Hilary Brace’s charcoal drawings are given additional vibrancy in her woven tapestries. The use of metal and reflective yarns creates dynamism in the works that reinforce the ethereal atmosphere of the landscapes and clouds.
Brace makes almost photographic drawings of clouds and mysterious, unspoiled landscapes. She makes elusive places tangible. Although the drawings are very lifelike, they are entirely rendered from the artist’s imagination. She invites the viewer to surrender to the logic and beauty of these other worlds, while reminding us of the instability and fragility of our own. In 2016, she started making tapestries in the TextielLab as way to express the essential characteristics of her drawings in jacquard woven works.
Brace created detailed digital drawings specifically for the weavings. With the product developer, she produced a colour palette of 16 shades of grey. She adapted her drawings to this colour palette until she achieved the desired result. This tapestry was woven with reflective yarns, among others, so that the image seems to move, depending on the position of the viewer.
Brace (Seattle, 1956) is an American artist known for her charcoal drawings on polyester film of cloudscapes and landscapes. She graduated from the University of California in 1985 and received her bachelor’s in painting and fine arts from the Western Washington State University. She had her first solo exhibition in 1996. Institutions including the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Boise Art Museum have acquired her work. She has won various awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship. She is based in Santa Barbara.
