Modern Chain Link Fence

The chain link fence gets heavy ornamentation at the hands of artist Katherine Daniels.

Her new work, Fence Embroidery with Embellishment is a 600 foot installation on a chain link fence on South Street in NYC. (It runs from the Wall Street Ferry to The South Street Seaport.) This work is created by inserting ribbon-like stitches of green and white plastic fence weave into the wire mesh fencing. The forms, though quite geometric are evocative of stems and vines. The installation is embellished with brightly painted spools, lids and flanges woven into the 54, 7 1/2 x 12 foot chain link fences at various points on the fencing and all along the top. Where Katherine Daniels does not weave her materials, one can peer though to see the New York City’s Economic Development Corporation’s construction site within and the East River and blue sky beyond.

Growing up in West Virginia, Daniels’ first introduction to color, line and form came from her mother’s sewing and knitting. Now she sculpts with the materials and techniques of sewing that are second nature for her. She uses beads along with found, re-purposed and recycled materials as her pallet. Her artistic interests lie in grand visual and physical forms that introduce a sense of wonder and pleasure. Daniels' composition of an abstract flowering hedge embraces the idea of a garden path with a visual rhythms of lines, colors and shapes for the viewer to move through.

Katherine Daniels is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. She is a NYFA fellow who is working in New York City in a Chashama studio. She will be participating in the Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM program and exhibiting in Nurture Art’s Who’s Afraid of Ornament in April 2010.

Her website is www.katherinedaniels.com