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"The
Greatest Snow on Earth": The Winter Olympics in Downtown Salt
Lake City
by
Dallas Petersen
An Olympic
Tapestry
The
Olympics has proven to be a magnet for Salt Lake City, attracting
people from around the world. Sola, a tapestry artist, moved to
Salt Lake City one year ago to begin work on a tapestry in commemoration
of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
Sola is a natural storyteller. Her speech is rich with a keen sense
of humor and attention to detail. I found our brief conversation
about her art, the Olympics, and Utah compelling.
Sola and the Salt Lake Tapestry. Weaving on the Salt Lake Tapestry
began April 1, 2001 at the rate of 10 hours every day, the 10 ft.
by 7 ft. tapestry will take 3,500 hours to complete by March 2002.
This tapestry provides an interesting "view from 50,000 feet"
perspective that has changed my perception of the Wasatch Front.
After years of traveling the freeway, the mountains had begun to
look flat, almost façade-like, to me. After seeing this tapestry,
I've realized how high and deep the Wasatch Mountains are.
Sola, a London-born artist, has lived an equal amount of her life
in England, Canada, and the United States. A self-proclaimed "global
nomad," Sola travels the world covering the Olympics exclusively.
This shot captures needle, thread, completed and uncompleted tapestry,
and a paper guide to help maintain absolute detail. With every tapestry
prior to this one, she has created her art from memory on a blank
canvas. At the Sydney Olympics, she personally walked the entire
length of ground that her tapestry depicted, from one end of Syndey
to the other, carefully accounting for "every tree in the park."
I asked her if she toted a camera for photographic reference. "Photographs
are two-dimensional, but when I take a picture with my mind, that
is three-dimensional. That is what I strive to achieve with my tapestries."
The sheer scope of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics prevented her from
observing her subject in person—this tapestry covers the entire
Wasatch Front from North Salt Lake to Cedar City—so she relies
on accurate maps and a colored backdrop to capture her subject accurately.
Sola points to one of the many Winter Olympics ski venues depicted
on her tapestry.
To achieve the subtle differences in shade and color for trees,
snow, and rock, Sola employs a Gobelins highwarp technique of pulling
string apart and intertwining threads of different colors, much
like a painter would mix colors on a palette. Pain-staking though
it may be, this technique has beautiful results. Sola creates an
apparent third dimension to the finely detailed drawing by James
Niehues (provided courtesy of Ski Utah) and lends itself to a contemporary
mural of textured poetry on a monumental scale.For another detailed
shot of the tapestry, click
here.
Sola's workspace is located in a glass-enclosed room next to the
Crossroads Mall Food Court. She says that the location proves to
be rewarding and challenging—in-between interviews and talking
with the lunchtime crowd, she finds it difficult to make much progress
on the tapestry. Sola says that part of her aim in working in public
is to share the artistic process with the Olympic crowd. There are
frequently throngs of people admiring her work and asking questions.
She says, "I'm the entertainment du jour at the food court.
Instead of saying, "Would you like fries with that?' the McDonald's
folks are saying, 'Would you like Sola with that?"
A close-up of downtown Salt Lake City. Sola's been impressed with
how well Salt Lake has organized the event, a stark contrast to
what she observed in Atlanta. I asked Sola how her year-long residency
in Utah has been. "It's like travelling back 20 or 30 years
ago to a time and place where people actually care for you,"
she said. Despite her positive impression of Utah, she has no intention
of staying long after the Olympics—the Athens Summer Olympics
and Turin, Italy Winter Olympics beckon.
Note:
Like most artists, Sola's livelihood depends on selling her art,
so any interested parties are welcome to email
me. I'll pass the word on to Sola (she's more or less blissfully
free of computers).
Continue
reading this article... Page 6: Street Scenes
(All
photographs Copyright 2002 Dallas Petersen)
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