones of well-traveled paths. Faces appear, wombs, the divine feminine, flowers, heads, gardens, walls, roads, shorelines, destinations, angels, light, shadow; only to return again into Devieux’ depths of the creative unknown.
“I am a loner, I work in isolation, and I think what comes out is something from very deep inside,” Devieux says, and no-where is this more evident than in her series “The Depths of Silence,” works which contain - in addition to her stitches and fragile materials - words, thoughts, sayings, and colours evocative of her time living abroad, everywhere from her native Haiti, to places as diverse as India and Singapore.
Lucille Clifton’s famous quote, pinned to Devieux’ studio wall, is the benediction to the work all around it: “Things don’t fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.”
-Naomi Ryerson