Amanda Earl: 'LIFE’S KNOTS'

The British textile artist Rezia Wahid kindly mailed some beautiful postcards from her Woven Air. The cards were wrapped in silk thread, which I kept because I loved its feel. In her biography, she states that air, peace, and tranquility are part of Islamic tradition and art, and they have influences on her work. 

We are living in an unsettling and hectic time. Air, peace, and tranquility can be difficult to achieve. Life gets tangled into knots. The silk thread tangled up too. I love the gentle palate of Rezia’s textiles and tried to honour it with these pieces. I scanned the knotted silk thread below pastel construction paper, thinking of the tangle of the good and the complicated, the settled and the unsettled. I played with the pieces in Photoshop, seeing what combining and turning together might reveal, much like what I imagine the process of weaving to entail, and I found a river, turning and twisting, flowing into the sea.

Amanda Earl (she/her) is a polyamorous pansexual feminist Canadian writer, visual poet, editor and publisher who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She’s the managing editor of Bywords.ca, the fallen angel of AngelHousePress, and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset Editions, 2021). Her books are Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014, now with Invisible Publishing), Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl (Coming Together, 2014) and A World of Yes (DevilHouse, 2015). Earl’s most recent chapbook is The Before, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (above/ground press, 2022) Her pamphlet, TROUBLE, will be published by Hem Press in Fall, 2022 and Genesis, an excerpt from the Vispo Bible is forthcoming from Timglaset Editions. Her visual poetry has been exhibited in Canada, Brazil, Italy, Russia, UK and USA. More info is available at AmandaEarl.com or connect on Twitter @KikiFolle.