Night Image #1

Currently not on view

Night Image #1

1963

Thomas Stearns (American, 1936–2006)

Stearns created Night Image #1 at a time when fiber was being discovered by artists nationwide as a medium for sculpture as opposed to a material used in commercial and industrial products. Like many painters of the period, his intention was to not only express strong emotions in his art but to elicit those feelings through the use of color, form, and texture.

Prototypes for Constructions, a body of work that includes this sculpture, began in 1960–62 in Venice, where Stearns maintained a studio in his home to work on fiber assemblages. Evocative of the city at twilight with striations of color and shadow and references to reflection and abstraction, Night Image #1 can be tied to Stearns’s reaction when he arrived in Italy in November 1960: “My first night in Venice decided for me that whatever work I was to do . . . would be a tribute to the magic and mystery of Venice.”

Currently not on view

Object Details

Title:

Night Image #1

Date:

1963

Artist:

Thomas Stearns (American, 1936–2006)

Medium:

Silk, linen, cactus fiber, wool, metal thread, lacquered and gilded pine

Dimensions:

6 feet 6 inches × 10 inches × 10 inches (198.1 × 25.4 × 25.4 cm)

Classification:

Fiber Art

Credit Line:

Gift of Miani Johnson in memory of her mother, Marian Willard Johnson, 1992

Accession Number:

1992-80-1

Geography:

Made in United States, North and Central America

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Currently not on view