rove | Meghan Shimek
Rove: a journey, especially one with no specific destination; an act of wandering.
Rove is the artist’s process of creation after loss. Rove is part static and part kinetic. The static is a series of woven fiber works fueled by raw, emotional, and honest states of discovery through tactility. The roving in these works is the physical matter that tethers Meghan Shimek to her life’s earthly journey after the death of her father and the deterioration of her marriage. The roving in these works also acts as an abstraction of substantiality. Abrupt endings, security as an illusion, healing by means of repetition, natural and unforeseen growth, interconnectedness, pacifying barriers and the dangers of a comfort zone are all ideas explored through material, sound and movement.
Through the physical act of Rove, an internal movement landscape will be destroyed and built again through the practiced nature of habitual rebirth within the personal human experience. Within the creative framework of Activated Environments, Babette DeLafayette will work alongside the static to create a kinetic, immersive, durational expression that weaves together deactivated personal histories, displaced bodily borders, creative destruction, and memories.
“The physical world is diaphanous. It’s like music. When you play music, it simply disappear, there’s nothing left. And for that very reason it is one of the highest and most spiritual of the arts. So in a way you might say that transiency is a mark of spirituality. The more a thing tends to be permanent the more it tends to be lifeless. We can’t even find any stuff out of which the physical world is made. We recognize each other. I see you now and I recognize that I’ve seen you before, but what I’m really seeing is consistent pattern. Let’s suppose I have a rope and this rope begins by being manila rope and then it goes on by being cotton rope, then it goes on with being nylon, then it goes on with being silk. So I tie a knot in the rope and I move the knot down along the rope. Is it as it moves along the same knot or a different knot? There’s nothing in the physical world that is what you might call substantial. It’s pattern and this is why it’s spiritual. To be non-spiritual is to impose upon the world the idea of thingness, of substantiality. That is to be involved in matter, to identify with the body. To believe that the body is something constant and tangible. The body is actually intangible. You cannot pin it down. It’s all falling apart. It’s aging and getting older, therefore if you cling to the body you will be frustrated. The material world, the world of nature, is marvelous so long as you don’t try to lean on it. So long as and you don’t cling to it.” - Alan Watts, The Viel of Thoughts
About the Artists
Meghan Shimek is a weaver and fiber artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She integrates the natural beauty of her surroundings, the memory of quiet snowy nights, and the sound of the stream running under her home into every weaving. Meghan has been trained in traditional tapestry and Navajo weaving techniques; she incorporates raw fibers and objects to create abstract and textural wall hangings. Meghan also teaches beginners weaving workshops using looms that she designed.
Omni-disciplinary artist and creative entrepreneur Babette DeLafayette founded the art production company The Pendleton House in 2013. She has joined forces with visual artist John Marc Powell to create an creative entity that focuses on their practice called Activated Environments. Her work has be presented at Velocity, On The Boards, Cornish College Gallery & Playhouse, 12th Avenue Arts, LoveCityLove, Hedreen Gallery, Steel Gallery at Gage, LxWxH Gallery, Northwest Film Forum, and Decibel Music Festival.