Focus:
Racine Art Museum
(front cover)
Figure 1
Randall Darwall Eyelash/Cut Float Weave Scarf (detail), 2005 Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis
11 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(contents page)
Figure 2
Randall Darwall Goose Eye Twill Weave Scarf (detail), 1984 Dyed silk Woven by Sarah Kaufman
11 x 60 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Copyright ©2022 Racine Art Museum
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Published in the United States by the Racine Art Museum (RAM), 441 Main Street, Racine, WI 53403.
Proofreaders: Katherine Berggruen, Lisa Englander, Laura Grayson, Jean Mandli, Bruce W. Pepich, Tyler Potter, Lena Vigna, and Kendra Voelz, RAM Designers: Irene Cardozo and Tyler Potter, RAM Marketing Department
Printed in Waukesha, Wisconsin by The SCAN Group
Collection Focus: Randall Darwall at RAM is published on the occasion of the exhibition
Collection Focus: Randall Darwall, organized by the Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI, and on view from September 21, 2022 through January 7, 2023.
All photography by Jon Bolton, except where noted.
Special support for this publication has been provided by a fund established by Friends of Fiber Art International in honor of Camille and Alex Cook.
Racine Art Museum is grateful to the following sponsors:
Platinum Sponsors
Judith and David Flegel Fund Institute of Museum and Library Services Ron and Judith Isaacs Nicholas and Nancy Kurten Windgate Foundation
Diamond Sponsors Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation Ruffo Family Foundation
Gold Sponsors Anonymous
David Charak Tom and Irene Creecy Herzfeld Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Racine Community Foundation Reliance Controls Trio Foundation of St. Louis W.T. Walker Group, Inc. Wisconsin Arts Board
Silver Sponsors
Art Bridges
A.C. Buhler Family Andis Foundation
Baird Lucy G. Feller Ben and Dawn Flegel Annette Hirsch Family J. Jeffers & Co.
Dorothy MacVicar RDK Foundation
Real Racine Jan Serr and John Shannon
Bronze Sponsors Anonymous Susan Boland Virginia Buhler Butcher & Barrel/Amos Los Tacos Educators Credit Union Express Employment Professionals Get Behind the Arts Studio Tour William A. Guenther Tom and Sharon Harty Tony and Andrea Hauser David and Judy Hecker Bradley Lynch Carlotta Miller Larry and Barbara Newman The Norbell Foundation The Prairie School Georgiana Treivush Twin Disc, Inc. Deb and Will Walker
Media Sponsors 88Nine Radio Milwaukee Wisconsin Public Radio
(opposite)
Figure 3 Randall Darwall A montage of scarves and shawls (detail) Various dates, materials, and sizes Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Collection Focus: Randall Darwall at RAM
I’m trying to get people to realize that cloth can have that [life-guiding] kind of spiritual, emotional, and artistic content…If an artistic shawl or scarf ‘fits into your everyday life,’ then it has that kind of ability to spiritually elevate everyday life.1
—Randall Darwall
Kaleidoscopic colors. Bold patterns. Lush fabrics. These are just a few of the many phrases that could be applied to the work of Randall Darwall (1948–2017). A revered and beloved fiber artist, Darwall combined an early interest in painting with a poetic sensibility. He created one-of-a-kind textiles that were meant to be both worn and seen, somehow imbuing the threads with his own organic spirituality. This capacity would lead him to interweave, metaphorically and literally, elements of an artistic vision with the everyday—bringing his interest in color and texture in line with his strong belief that what he made was activated in its function.
Darwall had a way of articulating his thoughts and his practice that speaks to a self-assured yet humble confidence. With that in mind, the flow of this essay is framed through his words.
Color is a very visceral, sensual, and even spiritual experience.2
—Randall Darwall
Darwall’s much-talked-about relationship to and with color was born of his early processing of it and a static sense of color he observed in the cloth of the 1960s. He drew on this as he began weaving in the early 1970s and was looking to make fabric that had “surprise and artistic integrity.” It is noted that his capacity to see depth was limited, yet he gained an understanding of how color could create that dimension. Combining this with his early ambition to be a painter and his art history studies of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Darwall was able to begin using thread in a manner similar to how others would use paint. A stint designing sets for theater productions offered opportunities to think about color, lighting, and dyeing at a different scale. Two paintings from the 1970s reflect his use of color as subject and form—grid-like patterns overlay imagery that suggests trees or the interior of a room with a man sitting near a wall. Fabric panels from 1983 mounted to be hung (fig. 29) underscore the correlations between thread and paint as well as understanding his work on a flat plane. Darwall also acknowledged that thread and the weaving process truly worked best with his ways of thinking and doing—“In painting, I would end up with mud a lot of the time. With weaving, I can just put color exactly where I want it in the weave structure.”3
For Darwall, thread allowed him the opportunity to experiment and explore with color in a way that paint would not. With his shawls and scarves, in particular, he could create an effect very similar to those earlier artists that drew him in; like his Impressionist and Post-Impressionist forebears, Darwall created work that read as one thing from a distance and as something else up close. Visually skimming across a Darwall fabric, there are often color shifts and gradations as well as patterns—up close, the warp and weft of the thread become more visible, as do the individual color strands that comprise the overall.
