{"id":32649,"date":"2018-10-23T01:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/?p=32649"},"modified":"2018-10-22T10:53:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T17:53:13","slug":"windy-chien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/23\/windy-chien\/","title":{"rendered":"windy chien"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh my word. So. Many. Knots! Sigh.<\/em> This beautiful, year-long project is the work of San Francisco based artist Windy Chien<\/a>… and that’s all I’m going to say, because she explains it perfectly :<\/p>\n

I made one new knot every day in 2016: The Year of Knots<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On the fourth day of January in 2016, I was at home in San Francisco in my backyard woodworking shed sweeping up sawdust, tidying the workshop, aware of the new year ahead. I wondered, idly, what it might bring. What happened next\u2014in a flash\u2014was completely unexpected: I had an actual \u2018lightbulb moment,’ the kind I thought happened only in fiction. In the space of seconds, an entire year of knots laid itself out to me. Yes, knots\u2014as in rope, tied …\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

2016 unfurled itself in my mind as I swept:\u00a0I would learn one new knot each and every day of the year<\/strong>. I would post the daily results on Instagram, not only to keep myself accountable, but as a reference and a record. I would include captions explaining the knots\u2019 names, histories, and utility, so that others could learn alongside me. I had no idea then\u00a0if\u00a0others would be interested, but I hoped they might be. I instantly intuited the project\u2019s self-imposed design constraints\u2014such as making the knots out of white rope and photographing them on a white background for visual consistency and in order to emphasize what I find to be the most compelling element of the art of knot-making: the line.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I would allow myself to fully and deeply explore the aesthetics of objects we usually think of as merely functional.\u00a0Knots seem humble but are feats of engineering<\/strong>. What is the direction of pull? Is the knot made from a single line, or more than one strand? Does the knot move or is it fixed? Where is its tension?<\/em><\/p>\n

The Year of Knots gave me many rich things.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \n
  1. A daily ritual that allowed me to quickly access the blissful state of\u00a0flow\u00a0that had previously been so elusive to me.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. My art school, where I learned the elemental building blocks of art: line, form, shape, space, texture, and color.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. A history lesson, where I learned knots’ context in nautical life, the material and physical properties of rope, and how for any given situation there’s a knot that is right while all the others are wrong.<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. Most importantly, the knots are a new language. Every new knot is like learning another letter in the alphabet. Alphabets and letters form words, and words communicate. So the knots are a new form of communication, to make, as Rebecca Solnit puts it, “the mute material world come to life.”\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Love.<\/p>\n

    {Currently installed at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, CA}<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Oh my word. So. Many. Knots! Sigh. This beautiful, year-long project is the work of San Francisco based artist Windy Chien… and that’s all I’m going to say, because she explains it perfectly : I made one new knot every day in 2016: The Year of Knots On the fourth day of January in 2016, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,285,493],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32651,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32649\/revisions\/32651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejealouscurator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}