Fabric Sculptor J. Lauren McCall - P.A.W. Print

These past few weeks have been busy for J. Lauren McCall as she has prepared for her last exhibition as a student at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The labor was worth it. She was awarded a travel scholarship to Europe for two months this fall.

Her work is displayed at the PAFA Museum, on Broad and Cherry Streets, where the Annual Student Exhibition runs through June 8.

McCall is an iconoclast. Just as the ancient Greeks used this word to describe persons who destroyed sacred images, this word defines the manner in which McCall defies tradition and popular ideas.

Born in California, McCall currently resides only blocks away from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum, creating cutting-edge fabric art that bends the traditional definitions of drawing and sculpture.

In another way, this may be a misnomer. McCall has no intention to destroy the sacred. In fact religious and philosophical ideas play a significant role in her work. Her sculptures are created using the theories of drawing, the tools of craftsmanship, and the philosophies of the ancient Hindus and Buddhists. The work not only defies traditional methods and ideas, it defies definition altogether.

McCall labels her pieces with vermilion titles: "The Red Line Installation," "The Red Circle Project," and "Rosebud."

"I guess it all corresponds to point that I decided I was an artist. For a long time I avoided the color red because of the boldness of the color. When I decided that I was an artist, I embraced the color red and that's about the same time that all the sewing started.

"It's funny, because my mom told me that when I was really little I had these bright red Mary-Jane shoes, it started making me think about being born who you are. When you're young, you are always asking questions and very outgoing, then you become an adolescent and become introspective, and then you come out of that. Like going back to the child's mind.

"The first time I ever created art was when I was five years old and I made a cross-stitch ornament probably around Christmas time."

It wasn't until sixteen years later that McCall realized her natural abilities were the defining characteristic in her life, and this fulfilling decision to be an artist fused with her identity, her veins and arteries pumping red. She speaks about sewing and sculpture in philosophical terms: "Sewing is a delicate balance of in and out, give and take. A seam will not hold without two threads."

McCall manipulates this balance when she creates what she calls "Sewing Machine Drawings." These are forms created on paper or fabric with a single line, a stitch that builds in varying forms creating protrusions. In her installation work, she adopts a similar view of balance. "The line is an illusion of form, there is no structure other than that which the line is connected to. The form is created in the line by the space that the installation is created in."

McCall desires for her art to help her connect with the people in the world just as the top stitch connects with the bottom. This desire came to fruition last autumn when she began The Red Circle Project. This project requires people to connect with her to participate.

A long-term project for McCall, The Red Circle Project grew from early reactions to her work. "People kept seeing that I was working on fabric and said things like, 'You should go into fashion'," said McCall. She took that cue and started the project, where the participant supplies a shirt, a dollar and a return envelope. McCall returns the shirt with an embroidered red circle and her signature, hand-stitched. Each shirt receives a consecutive number illustrating the sequence of connection.

The project has taken off, reaching as far as Paris, France, where McCall intends to visit the participant in the fall when she takes her European tour. The result of this ongoing project will be a completed website and a book documenting the project with a collection of photos and letters from those who are involved.

Information on McCall can be found at the developing site, www.theredcircleproject.com.