Pythagorean Numerology, the Archetypal Feminine, & Plant Dyes with Yale physics grad + Fiber Artist Aleena Glinski

Enjoy the artist talk from my solo art show at Allen's Lane Art Center. Find out more about the underlying philosophy and process behind my work.

Aleena: The wood that I find is from the Schuylkill River, the drift wood that you see. I go through a bleaching process and then a sealing process so that it'll last longer and not be subject to any issues down the line. The rope that I use is cotton. I dye it with natural plant dyes, so in the room we have turmeric and madder and Logwood and weld and black beans and squid ink over there.

I try to, as an artist, honor and respect life in general - that’s my mission - and our connection to it, which is why I really enjoy plant dyes and cotton rope and the driftwood and all of that. I love macrame for being so loose, for being so flowing. I realized that I'm also an aerialist and a dancer and I make jewelry and I teach yoga, and I realized that so much about my aesthetic and everything that I do is that I love things that hang and things that dangle, whether it's people or rope. I was reflecting on that and wondering what it is that I'm attracted to about that, and I thought about the expression “hang loose” versus being “up tight,” and I thought about myself. I think that my life has been one of unwinding from from tension and tightness and structure and discipline, and I just really gravitate towards things that, for me, evoke a sense of peace, and that's been much of my practice in yoga and meditation as well. 

I think that fiber in general really evokes what is archetypally feminine in its softness and its fluidity and its ability to to flow with us and our experience of it, that it's something tactile. Fiber art is on your clothes and it's your rug and it’s something that you really interact with it, and it’s very embodied and sensual. I love the way that people come up and they want to brush it. It's like your daughter's hair that you need to comb out occasionally, because it will sometimes gather up. That has been interesting learning for me about myself because of course I didn't come into it with this intention, but just experiencing my own art and reflecting on why I do what I do I've come to this realization.

And then you'll also probably noticed that I really like triangles. There are little triangles over there, triangles over here, triangles here, out in the front. I just love triangles and trigonometry. I love the way the triangles inscribe into circles, I love the way that their movement within a circle becomes a wave that tells us the nature of the most fundamental principles of reality. I love trigonometry. So a triangle can be inscribed into a circle and the way that it moves around if you project that outward becomes a wave and then if you think about the dual nature of reality as both particle and wave you have in many of my pieces the circle and also the triangle, which wasn't necessarily intentional. 

I also think a lot about numbers. I love numbers. Since I was a kid, I’ve always had a very strong sense of my favorite numbers, and I don't know if anyone else has had a very strong connection to that? But for me it was four and six, and I also love hexagons and have a lot of hexagon work as well. Another thing about triangles is the combination of being 1+ 2 and when you look at Pythagoras he's actually sort of a mystic he's not even necessarily a real person, we're not really sure, he might have been a myth or sort of like a Godlike figure, but he is the person who sort of gave us our original numerology, and for him one was like the monad, which is God and unity the Oneness of Nature and the connection of all things, that there is this Universal Oneness that we're a part of, and two is like the fall from divinity. It's like duality, the fall from grace and one is God, the masculine, and two is the feminine and then that separation from Oneness, and our ability to have distinctions between things and understand life through duality, and how that's sort of intrinsically flawed. I was very struck by how the feminine was so intrinsically tied to what's negative in this very primordial numerology. And then three is the coming together of those two things: you have the masculine and the feminine, you have the triangle. You have the first really stable shape in the universe that combines these two principles. 

So all of my triangles are always upside down, which for me is also a symbol of feminism and what is archetypally feminine. Instead of having the one on top, the one masculine God be flipped to have the two points the feminine on top. And it's interesting, because the one, you think about God the one going up, this is traditionally what people think of. God is above us, and what is mental, and our connection to the cosmos, and all of that is what is the highest good. People generally don't like to look at what is below, what is Earthly, material, sensual, instinctual what is underneath of us. That's hell or something, but it's also Earth, and it's also what sustains us, and also what is more archetypally feminine.

