Laurie Lambrecht's 'Weaving the Unraveled'

Now through October 30, the Drawing Room in East Hampton is presenting “Weaving the Unraveled: New Tapestries by Laurie Lambrecht.” The exhibition brings together unique montages of weaving, photography and embroidery, the artistic traditions Lambrecht has mastered and interlaced over four decades.

Born and raised in Bridgehampton, Lambrecht maintains her studio practice in her hometown where the coastal landscape and woodland trails continue to inspire her imagery and creativity. The recipient of prestigious artists’ residencies in Europe and the U.S., Lambrecht travels often to seek inspiration from foreign landscapes where she concentrates on new mixed media projects.

In these sumptuous, layered fiber works begun in 2016, Lambrecht embeds color and graphic energy captured in her photography of nature or of modern paintings. She begins with the photograph of lichen on tree bark, or of a painting by Gauguin, which she prints in archival pigments on linen. She then deconstructs the image on linen by cutting it into strips. Weaving these strips on her handloom, she creates a new work of art that holds memory bits of the original palette in the photograph.

Often she embroiders the linen weaving, adding more evidence of her hand. In this inventive approach, Lambrecht’s original photograph becomes the matrix for newly woven works in fiber.

The most recent group of small tapestries presents the artist’s appropriation of iconic paintings by contemporary and modern masters.

In this series, Lambrecht begins with photographs of paintings by artists ranging from Cy Twombly and Mary Heilmann to Henri Matisse and Gustav Klimt. The surprising outcome of creating new images from weaving strips of another work of art invites close viewing and offers insights into each painter’s style.

Combining her mastery of photography, weaving and embroidery, Lambrecht creates evocative abstract tapestries imbued with the history of their making. Each technique adds a rich texture and shimmers with colors from nature and art history.

Installed in a separate room are highlights from Lambrecht’s 1990-1992 series of photographs, “In Roy Lichtenstein’s Studio.” The collages of strewn materials she photographed on Lichtenstein’s worktables presage her recent compositions of interlaced fibers and threads and offer a look into the mind and eye of the artist.

Lambrecht has earned critical recognition for her photographs of visual and performing artists and their creative environments, as well as landscapes of public and private spaces around the world. Her widely exhibited series on Lichtenstein was published in a monograph by The Monacelli Press in 2011. Her work is represented in numerous museums and corporate and private collections, including the Parrish Art Museum, Guild Hall Museum, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

The Drawing Room is at 55 Main Street in East Hampton and “Weaving the Unraveled” runs through October 30. Visit drawingroom-gallery.com or call 631-324-5016 for details.