Striated Straw

Artist / Maker Priscilla Kepner Sage (American, b. 1936)

Date1962-1963

MediumFabric, fiber, bleach, and dye. Machine and hand stitched.

Dimensions80 x 35 1/2 in. (203.2 x 90.2 cm)

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineGift of the artist and Charles Sage. In the Art on Campus Collection, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object numberU2012.359

Status

Not on view

Collections

CultureAmerican

Label TextOnce Priscilla moves to Ames, Iowa in 1962 with computer-expert husband Charles, early urban architectural skylines give way to an architecture of body and earth. The warm-hued textured fabrics layered with heavily stitched lines in Striated Straw (1962–63) and Butterburr (1963) are like aerial views of a creatively planted, visibly growing garden. Both use embroidery on a macrocosmic scale organically layered over a collage of intensely warm, highly textured, geometric fabric shapes. They are really drawings in the sense that the threads are moving lines and gestures —an EKG reading meeting a seismographic printout. It was an exciting time of change in Priscilla’s life and that comes through in the work.

PeriodMid-Century

Locations