After I put down paint and paper in favor of yarns and looms in the early seventies, I tried weaving absolutely every kind of thing I could imagine—from large environmental and theatrical pieces right down to placemats. I found I liked—and was better at—making smaller, more useful things. The pace of creating three or four pieces a day felt more satisfying than three or four a year. When I tried to be grand it always came out grandiose. But when I worked in the relatively simple rectangular format of a scarf I intuitively knew what to do…My job became to make small handwoven textiles that spoke to the intimacy of everyday use: a kind of security blanket. The possibilities in the color mixes in this relatively fine scale, and the infinite variations and progressions that came about when moving from one complex set of colors to another became like a narrative. I had found my voice and a way to be a storyteller…4
While he did not take up weaving until 1973—and did not operate full-time as a weaver until the 1980s— Darwall’s connection to fiber began at an early age. He recounted a time from his youth before he knew “sewing was unacceptable for boys”—when he would spend hours sewing with scraps at a neighbor’s house. This nurtured a love of the tactile that would always be present, even when his engagement with art as an “idea” would take him away from it in a formal sense.
Darwall obtained a BA in Art History from Harvard University and a MA in Art Education from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). It was at RISD that he took courses in weaving and sparked a passion. He worked as an art teacher at Cambridge School in Weston, Massachusetts, for eight years, creating and exhibiting artwork until 1981, when he moved to Cape Cod to pursue weaving as a full-time career. Videos that show Darwall talking about his work—such as those produced by Craft in America and included in their Threads episode—highlight how he was adept at walking through his ideas and thoughts. He shared these thoughts in workshops throughout his career—balancing traveling and running a business with teaching and going directly to his customer market at craft retail shows, such as those organized by the American Craft Council.
A macramé dance costume (fig. 4) from 1968 underscores his desire to play with fiber and fabric. A mass of material, it shrouds the body in heavy, artfully arranged and wrapped cotton and rayon—with dimension created through pattern and texture as well as elements trailing on the ground. It is a striking piece that reflects how Darwall was not just thinking about fiber during this period but, notably, wearable fiber. About work from that era, Darwall stated: “I can smile tolerantly at the experimental flamboyance of my youth, when I sought ‘poetry in fiber,’ and macraméd, crocheted, and wrapped my way through
Figure 4
Randall Darwall Dance Costume, 1968
Cotton, rayon, and paint Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
a jungle of soft sculpture looking for something that made sense for me to make, and to keep making. And slowly, I figured out that what I really wanted to weave was, quite simply, cloth.” 5
Kimonos (fig. 5), tunics, and jackets (fig. 7–9) from the 1970s and 1980s show this sentiment realized and expanded upon as woven cloth was incorporated into garment design. These pieces echoed fashions of the era, shifting from a looser tunic to a fitted jacket in styles that spoke to the shifting emphases in social and cultural concerns—oversimplified, the designs could be understood as a change from a groovy 1970s to buttonedup 1980s. Scarves and shawls from the same time period show Darwall experimenting with different types of weaving. He was producing double weaves, honeycombs, damasks, twills, and more—picking up on those and expanding his catalogue of techniques as he moved along in his career.
Darwall was motivated by a love of color and a dedication to cloth as a form of knowledge—functioning as wearable and metaphorical. He stated: “My scarves are meant to evoke safety and healing…I hope they will be like that first significant textile we all got attached to: the security blanket that softened the edges of growing up.”6 While his work was attainable and approachable, it also had a conceptual framework that others used to fuel objects and images created without utility in mind. This underpinning linked him to developments in the craft field in the twentieth century, such as “art to wear,” 7 while his emphasis on function also sometimes set him apart from makers who wanted to use craft materials but challenge ideas about use.
(top)
Figure 5
Randall Darwall
Float Weave Kimono, 1979 Natural and dyed silk Racine Art Museum, Gift of Pat Garrett (bottom)
Figure 6
Randall Darwall and Brian Murphy Jacket (front and back), ca. 1990
Dyed and hand-painted silk Racine Art Museum, Gift of Drs. Judith and Martin Bloomfield
5
I could see that the pointillist works of the Impressionists were creating the illusion of space; the impression of a landscape without all the detail. And that was what I could put into my cloth. Instead of turning color into a repeating pattern like some sort of machine, I became actively involved in dyeing the work so it really would change, and then I’d respond to that change by constantly changing the wefts in the piece. So I was really trying to create that sense of hills and valleys.8
Darwall relished the potential spontaneity of handweaving, the “unpredictable possibilities that a handweaver is free to explore in process.” 9 He would remark that since he was not a machine that would be set up on a repeat pattern, he could work intuitively.10 By manipulating the color of the thread even before the weaving began, Darwall encouraged variety. This was further extended when he would “change the weft” of a fabric. The language he used to describe his vision reinforced the idea that he was using a small space to suggest a grand vista, or in his words, an “illusion of space…impression of a landscape...[a] sense of hills and valleys.” 11
What continues to fascinate me the most is the interaction of color with weave structure—the exchange between one yarn and the next in a complex pattern. This often means contrasting bright against neutral, warm next to cool, thin with thick. It’s all about what color contributes to the conversation.12
Figures 7, 8, and 9 Randall Darwall Jacket, ca. 1985 Dyed silk, dyed cotton, and metallic thread Constructed by Linda Faiola Racine Art Museum, Gift of Norma Minkowitz
(opposite)
Figure 10 Randall Darwall Vest (front and back), 2002 Dyed and hand-painted silk Woven by Fayette Watkis Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Sometimes, Darwall gave up some of the ownership of a singular project—he would choose the thread, dye it, and set up the warp while another weaver would create the weft. He seemed to be adept at this kind of arrangement which offered a plan but also further opportunities for variability. The idea of collaboration was extended throughout Darwall’s career in nuanced ways. For example, the more structured jackets of the 1980s mentioned previously were created in combination with Linda Faiola, a fiber artist and clothing designer who would take his woven fabric and create one-of-a-kind garments with it. Darwall suggested that the spirit was collaborative, but the design was up to Faiola.
