Katherine Westphal is a celebrated and masterful textile maker whose practice has impacted generations of artists working with thread in the United States and beyond. This woven work demonstrates the strength and expressive form created when natural and synthetic raffia are woven together. Natural raffia is derived from the leaves of a type of tropical palm tree and synthetic is manmade from vegetable cellulose. In 2002, Westphal described her focus on color and pattern as placing “a dark against the light or inlaying patterns” in order to achieve different optical effects within her deliberately misshapen woven forms.

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