Joan Diamond
Tomorrow is Not Promised, 2024
Silk, Muslin, vat and Procion dyes, fabric paint, threads 19" W x 43"H (+ more for hanging threads)
The news allows us nearly daily to reassess and revise our thoughts on environmental changes and the divides between science, politics, and business on this issue. Explosive and unprecedented fires, hurricanes and tornadoes, dramatic ice melt, droughts, heat waves and warming ocean waters have become common destructive events. Surgical stitches and the longer threads that trail off the art together contemplate whether there ever will be enough thread for all the needed repairs.
Joan Diamond
Memories of Mom #2, 2025
Silk organza, artist-made netting, feathers, slides, embroidery thread (for free motion embroidery) 17"h x 27"W x 6"D
This is one of 3 pillow cases in this series. One of mom's artist statements has been embroidered onto this pillow. Writing a statement is often difficult, and one goes to bed still editing and rewriting until the statement feels right.! The slides of different pieces contained in organza envelopes documents some of her work. Feathers are for hope and respect for an elder.
Joan Diamond
Before, 2022
wool, organza, silk noil, acid dyes, rust and tea dyed linen, gesso, strapping, gold paint, linen thread, acrylic tubing, River Birch tree seeds variable; mean length of "pods" is 4 feet long x 8" wide
A poem I wrote was the inspiration for this piece. In tandem with the seeds, directly above them, the "pods" hover, point, and twirl in a breeze. It is my hope that the work leads the viewer to consider cycles of many beginnings.
Joan Diamond
It Helps Sometimes to Take the Long View, 2021
wool, silk noil, silk organza, acid dyes, single use plastic bags, embroidery floss 52"H x 48"W
Ageless Shibori (Nui-in this case machine stitch Shibori)on forms meant to evoke landscape, as in mountain ridges, in combination with single use plastic detritis.
Joan Diamond
Enduring, 2021
Single use plastic bags, quilt fragments, organza, netting, thread 64"H x 44"W
A quilt is a tangible link to family, imbued with sensory and emotive triggers, often too precious to toss in spite of worn spots and holes. The aerial landscape evokes a sense of place. Concepts of love and home, whether an idea, a real place, or a longing are collective experiences lasting a lifetime and cross all gender and social class lines.. Collectively, globally, we live in partnership with our artificial man-made world. Single use plastic bags live well beyond their momentary utility. It takes 500 years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. They contaminate marine eco-systems, soil, water, animals ingesting them. Blue, the color of expansiveness, neutrality and lack of aggression, was chosen as ironic commentary. Here the news is packaged in blue, as if innocent of its greater toxicity? "Enduring" asks: are we mindful enough of what we hold dear?
Joan Diamond
Tethered, 2019
Clay mono-print; archival pigment print; monofilament, floss, silk and wax linen threads 19"H x 37"W x 19"D
A web of barely visible threads straddles across all three images on the convex side. These threads are meant to be suggestive of the invisibilia (i.e., unseeable forces that shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions) which ties us to our place, our time, our loves. On the concave side this mixed media sculpture showcases clay mono prints. Until this print I had faithfully done as instructed: make three pulls of an image, decide the best, toss out the others. This print caused a pause: why not celebrate the differences amongst the three pulls instead? Heavy stitching emphasizes these differences, yet does not abstract their relatedness.
Joan Diamond
Possibilities, 2017
Commercial fabrics, silk organza, netting, silk and cotton thread 48"W x 60"H
This piece was inspired by a trip to Morocco, and my interpretation with their concept of "bare requirements" necessary to build community. The necessary five are community: fountain, oven, bath, madressa (school), and mosque. Using Bojagi renders finished seams on both back and front. These seams cast a network of shadows. When the piece sways in a breeze the quivering roadmap pattern felt appropriate to convey a sense of shifting possibilities when visiting a city for the first time.
Joan Diamond
Portal, 2019
Cotton, Procion dyes, cotton and silk thread 41"H x 46"W
This started as a very large cotton square, but the composition on it was undesirable. I found myself with a static T shaped design, like the shape of a kimono. Free wheeling black swirly lines failed to break up the composition and realizing the piece needed a dramatic over-haul, I put it away. By the time I looked at it again I had coincidently been looking at a lot of pre-Renaissance paintings, and was admiring how important all those triangle sight lines were-portals to cohesiveness and perspective. Click! I realized I could be brave and not be bound by the original size or shape that this piece was as it had been dyed, and without further ado, re-addressed it.
Joan Diamond
Covid 2, 2020
Cotton flannel, wool, commercial fabrics, yarn, thread 8 1/4"H x 12"
This is a translation of a drawing made with various marking mediums to fiber. With the onset of lockdown suddenly I was urgently compelled to work without color, something I had never done before. This, and others in this series, helped me process my thoughts in that scary time.
Joan Diamond
Covid 3, 2020
Cotton flannel, commercial fabrics, yarn, thread 8 3'4" H x 12"W
This is a translation of a drawing made with various marking mediums to fiber during quarantine. I, who live squarely in a world of color with my dyes and threads ,was suddenly compelled to work without color.