In a holistic sense, one of his most significant partnerships was a collaboration with his husband and business partner, Brian Murphy. Together for 23 years, the couple enjoyed traveling together, interacting with clients together, and by all accounts, running their business together. While Murphy managed the sales side of their endeavors, Darwall was dyeing and creating scarves, shawls, and fabric used for garments. Both noted that a “collaborative community” both sustained and extended the possibilities for the business as well as their vision. They developed strong relationships with some clients—turning them into friendships—as well as generative relationships with other fiber artists and tailors who helped create the individual pieces. These craftspeople also embraced the notion of surprise and spontaneity that Darwall prized as well as the aesthetic of both Darwall and Murphy.13
A large portion of Darwall’s career was dedicated to exhibiting at juried craft shows that were framed as marketplaces for the handmade. This fact, a significant accomplishment in its own right, was enhanced by the recognition of Darwall’s work in a broader context. His work has been included in public collections such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, as well as the Racine Art Museum and corporate private collections. It was featured in pivotal exhibitions such as Art to Wear: New Handmade Clothing, debuting at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (then American Craft Museum) in 1983, and then traveling across the United States and Asia. While he did not seem to chase institutional representation of his work, the presence of it in museum collections is no surprise as it combines artistic vision with a high caliber of craftsmanship.
This exhibition debuts Darwall’s archive of over 135 scarves, shawls, and garments at the Racine Art Museum. Dyed silk stands out as the material of choice, with metallic thread, wool, cashmere, and chenille on hand as well. While the number of works is impressive, so too is the variety of different patterns, colorways, and eras represented. In addition, as part of the archival supporting materials, RAM has been gifted textile works by other artists that served as inspiration for Darwall—several of which are included in this exhibition—and ephemera that document his career. His work boosts the quantity of art to wear in RAM’s holdings while dialoguing with objects and images across media and types.
This essay ends with a quote from Darwall that underscores his relationship to the material and his desire to connect: “Each scarf is a record of my growth, my own feelings, as I worked on it. Each one offers both physical and spiritual connection. They’re High Touch—the antithesis of High Tech.”14
Lena Vigna Curator of Exhibitions Racine Art MuseumBruce W. Pepich: You had a long-term partnership—personally and professionally—with your husband, Randall Darwall (Randy). He was known for creating textiles and you for designing clothing that incorporated some of this cloth. How did your work together begin and how did it evolve?
Brian Murphy: We met in 1987 when we were both 37 years old. I had been involved in a number of three-dimensional art forms but not textiles, and Randy was already established in the field. We spent the better part of both our careers working together. I have an art background and have always been involved in the field, so we were an interesting blend as a couple. When I went to Randy’s studio for the first time, I saw what I thought was a beach rock with a hole in it; however, it was actually a ceramic sculpture by David Shaner whose work I followed. Randy told me that his connection to Shaner’s work was that the artist lived next door to his stepmother in Montana, and I had always wanted to go to Montana. I think my heart and my head were won over by our mutual attraction to an object and an idea. That was the beginning of us starting to see together—what the meeting of our minds was going to be like. We were together for 30 years until Randy’s death in 2017.
At one point in time, I realized that there was a level of knowledge that Randy had that absolutely blew me away because we just approached life very differently. When I understood his kind of quiet, steady way of being, I admired it because he had a strongly centered, spiritual quality. We both admired each other’s sensibilities as artists and our individual aesthetic taste. Because we looked at things differently, we were able to learn by seeing through the eyes of the other.
In our early time as a couple, Randy asked for some help setting up at the American Craft Council (ACC)’s American Craft Show in Baltimore and that was the start of our professional life together. What started as my helping him set up his booth quickly evolved into my working with customers during the busy retail portion of this show. I didn’t realize I was applying for a job, but I did think I could help make a difference by connecting Randy and his work with the public by helping him with the clients.
(above)
Figure 11
Randall Darwall Collapse Double Weave Scarf (detail), 2005
Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis 13 x 80 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(opposite, top)
Figure 12
Randall Darwall Scarf, ca. 1985
Dyed silk, dyed linen, and metallic thread 68 x 12 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Norma Minkowitz
(opposite, bottom)
Figure 13
Randall Darwall Collapse Double Weave Scarf, ca. 2005
Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis 13 x 98 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
A Conversation with Brian Murphy and Bruce W. Pepich about Randall Darwall
In 1988, I realized I could use one of Randy’s scarves to create the front of a classically styled button-up vest that allowed people to see a majority of the fabric. It had solid material on the back and was one of those projects that I thought would be a fun experiment. I wore it to a show and just kept taking orders because people who had been collecting scarves and shawls wanted to move up to the next step. In the early 1990s, we started living together, and I wanted to make a bigger contribution to support our home and Randy’s studio. People were interested in having more clothing, and I told Randy I thought I could do this. The next piece we created was a jacket. The vests had been very successful but they were a much simpler design than a fitted coat. I took my choice of handwoven cloth and brought it to a woman whom I worked with, and I designed a jacket that I really wanted to look more couture than hippie style (fig. 6, 18, or 19). At that time, I was a psychotherapist with a private practice, and I had to schedule my appointments around our show schedule, but the larger garments were major statements and gave us a more substantial “canvas” on which to work. The one-of-akind clothing made out of his cloth eventually became a solid part of our body of work. At our peak, our exhibition booth was 60% flat textiles and 40% garments.
