Stitches in Paint and Thread

There are so many behind-the-scenes jobs that we take for granted. Essential people like the chef beyond the restaurant's swinging doors. The projectionist behind the flickering lights at the cineplex. The technician who stocks the supply cabinets at a hospital. You know these people; they do their jobs quietly, without much fanfare, and make the world a better place. (You might even be one of them; if you are, thank you.)

Well, here's another unsung but essential job: that of the curator. Faythe Levine, artist and producer of the indie craft documentary Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design (available now on DVD), guest-curated the current Craftland Gallery exhibition, Work by Margaret Oomen and Merrilee Challis.

Levine met Merrilee Challis at a craft show in Brooklyn several years ago. When Levine saw Margaret Oomen's work last year, she knew that putting together the work of these two artists would be a revelation. And it is.

When you view the two collections together, the painted patterns on Challis' gouache panels read like tiny stitches, and Oomen's weblike crochet patterns are rendered like paintings over stone. The crocheted patterns curve over the smooth surfaces of rocks rounded by time and the elements. Intricate crocheted webs cover vintage china saucers like films of time. Challis' timeless images, a melding of nature and mythology, glow like illuminated manuscripts or Russian icons with their thread-like repeating dots, curves, and dashes. Challis' mythic animals are the central figures in her pieces; Oomen's animals are implicit or implied: the spiders that have spun the ornate webs, the sea urchins that emerge from the repeating crocheted patterns.

I had to overcome my shyness, but I worked up the courage to talk to Levine and Challis at the exhibition's opening reception. Levine is a real gem and the epicenter for the exploding indie craft/DIY movement. Challis sparkles; I loved hearing about her intuitive, sometimes obsessive process. Her imagery emerges from a deep well of mythology, travel, nature, and culture.

So sing a little ditty for Faythe Levine, for her work as craft priestess in creating this alchemical melding of the works of these two artists, a happy meeting of paint and thread. You still have time to visit the exhibition, which runs until February 6 in Providence, Rhode Island. If you can't make it to Rhode Island in the depths of winter (it's not that bad, really), make your own connections between the work of these extraordinary makers with just a few clicks of your mouse.