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Charlotte Lindgren
Weather Front

Charlotte Lindgren
(b. 1931 Toronto, ON; lives in Baddeck, NS)

Weather Front 1983
hand-woven linen and sheet acrylic
56 x 112 x 119.5 cm
Gift of the artist, 2013
Mount Saint Vincent University Collection
2013.3

Charlotte Lindgren is a pioneering textile artist, well-known for the large, hand-woven sculptures that she began producing in the 1960s. Lindgren pushed the boundaries of her medium by using unexpected materials such as cow hair, wire and plastics, in addition to wool, linen, silk or mohair. The influence of architecture in Lindgren’s work is evidenced by a dedicated exploration of form, material, and particularly of scale. The larger works prompt consideration of the human body; Lindgren created structures that invite the spectator to move around and enter into them. In 1980, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia presented a retrospective of Lindgren’s work entitled, Fibre Structures, which included Windjammer, a piece similar to Weather Front. Lindgren ceased weaving in 1985.

Weather Front is exemplary of the fibre sculptures Lindgren created while working in an abandoned church in Halifax. Her Armdale church studio allowed the artist room to spread out her forms after they were completed flat on the loom. Weather Front is composed of a colourful linen textile, woven with a stepped pattern, and suspended from the underside of a large clear acrylic sheet. The linen-lined acrylic sheet is cantilevered from the wall and hangs parallel to the ceiling. Six additional loosely woven rectangular panels of diminishing sizes, in shades of red, green, and blue, hang perpendicularly. The hanging rectangular panels mirror the shape of the stepped pattern in the linen textile. The acrylic sheet supports the pendant lengths of textile giving the work a geometric shape, a semblance of weight and a three-dimensional form.

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