Pepich: Randy’s work in textiles grew out of his interest in painting and in dealing with color. What were some of the aesthetic principles he strove to express that you witnessed during your time together?
Murphy: Randy’s work was all about color palettes, his ideas and interpretations, and how his choices would change with the times and his experiences. We always looked at the clothing industry’s publications and the color projections they produced for the field. These had a lot of science behind them and were oriented for off-the-rack clothing companies whose products changed from season to season. However, Randy would always look at these projections as a suggestion and interpret the data in his own aesthetic. He never really took a recipe and followed it, and I think that’s what was unique about his approach. He would see suggestions for color choices and still create his own palettes. He injected his own sense into whatever range he worked on in each piece of cloth. Randy could get hues to do unusual things together that went far beyond what was being dictated by the commercial field. It was fascinating to see him constantly experimenting with color while still creating a very consistent body of work through changing, tweaking, and experimenting.
Randy was born with strabismus—one of his eyes crossed. When he started out as a painter, one of his greatest difficulties was attaining depth of field in vision. This birth defect prevented him from having full satisfaction from working with color on canvas. Early in his career, he taught high school students. He had leftover looms in his classroom and started to teach the students how to put a warp on and as he started to pull the yarns across in the weft, he suddenly saw those hues blending in a three-dimensional way. Randy said weaving enabled him to see the colors going together in ways that he could not perceive when painting. He was hooked at that point; it was the beginning of him seeing hues. I often refer to Randy’s color sense in musical terms. I heard him talking to a group of students who noted this connection to another medium and he said, “Well, you know what the beauty is? I hear color.”
Pepich: Early in his career, Randy was quickly drawn to creating relatively broad expanses of cloth—used for making scarves and shawls that demonstrated his talent for versatility in coloration and texture. The garments you made had many more variations in formats and types. What did the work each of you produced share, and how did it differ?
Murphy: When we first got together, I asked Randy if he had ever considered making clothing, but he had already done everything he needed to try in that area. He had boiled his formats down to two rectangular shapes. In the shawl, he could get a broader sense of what he was composing and with the scarf, a narrower impression (fig. 30–31). The rectangular lengths allowed him to tell a story about color from end to end—his compositions were complete symphonies of color that had an intellectual depth. This approach may also stem from his early training because painters mostly work in square or rectangular formats and never complain about feeling limited or constrained—they are free to create whatever they wish within those confines that they choose. I think his scarves and shawls became the space where he was able to create seemingly endless combinations of color and textures.
We met a woman at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show who taught landscape architecture at Penn (University of Pennsylvania) and she bought three scarves from the same warp and weave structure. When I asked her if she wanted to consider purchasing something different, she told me she was buying the three related pieces as a teaching tool. She wanted to show her students that they have one piece of land with which to work, and within that allotment, you can have many colors. It pointed out to me that within Randy’s two textile formats there could be many changes and that this was content. When people were standing in the booth and we thought somebody was just looking up at a decorative item created by us, it wasn’t really the case.
(top)
Figure 14
Randall Darwall
Eight Harness Block Weave Shawl (detail), 1995
Dyed silk
Woven by Mark Denecour 22 x 87 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(right) Figure 15
Randall Darwall
Eight Harness Block Weave Shawl, 1995
Dyed silk Woven by Mark Denecour 22 x 87 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
I most admired how Randy injected a great deal of spirituality into his work. The jubilance and subtlety of his hues attracted people. Randy would say, “Why use five colors when 50 do so nicely?” He was able to reach different personalities because he knew what cloth meant to all of us—a universal language. I think the work spoke to many people because it was multiphasic. He was trying to teach people to move out of their comfort zone with color and expand their horizons. We did move into producing clothing to have a larger scale in which to express our ideas. Eventually, one jacket took five shawls to create, which was an enormous amount of hand-woven material, making these pieces expensive as they could involve the work of five or six people at different steps along the way. People loved these garments but many could not afford them, so we took a step that was market-driven. By using silk fabric that Randy hand-dyed, combined with hand-woven fragments of his woven cloth left from the pattern cutting process, we were able to make clothing that had our aesthetic but was available to a broader public.
Pepich: How did Randy develop his ideas? Were there particular types of weaving he preferred? Did he also develop and add new technical approaches and revisit older ones over the years? Were there particular periods in art history, works by specific artists, cultures or places that influenced the creation of the studio’s work?
Murphy: Randy had a wide range of interests and inspirations. He studied the works of the faculty members at both Cranbrook Academy of Art and Black Mountain College, and particularly the work of Anni Albers. We frequently traveled to Europe to study historic work. I remember seeing silk jacquard textiles produced in Italy on a loom from the 1780s. Randy was interested in England’s textile history and its relation to its economy. I remember going to the textile department at the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum) in London to view antique hand-loomed pieces and comparing them with historic machine-loomed works. National gatherings, such as the Handweavers Guild of America’s biennial Convergence conference, were great for idea-generation, as like-minded people gathered over a shared passion with enthusiasm. Randy looked for different ideas and then created work in the studio in his own voice.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, after a trip to Paris, Randy added the eyelash weave (fig. 21), in which many threads come off the surface as a fringe. He saw something on that trip that spurred an interest in having a little more fringe throughout the piece; however, cutting woven silk threads is not as easy as it sounds. He had to work out those technical skills on his own before he came up with that series.
