Collection Focus: Mary Giles at RAM
With a cabinetmaker father and a mother who knitted, quilted, and did Scandinavian decorative painting known as rosemaling, Mary Giles (1944 – 2018) seemed destined to work creatively with her hands. Revered for her willingness to push the boundaries of form and concept, Giles made objects throughout her career that reflected her interest in materials and traditional basketmaking techniques. An affinity for the natural world, also cultivated in her young home life, fueled the artist’s investigations of media including waxed linen, porcupine quills, and various metals such as copper and iron. Favoring the technique of coiling—a process associated with Native American basket traditions— Giles would move between three and two dimensions throughout her career, sometimes creating wall pieces, in addition to sculpture, that suggest aspects of the environment, human figures, and vessels. Giles received her BS in art education from Mankato State University in Minnesota. Her fiber education was pursued in workshops with some of the most innovative artists working in the field in the last part of the twentieth century—Lissa Hunter, Diane Itter, Ferne Jacobs, John McQueen, and Jane Sauer. These artists shaped the shifting boundaries of fiber, generally, and basketmaking, specifically. Their guidance, her own investigatory nature, and––in Giles’ words––“a certain maturity” led her to develop a distinct style and “identity.” Specifically, she credits a breakthrough to a moment when her father offered her porcupine quills he found in the woods. Acknowledging the historical precedent set long ago by Native Americans, Giles began to use quills in her own work— embracing both their physical attributes and, for her specifically, resonant connections made with childhood memories of woods and her affinity for the environment.
Figure 3 Mary Giles Fading Light, 2007 Waxed and dyed linen, fine copper wire, and fine iron wire 13 x 17 inches diameter Racine Art Museum, Promised Gift of Jim Harris Photography by Petronella J. Ytsma
3
