{"id":21439,"date":"2022-04-10T15:37:18","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T19:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=21439"},"modified":"2022-04-28T09:16:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T13:16:58","slug":"marilyn-pappas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2022\/04\/10\/marilyn-pappas\/","title":{"rendered":"Marilyn Pappas Addresses Feminism, War, Beauty, Aging As She Draws With Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the 1990s, Marilyn Pappas was making textiles depicting ancient Greco-Roman sculptures of goddess.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that even in their broken, battered state\u2014they wouldn\u2019t have a head, or one breast would be off or whatever\u2014that they still, these sculptures that we look at were broken, but they were beautiful. And we learned to love them that way,\u201d the Somerville artist said for a 2020 virtual exhibition at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute<\/a>. \u201cAnd for me, they were metaphors of women that as you age as I have, as things happen to you, you may be broken in different ways. Broken and hurt and changed. But you could still be strong. You might still be vulnerable, but you could still be strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMarilyn Pappas: A Retrospective\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum<\/a> in Brockton from March 12 to Aug. 28, 2022, features 21 textile artworks, dating as far back as the 1960s, often embroidered in a manner she\u2019s called \u201cdrawing with thread.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHer socially charged themes\u2014feminism, political resistance, beauty and aging, love and loss\u2014ring as true today as they did in the years in which they were created, over five decades ago in some cases,\u201d Fuller Craft Museum Artistic Director and Chief Curator Beth McLaughlin says in a press release.<\/p>\n

A native of Brockton, Pappas was born in 1931. She studied art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Pennsylvania State University, then taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design from 1974 to \u201994, and chaired the school\u2019s 3D Fine Arts Program for nine years. She is one of the cofounders of Somerville\u2019s Brickbottom studios in 1989, where she still lives and works.<\/p>\n

\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Knapsack I,” 1970s. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pappas emerged as an artist in the early 1960s as part of the American studio craft movement. Her pieces from the 1960s and \u201870s are often patchworks. Some of them\u2014collaged together from military uniforms and gear, with dangling ropes and strings\u2014can call to mind wounded veterans returning from the Vietnam war.<\/p>\n

During the 1970s and \u201880s, she made collages of paper or fabric evoking outfits and landscapes and maps.\u00a0By the 1990s, she’d found her ancient classical goddesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI usually choose a sculpture that interests me, often because I have actually seen it and somehow it strikes a chord,\u201d Pappas told Judith Zausner of the blog Creativity Matters in 2013<\/a>. \u201cFrom photographs of the sculpture, I make full scale sketches that I often cut out and then I draw the outline on linen. Most of the rest of the drawing is done directly with thread, on the background linen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, (from left) “Altar with Three Figures”; “Nevertheless She Persisted I,” 2018, cotton, linen, wood; and “Nike, Goddess of Victory,” 2004, cotton, linen, gold. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of Pappas\u2019s textiles are embroidered with red and orange and tan threads that can evoke viscera\u2014and violence. \u201cHistory Lessons: Nike, Goddess of Victory,\u201d which arrived during the United States\u2019 simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, depicts a sculptural fragment of the winged goddess, missing an arm and head, in sheer garments, next to a shattered vase and under a banner reading \u201cAt What Cost Victory?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLarger than life, scarred and battered by the ravages of time,\u201d Pappas has said, \u201cthere is a particular beauty, vulnerability, and dignity in these mythical personifications of idealism. By placing the draped images of the goddesses back into the softness of linen, the fabric depicted in the ancient marbIe sculptures, I try to reemphasize their femininity while retaining the individual character of each figure. Some are powerful, strong, larger than life; others seem vulnerable, yet dignified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other pieces\u2014like her 2009 pairing of a classical sculpture of Venus with Marilyn Monroe with her white cocktail dress blowing up, as in the famous scene from the 1955 film \u201cThe Seven Year Itch\u201d\u2014are, she says, \u201cmeditations on western concepts of beauty throughout time. \u2026 I am interested in the imperfection of beauty and the beauty of imperfection.\u201d (Can’t help wondering if being named Marilyn has something to do with the subject of this particular piece as well.)<\/p>\n

A 2018 embroidered textile of a headless and armless classical sculpture of a woman, displayed upright over a wood support, was titled \u201cNevertheless She Persisted I.\u201d It\u2019s named after Republican (then) Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell\u2019s insult of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2017, when he stopped her from speaking during debate of Donald Trump\u2019s nomination of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General. It immediately became a feminist rallying cry. Pappas has said, \u201cAlthough broken, faded and disintegrating, I see them in this era of \u201c#metoo\u201d, as metaphors for the strength and power of today\u2019s women.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Opera Coat,” 1968, fabric collage. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Collaged Drawing with Knapsack,” 1970s. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Opera Coat,” 1968, fabric collage. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Nevertheless She Persisted I,” 2018, cotton, linen, wood. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cMarilyn<\/a>
\u201cMarilyn Pappas: A Retrospective\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton from March 12 to Aug. 28, 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Nevertheless She Persisted I,” 2018, cotton, linen, wood. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, (foreground) “Nevertheless She Persisted II,” 2018, cotton, linen, wood. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas, “Venus, Marilyn and the Life of Beauty,” 2009, cotton, linen. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Marilyn<\/a>
Marilyn Pappas (from left) “Nevertheless She Persisted III: Hygieia with Snakes,” 2021, cotton thread on linen; and “The Erosion of Diana,” 2017, cotton, linen. (Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cMarilyn<\/a>
\u201cMarilyn Pappas: A Retrospective\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton from March 12 to Aug. 28, 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the 1990s, Marilyn Pappas was making textiles depicting ancient Greco-Roman sculptures of goddess. \u201cI felt that even in their broken, battered state\u2014they wouldn\u2019t have a head, or one breast would be off or whatever\u2014that they still, these sculptures that we look at were broken, but they were beautiful. And we learned to love them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[226],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21439"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21568,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21439\/revisions\/21568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}