Suppliers would come to Convergence with end runs from mills, and we would search for fibers in our travels.
Randy found a new over-twisted yarn that, when woven and washed, shed its casing and collapsed onto itself. As a natural material, he could dye it and incorporate it with silk into a new weave structure. Collapsed weaves (fig. 11, 13) were beginning to show up in the field, inspired by the work the Japanese designers were doing at the time. Randy wanted to create this effect in some of his pieces, bringing something new to his clients. Working with this yarn was a technical challenge that motivated his investigations to find a solution. His creative process was driven not only by the marketplace, but also by his idea to do something fresh with a new material. Once again, Randy had that empirical knowledge of what the strength of that piece of thread would have and how it would function with other fibers.
I asked him about the dangers of sharing too much about his techniques and aesthetic foundations with the field in case it led to copying. Randy would quote Carol Sedestrom Ross, a leading figure in the field of contemporary craft exhibitions and marketing, “If you’ve only got one really good idea, then you’re in the wrong field.” Because of his intellect and work ethic, he knew the chance of somebody creating a scarf that resembled his work was slim.
Randall Darwall Summer and Winter Weave Shawl, 1994 Dyed silk Woven by Fayette Watkis 23 x 96 inchesRacine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Pepich: How did Randy’s studio practice function? What was his role as the head weaver, and how were other weavers employed? How did your work as the maker of garments mesh with his studio methods?
Murphy: Randy hand-dyed all of his warp threads (the longitudinal fibers on the loom that run top to bottom), and because of this, when he tied the warp onto the loom, he never measured or was precise because he loved the changes and chance occurrences that happened during the process. He would set up all the looms for each cloth but gave the weavers, who worked for him, room to improvise as they wove in the weft yarns (the horizontal fibers on the loom). We wanted continuity and Randy provided guidance. At the same time, he allowed the weavers to interpret the use of the weft as their own prerogative. Most of our assistants were women who worked out of their homes or their own studios. Some were stay-at-home mothers who appreciated earning money working at home while continuing to weave. We usually worked on two-week cycles, and they would bring their pieces back to Randy for review—say 13 scarves at a time. He would go through each scarf with them and point out the parts he admired. As an experienced educator, he always encouraged their efforts and enjoyed the give-and-take of what the weavers brought to the studio’s production. This process ensured that each piece was unique.
He always used a traditional weave structure, but he would use color or textural changes to make it more his voice. He’d not only change the hue but also the variations in each piece. By giving his weavers a choice in parts of the process, Randy incorporated an element of chance in the creation of his textiles. He would make a sample of about six inches to a foot to give them an idea of what he would like to accomplish with a warp. Then he would cut that off and say, either you could take this piece home with you as a reference or you have my general idea of what I want to do. From the standpoint of the production of the studio, the longer the relationship with the weaver, the better it was because they would get to a point where they knew exactly what Randy was thinking from talking with him and how far they could bring their own ideas into the process. Some of these people worked for us for 15–20 years and there is one who continues to work with me after 30 years.
The studio produced about 1,200 pieces per year. Randy was very close to his medium—he inherently knew the yarns themselves and sourcing was a big part of his aesthetic. His hands looked magical whenever he would rub some yarn threads between his fingers and started doing a little pressure test. It was almost as if we were scavenger hunting everywhere, and when he found the right fiber, Randy would turn to the distributor and said he’d take the lot. The distributor would say that he had 2,000 kilos and it was an odd green. That didn’t matter to Randy because he’d dye it but it was the quality of the yarn that was most important to him.
Pepich: You and Randy worked in close proximity to each other. How did your two studio practices intersect and how did they operate separately? Can you talk more about what it was like to collaborate with your husband from a day-to-day point of view?
Figure 17
Goose Eye Twill Weave Scarf, 1984
Dyed silk
Woven by Sarah Kaufman 11 x 60 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Randall DarwallMurphy: We came to a point in our relationship where I could look at Randy’s work and decide where he was emotionally because of what he was creating. I don’t know if that’s saying more about my observational skills or about getting to know somebody that strongly that you could then look at their work and see something behind it. In our similarities, there were many differences. I have technical expertise that he did not have. Those abilities are more mechanical. Randy was coming at our work more intellectually and as a painter, and I came at it with a more systematic point of view to make a textile physically stronger. If you are bringing an object to market, it has to withstand time; you must take responsibility for it. We wanted to make these pieces last, to make good cloth better. We strove for a tighter weave instead of a loose structure unless we designed the textile to be loosely woven. One of our similarities was that we both had a very strong work ethic. As with most people, our trips in the US and Europe involved eating, shopping, and sightseeing. However, we always focused our shopping on finding notions for the clothing line, and we incorporated the business into most of our travels.
Integral to being an artist is being disciplined about working, especially if you’re living where you work, which can get distracting. We both had studios on our property. We very rarely interrupted each other unless it was planned like lunch. He would leave the house at 5:30 am to go to work. Randy always said his head was clearer in the morning and it was his most productive time. He would come home for lunch, which we usually had together and then he’d go back. Randy stayed probably until three or four in the afternoon and came back to the house. I would be doing my work there or planning dinner. This was the usual schedule for our days. As with most artists, Randy’s passion for his work was also obsessive, so he would have been in the studio seven days a week. My other role was to make sure we took time off together. It was important to what we were doing, because whatever we did, if we went to galleries, shopping, exploring, or flea markets, it was part of being together, and he realized it was a way of recharging both the business and us.
