Julian Joos, a printmaker who has expanded her practice to include Jacquard tapestries, appears to have developed an exculpatory relationship to the grey-headed flying foxes (vegetarian bats) during a residency at Art space in Sydney, Australia in 2008. She came back to her home and studio in Quebec and the pesky leaf-eaters found themselves memorialized. Headbones Gallery will have a diptych of these large tapestries and two depicting close ups of the intriguing giants at Headbones Gallery November 19 to December 31. The images on the tapestries are close to life size. Julianna Joos doesn’t tackle her subjects lightly and it is partially the story behind each of the series that adds body to the works.

Twelve smaller tapestries relate to the ever-intriguing idea of the vanities. One of the most quoted biblical passages from Ecclesiastes “Vanity of Vanities, saith the Preacher, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” grants scope within the subject for interpretation. One work is titled “self portrait,” the concept of personal identity altering according to the conceit, or vanity of the individual. Using simple graphic rendering and the repeated visual of a knotted rope, the inward turning notion of the theme, historically of great interest to artists, is convoluted and yet binding, much like the physical traits of a weaving.   

Her use of the Jacquard method is related to printmaking not only through imagery (the deep blacks and myriad greys and monochromatic palettes reminiscent of classic lithography or etching) but also revealed through elements of the processes. Often printmaking creates a positive image from a negative imprint, the markings of the hand upon the original plate much like the reverse of a woven image. Printmaking deals in multiples of the same image which is also an integral part of weaving. The handsome Patterns and Melodies, a hand-woven Jacquard weaving inspired by the music of José Evangelista (music is also based on pattern and repetition) brings another artistic discipline into the conversation as subject.

The series of twelve etchings on copper, Les Mutants, employs imagery based on the scientifically recorded deformities of the Zizeera mala’s, or blue butterfly’s, larvae exposed to nuclear radiation during the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. With the white paper shining like a lens upon the fragile insects, the plight of the small exposed to the machinations of mankind is rendered both poignant and poetic.