‘225’: Unraveling childhood threads

From far away, it looks like thin, mesh sheets in multicolored hues twisted and wrapped along a wall. Up close, one sees the intricate truth, like individual pixels in a digital picture: This image is made up of more than 37 miles of colorful thread strung in a complex web. They look like they’d make an ethereal sound if you strummed your fingers over them. Mexico City-born artist Gabriel Dawe spent roughly two weeks in April installing the piece along a stretch of wall inside the LSU Museum of Art. And the museum invited patrons to watch Dawe weave his colorful magic each day. It’s a meticulous process, with Dawe hoisting strands of thread from a needle at the end of a long pole and hooking them to various anchor points nailed into the wall. Each of his installations takes on a different shape based on the space used. “The first time, I was climbing up and down a ladder over and over,” Dawe says of installing his first thread-based installation. “When I was offered to do show No. 2, I had to come up with a system, and that’s how I came up with this giant needle.” Read the full story by Benjamin Leger in the current issue of 225 here.