Pepich: You both come from a generation of artists that made use of high-quality art fairs that were regularly staged in different locations across the US. Commercial art galleries that represented handmade clothing also carried your work. Can you talk about the relationships with dealers and customers that you cultivated and how each of these sales methods supported your careers?
(top) Figure 18 Randall Darwall and Brian Murphy Jacket, ca. 1990
Dyed and hand-painted silk Racine Art Museum, Gift of Lisa Englander and Bruce W. Pepich in Honor of Randall Darwall and Brian Murphy
(bottom) Figure 19 Randall Darwall and Brian Murphy Jacket, ca. 1990
Dyed and hand-painted silk Racine Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Leslie Gould
Murphy: One of the primary relationships that Randy had before we met was with Julie Schafler Dale, the founder and president of Julie: Artisans’ Gallery, New York. I came to see her as somebody who had the same kind of commitment and passion that Randy had for what he was doing, and she could see that in Randy, as well. She was astute about things such as real estate and knew the importance of having a space on Madison Avenue. For over 40 years, she did more to educate the public about this field—through exhibitions, promotions, and authoring the first major book on art to wear—than people give her credit for. A number of galleries represented the studio’s work. Additional operations that come immediately to mind include Joanne Rapp Gallery/The Hand and the Spirit in Scottsdale, Arizona; Libby and JoAnne Cooper at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Carol Sauvion at Freehand Gallery in Los Angeles. All of these women were good at their business and were knowledgeable. They cared about their artists and knew how to present and sell individual works but also how to put different pieces of wearable art—clothing and jewelry—together for their clients to purchase. When Randy would add a new style of textile to his offerings, the gallerists were usually one of the first groups of people to respond positively which is validating for any artist debuting new work.
Pepich: What was life like “on the road?” How did you manage blending the demands of selling work directly to clients?
Murphy: Randy was more disciplined with scheduling than I ever knew. There are pragmatic parts of being a self-employed artist that are more important than I ever imagined, particularly when you have to organize to keep other people employed. We based our entire year on the schedule of shows we did around the country, which you had to apply for far in advance. When we first met, I frequently didn’t know what I was doing two weeks ahead in time but Randy knew he had a show booked nine months from now in March. At first, I was too free-spirited and it almost made me feel claustrophobic until I realized how important it was to our work to keep this calendar booked. The show circuit, as we knew it, had moved from its early years of hippie culture and artists wanting to avoid galleries and stores by selling directly to customers. Now, artists and the public wanted to meet and interact, as people began to seriously collect craft. By the late 1980s, these had become professional selling expositions.
The ACC organized a number of retail shows across the US for decades and their annual Baltimore show had a large wholesale component. These were high-quality, indoor events with professional-looking booths. The shows had matured from their original street fair or country meadow birthplaces. Because of our regular participation in these kinds of expositions, I have had relationships with other artists for over 30 years whom I only saw for a total of two weeks each year in three- or four-day-long installments.
Because the craft expositions had become much more professional in nature, we had a variety of practical issues to contend with. These included booth construction, installation, transportation, and lighting. You have an empty space in a large building and have to create an environment within it. This enabled me to put my technical skills to use. The show circuit also involved a lot of car travel, and we would spend time talking about the studio and its business model on these trips but also used the travel to stop in places where we could source materials for the work. We enjoyed being in the car together on trips and turned these into an adventure.
Pepich: You had people who regularly followed your careers and acquired pieces. How did relationships with customers function as part of your studio practices?
Murphy: I think the appreciation of the work opened a dialogue between the clients and us, at first. Many people knew of Randy’s work before they came into the booth. This may sound egotistical to say, but I think the other thing that people were attracted to was our personal relationship. They could tell the pieces were being made out of joy and interpreted in a garment. Any business that you have is about relationships with people, and we liked nearly every client we had. We were excited about doing shows, because we enjoyed seeing the people who were going to attend—the long-term friends and the new clients we’d meet. The positive feedback from followers was good for us, and we used these as teaching opportunities. We always spoke about why we did the work and how we made it— we educated the public about textiles constantly.
Pepich: The archive of the studio’s work at RAM spans 1968 through 2012. With the recent gift of over 100 works by Randy from Anne Wright, RAM now holds over 130 examples of his work and yours. These holdings chart your individual and joint artistic development and include sketchbooks, cloth samples, media coverage, and other collateral materials. As an artist, what kinds of benefits do you see this type of documentation provides the textile field?
Murphy: This archive of the studio’s work makes clear the continuity of the work we produced over a long period of time. Once, I was looking for woven cloth fragments to incorporate into some clothes and started going through a box of Randy’s weaving demonstration samples he had saved. I started piecing together two-inch squares of fabrics I selected at random. After I had assembled about a square yard of cloth, I realized I had a fragment from 1974 next to ones from different years, and there was a continuity among all these segments that gave me insight into his weaving and what he was actually putting into every square inch of a scarf.
I understood that I couldn’t use this on a jacket and that was when I made my first quilt of his cloth pieces. It was my way of looking at Randy’s work archivally and showing people that history in pieces made for domestic use. The collection of the studio’s work at RAM produces a large-scale version of this kind of documentation. Each work adds up to tell more about our history. I think a career goes so quickly—no matter how long you live it—and it’s important to look back once in a while to see how one step led to the next. Frequently, when you’re in the midst of that process, you’re too close to it to see.
