ALAN MAGEE TAPESTRIES
Magee began working in the tapestry medium in 2002 when
artist friends Donald Farnsworth and John Nava invited him
to join them in their newly launched tapestry project. The
two were about to install nearly forty grand-scale tapestries
in architect José Rafael Moneo's Our Lady of the Angels
Cathedral in Los Angeles. Nava's commissioned tapestries
were based on his paintings and employed a process devised
and refined by the two collaborators. The new method
permitted an extraordinarily rich and detailed translation of
image into woven fabric using selected color palettes of dyed
Italian cotton thread.
This new generation of tapestries is woven in Belgium on
Jacquard looms—machines often cited as the nineteenth
century precursors of the modern computer. Over several
years of work on the cathedral tapestries Farnsworth and
Nava, using their own patented software and color palettes,
stretched the limits of the present-day Jacquard. The results
are dazzling–even to the master weavers operating the
looms in Belgium.
Trained by inventor Donald Farnsworth, Magee prepares his
tapestry designs in his Maine studio for weaving at the
Belgian mill.
Magee's tapestries have been exhibited at the James A.
Michener Art Museum, the Farnsworth Art Museum, the San
Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, the Frye Art Museum,
Goethe-Institut New York, the Berliner Philharmonie, in
collaboration with Spectrum Concerts Berlin, Raab Gallery,
Berlin, the Luxembourg Embassy, Berlin, Forum Gallery,
New York and Los Angeles and the Shorenstein Building
(Bank of America Building) in San Francisco. They hang in
many private collections throughout the US and Europe.
Alan Magee's tapestries are available through the artist's
Maine studio where they can be seen by appointment.
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