In yoga you can look at it either way from the chakra system that you move up or you move down and either way, one is inside of the other and there's not one direction that's necessarily better than the other. I like to think about God as below, as well. Connecting to what is Earthly and sensual and instinctual and feminine. It sort of has gotten a bad rap under patriarchy, I think, but is essential. And it ties into the plant dies and the driftwood and the sensuality of rope and what is loose and soft. So that is what I've discovered about myself and the universe.

[wow 

Beautiful 

wow] 

Aleena: Thank you! 

It feels so good to be in this room. It’s very warm and comforting and the movement - it's musical too, your work, it really has a very musical rhythm to it.

Aleena: That’s amazing to hear as a dancer! That’s been so special for me, too. I really imagine my work up in people's spaces. I think it belongs somewhere where you need to feel peace - in your home, and office, and anywhere that you are. And feel free to ask any questions.

Your dying technique is so impressive.

Aleena: Oh, thank you!

It's really hard to get that gradiated colors, you know using different plant material. What's the, what did you say the leadwood what is that? 

Aleena: Logwood? 

What is that?

Aleena: It's actually a type of bark that's from a tree. Yeah, and it's really strong! And it's interesting too that different plant dyes are very different. You can see if you look really closely here that this is very neatly stacked, each of these, which was difficult to achieve but that I think is more uniquely turmeric, because logwood really likes to run. You can see it goes all the way up there at certain points, which I really like the kind of different sort of like situation that gives you here. 

That fluid, dancing, musical...

Aleena: Yeah, so some dyes have less freedom than others I guess. 

Is that wood, is that what made like the yellowish shades or the more purpley shades of purple? 

Aleena: Purple.

Wow. 

Aleena: Yeah. It's really strong strong! 

That's crazy.

Aleena: Such a small amount, less than a 1/4 cup to dye all that, and it was still so intense. I had to water it down!

Wow.

Do you dip the one and then the other and then hang them and let them flow together or how do you get the two colors? 

Aleena: Yeah, so I've worked through several different processes. At first I would have everything already tied on a stick in a long row and then I would dunk the entire piece in and try to slowly bring it up to get the Ombre, but that was a little bit too… if it if it were to run like this it would make a funny line that I didn't like, so the technique that I use now is to gather it into a bunch and so then you have basically an enormous tassel that you're dunking in, then when you lay it out it's not necessarily the one next to the other is influenced the same way as it was when it was laid out in a line if that makes sense?

So you do one end and then the other to get two colors?

Aleena: Yeah, exactly, and this one this one I did, I left the bottom white when I was doing the yellow parts so it was a fade from a dark yellow to very light to then white at the very end and then I did the exact opposite with the purple but for this one I wanted to try the whole thing was yellow and I was wondering if that would be different because the yellow went all the way down to the bottom, but I think because the Logwood is so strong it didn't really make too much of a difference at the bottom, but you can still see a slight difference in the color because this was dyed on white and this was dyed with the weld on it already.

What’s the pink color there?

Aleena: This one? Madder Root.

You just want to touch it. 

How about, I want to know about the circles.

Aleena: The circles? Like how I make them?

You talked about triangles. No, symbolically. 

Aleena: Yeah, so that's like the monad, like the one. 

Feels like the moon. 

Aleena: Oh, that too interesting! I also am completely obsessed with the sun. I'm also an astrologer, so I love having something solar, and this one I had two and I called it Gemini. But yeah, symbolically for me, over here that's a very abstracted mountain-scape to me. We have the sun setting. It looks like what?

It looks like the moon. 

Aleena: Oh, I love that! I normally think of them like the Sun but also in that numerological perspective like the one and also I feel like the metal really grounds and balances all of the feminine qualities of the fiber with something like very rigid and hard and I'm literally just hammering so hard. It takes so much strength. My wrist was like not having it.

Is that what you were doing the other day? [Laughter] 

Thanks for being here us… Super excited to have you here 

Yes

Congratulations

Aleena: Thank you.