I think this archive can demonstrate for people that documenting your work is an important part of being an artist. Showing a progression of your skills and changes
(opposite, top)
Figure 20 Randall Darwall Summer and Winter Weave Shawl, 1995
Dyed silk Woven by Fayette Watkis 24 x 85 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(opposite, bottom)
Figure 21
Randall Darwall Eyelash/Cut Float Weave Scarf, 2005 Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis 11 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(top) Figure 22 Randall Darwall Double Weave Scarf (detail), 1995
Dyed silk Woven by Sally Mullen 12 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(left)
Figure 23
Randall Darwall Double Weave Scarf, 1995
Dyed silk Woven by Sally Mullen 12 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
in ideas is also important. I was most impressed to see how much personal biographical material Randy saved, but I think that was part of his being an educator. He was a great writer and told me once that he believed that writing was a skill similar to weaving. Early in Randy’s education, he had a teacher who started having him journal about his personal life. He learned to be articulate about his difficult childhood, being a creative young man, and trying to deal with his sexuality. These entries were driven by inside voices, which Randy recorded in his writings.
He would hand the journal in once a week, and it would come back with suggestions about how to rephrase something or how to use a different choice of words or sentence structures. I think that became therapeutic so that he could write about what he was going through on a daily basis and that included his work. Now, when all of those books came out of storage, I realized that he would periodically take a break from his studio work and start journaling, and his work became a major topic.
Sometimes he would write about color choices or where he found yarn. He would include ideas that he wanted to try—future experiments. I think that all added up to basically being a scrapbooker, recording his thoughts. I also think he knew he was making a place in the art world for himself, and it was important that he documented his thought processes. It was a combination of working ideas out, but also leaving a record. I knew all of it was there but, until after he died, I wasn’t aware of how much of this material he left behind. It’s pretty incredible.
(top)
Figure 24
Randall Darwall
Cut Float Weave Scarf, 2012
Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis
11 1/2 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright (bottom)
Figure 25
Randall Darwall
Cut Float Weave Scarf (detail), 2012
Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis
11 1/2 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Pepich: This archive also contains your collection of over 130 contemporary textiles created by people known for making art to wear which Anne Wright presented to RAM at the same time. How did Randy make use of this material for research and inspiration?
Murphy: Everything he did always had a dual purpose. He selected these textiles first because they appealed to him. He was truly impressed by other people’s work and wanted to encourage their efforts. I think that’s the backbone of a true educator. He would be working with a class that brought examples of their own work for a critique and suddenly he would look at one person and ask if they wanted to trade. This was a sign of admiration meant to encourage a student’s efforts. In all of our travels, he would also buy scarves.
Randy wore them, so it was also functional for him. However, the focus was always on what was new and how did the artist make the piece. His process was to buy or trade for the piece and then to use it as a teaching tool or to inspire himself. He was always looking for creative insight. I remember being in Liberty’s textile department in London and finding cloth by Junichi Arai for the first time, which Randy bought, brought home, and studied. In his studio, Randy had many textiles hanging on the wall just to spur his imagination. It’s not copying, as the public might think—it’s all about dialoguing with other artists.
One of his greatest joys was to find a textile that he fell in love with and that moved him. Because of Randy’s reputation in the field, it was an incredible compliment to the person who made the piece to have him select their work. It also gave Randy a little bit of an idea of what it was like on the other side of a transaction when he sold his work to someone else—to find cloth that had meaning for the buyer. There were communications that happened through these purchases that were important to both of us, but mainly to him.
I am proud of being able to talk about our lives together and to do so in a joyful way. We brought out the best in one another. He could make me laugh more than anybody I’ve ever known. I loved his intellect, his sensibilities, and his sensitivity. It was a great complementary relationship.
Bruce W. PepichExecutive Director and Curator of Collections
Racine Art Museum Figure 26
Randall Darwall Shawl, ca. 1990
Dyed silk and metallic thread 24 x 75 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Randall Darwall’s work has been part of RAM’s contemporary craft collection since 1992. In that year, Karen Johnson Boyd made the second of two major gifts that put the museum on the road to becoming a major craft center. She presented RAM with a shawl from 1982 and followed with the gift of a second shawl, created circa 1970—that she (like a number of other Darwall collectors) used as a table runner in addition to wearing it. Her gifts were followed by those from 16 people who contributed 23 additional examples that arrived between 2006 and 2016. These works included scarves and shawls by Darwall but also jackets, vests, kimonos, and a bed quilt and pillow shams by Darwall and Brian Murphy, providing a documentation of the studio’s production over a number of decades and in various formats— such as three different styles of vests and six different kinds of jackets.
We acknowledge the donors whose gifts inaugurated the documentation of Darwall and Murphy’s work at RAM: Dale and Doug Anderson, Drs. Judith and Martin Bloomfield, Karen Johnson Boyd, Lisa Englander and Bruce W. Pepich, Lucy G. Feller, Pat Garrett, the Estate of Leslie Gould, Ken Loeber and Dona Look, Norma Minkowitz, Michael and Bernadette Monroe, and Dr. and Mrs. Victor Whitman.
The recent arrival of Anne Wright’s gift of over 100 textiles from Darwall’s and Murphy’s archive has exponentially increased their documentation at RAM. Her contribution of textiles and garments thoroughly captures the depth and breadth of the studio’s production. Her gift also includes early pieces from Darwall’s student years and a host of collateral materials such as cloth samples, books of press clippings, and publications in which the work of these two artists are featured.
Murphy mentions Darwall’s interest in recording his thought process and his career advancement in his interview in this publication. He addresses how these items are physical demonstrations of the way personal biographical materials can help the public better understand the germination of an artist’s aesthetic ideas and how they grow and mature over a period of time. Anne Wright’s gift also includes more than 130 textiles created by artists and designers from across the Studio Craft and commercial clothing fields. Darwall selected these works during classes and workshops he conducted and during trips he regularly took with Murphy.
The Randall Darwall Archive at Racine Art Museum
(top) Figure 27
Randall Darwall
Eight Harness Block Twill Weave Shawl (detail), 2000
Dyed silk
Woven by Sally Mullen 22 x 82 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Darwall wore many of these pieces, but this portion of their collection also served as inspiration for him in his studio. He would frequently study this material that he admired and then develop his own response to these works, establishing an unspoken dialogue with these artists, many of whom were, in turn, influenced by his work. RAM will show pieces from this portion of its archive in conjunction with exhibitions of Darwall’s and Murphy’s work. In addition, the museum also plans to include selections from these holdings in a variety of future shows as representative examples of artists who make up its handmade clothing collection. On a practical note, the flat nature of scarves and shawls allows the museum to collect a large number of individual pieces because these works do not have the storage needs of more elaborate garments. This allows RAM to maximize the number of artists whose work can be shared with the public. RAM is very grateful to Anne Wright for this gift.
The Studio’s Weavers and Technical Support Staff
Darwall’s studio actively engaged the talents of trained weavers and the technical expertise of experienced clothing technicians for tailoring, pattern making, and assemblage. Murphy talks about their work together in his interview and the appreciation he and Darwall had for the ability of these assistants to help them produce their designs and ideas. The studio extends its particular thanks and recognition to its:
Weavers: Vivian Cheney
Mark Denecour
Julie Doyle
Sara Kaufman
Joan Hoffer
Marjorie Holtz
Greg Johnson
Sally Mullen
Peter Ripley
Rachel Switze
Fayette Watkis
Constructors and Textile Technicians: Linda Faiola
Heide Harper
Figure 28
Randall Darwall Eyelash/Cut Float Weave Scarf (detail), 2005
Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis 11 x 70 inches Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
Endnotes
1 “Randall Darwall,” Obituary, Boston Globe, 2017.
2 Randall Darwall, “Color Conversations,” Handwoven, March/April 2000, 83.
3 Elizabeth Frankl, “Randall Darwall and Brian Murphy: The Landscape of the Cloth,” Ornament 34.2, 2010, 45.
4 Randall Darwall, artist statement, More than One (New York: American Craft Museum, 1992), unpaginated.
5 Randall Darwall, “Forum: On Making Good Cloth,” found article, publication unknown.
6 Randall Darwall, “Randall Darwall,” Design Times, January/February 1999, 36.
7 “Art to wear”—wearable clothing that is produced in unique or limited editions—is primarily handmade and reflects a particular aesthetic style. The genesis of art to wear in the 1960s and 1970s and its trajectory to the present day reflects the dynamics of contemporary society and culture, personal choices of the makers (and patrons), and complex notions regarding aesthetics, the production of works for wear, and the body as form. Definition excerpted from author’s essay, “Contemporary Art to Wear at Racine Art Museum,” (Racine, WI: Racine Art Museum), 2016, unpaginated gallery guide. Significantly, some collectors of Darwall’s work would use his shawls as table runners or take the cloth of provided by these smaller pieces and incorporate them into other textiles such as pillow covers. While this may not have been the direct intention of the artist, it still plays on Darwall’s desire to provide a handmade fabric that is used and, hopefully, loved.
8 Ibid, Frankl, 45.
9 Randall Darwall quoted in “Garments from the Loom: Handweaver Randall Darwall Focuses on the Cloth” by Joanne Mattera, Fiberarts, Jan/Feb 83, 21.
10 In various places, Darwall references the idea that the jacquard loom was the first computer as it, in essence, used a “program” to direct a machine to do automated tasks. This is significant as it allowed for more weaving to be done but, to Darwall’s way of thinking, it also made more average “run of the mill” cloth. He describes that as an artist he wants to slow the process back down and re-insert more “intent and content.” See the Randall Darwall segments of Craft in America’s “Threads” episodes for further discussion. By feeling free to play with the weft (the thread inserted over and under the lengthwise warp threads held in tension on the loom), Darwall could re-insert his vision and play to the potential of spontaneity.
11 Ibid, Frankl, 45.
12 Ibid, Boston Globe
13 This community collaboration idea, as well as further details about Darwall and Murphy’s relationship, are addressed in the 2010 Elizabeth Frankl article as well as in the dialogue between Brian Murphy and Bruce W. Pepich included in this publication.
14 Ibid, Darwall, Design Times, 36.
(above)
Figure 29
Randall Darwall
Untitled (Pair of Wall Panels), 1983
Dyed wool, dyed silk, and metallic thread 19 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(inside front and back covers)
Figures 30 and 31
Randall Darwall
A montage of scarves and shawls
Various dates, materials, and sizes
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
(back cover)
Figure 32
Randall Darwall
Eyelash/Cut Float Weave Scarf (detail), 2005
Dyed silk and dyed wool Woven by Fayette Watkis 11 x 70 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Anne Wright
