Frank Connet
Indigo and Shibori: The Work of Frank Connet

The origins and rebirth of dyeing fabric has always been a global event. While some disciplines can trace their origins back to a specific time, the genesis of indigo dyeing and Japanese Shibori resist techniques are not bound to an exact time.

Man’s relationship to earthly dyes and folded shapes developed early. These circumstances encouraged humanity to explore ideas of spiritual significance and primal overtones. Over 30,000 years ago humans began burying their dead under red ochre mounds. The first colors were little more than stains that occurred naturally, where later civilizations, like the Phoenicians, refined their dying techniques. In the city of Tyre, the royal purple dye industry thrived on the color’s exquisite beauty. Countries such as Persia, the Peruvian Nazca culture, West Africa, and India all experimented with similar methodologies and hues.

Indigo blue dye’s ascendance to power has been associated with various countries and calamities. Such contradictions conferred a mythic though sordid identity, as indigo changed the fate of millions of people. While its beauty was enduring, indigo was connected to deception and social malfeasance.

Though the process of indigo dyeing can be controlled through experience and knowledge, there is always an element of chance and mystery surrounding its use. As seen in cotton denim ‘blue jeans,’ indigo makes fabrics very durable, and embeds cloth with a wide range of subtle blues. This unique plant, anil, or the scientific name indigofera tinctoria, is also used as the base for developing numerous other hues.

Frank Connet’s work emerges from and into these emblematic strains, suggesting a variety of configurations and interpretations. The striations that comprise or shape these variations appear as genetic codes, applicable to genus, species, type, and individual.

In all of Connet’s work, his strokes of color, beyond the works’ dark backgrounds, present the watery seeds of humanity’s biological flux and revelation. Long strands of cloned and repeated cells migrate as a group. Several stray less than a space away, moving apart from the organic tightness of the main group. This exhibits the potential for subtle independence while still keeping close and in contact with the group’s activities as a whole.

His work addresses the symmetry of individuation. Within Connet’s constructs, biological and physical independence parallel the systematic variables of process, accessing symbiotic psychological and social paradigms. The process of growth and its deviations from symmetrical predilection, create a mysterious asymmetrical symmetry, through distinct levels and motifs of variation. The whole and uniqueness of the one are thus combined. This confers unity and variety, especially within the adept hands and experience of an artist whose raison d’etre often resides in the resolution of this issue.

All of Connet’s recent stretched fiber work is titled by the name of the water spring that inspired it, with the exception of “Blue Pearl II,” whose inspiration is esoteric. “Blue Pearl II” is successful in strategically engaging the viewer through focal wholes and patterns capable of subdividing and recombining into various forms and colors. These become alternative configurations and fluctuating symbols, beyond obvious graphic idioms. Connet also succeeds in creating a vague yet concrete mixture of optical predominance, as indigo and black take turns flipping between an awareness of blue and a predominance of black. The rich black physical texture within the large inner circle adds another perceptual dimension to the work. This becomes more evident as we explore “Blue Pearl II” from various distances.

Each piece has its own primal complexity. His “Veil” series evokes symmetry while addressing the virtues of divergence. Formally, and in character, they mimic the royal bearing of kings and queens—implying a blood relationship or divinity of rule that has been shaped by the undulating genetic strands. Connet is aware of the reversal of figure ground. His symbolic indigo springs become positive based on the size and position of the strands. Similarly, the strands assume a positive role by linking the black hole with the upper and lower bands. His initial inspiration for these forms were based on North African counterweights used to balance heavy, veiled headdresses.

“Maramac’s” top dark pool is similar to “Blue Pearl II” in that its strategic ambiguity plays on an exchange of predominance between indigo and black. However, while Connet is still visually referencing a water spring and its groundwater supply, his work is invested with more playful ramifications. There are undeniable attributes to the human female body within this particular work, though they manifest themselves as backward and inverted. These characteristics are consistent with the theme, given springs are associated with the feminine divine, especially within Celtic mythology. Springs are also linked to the beginning of life, motherhood, new ideas, and journeys.

Connet uses the process of fabric form burn-out in his series of sculptural work. He explores the process of electroforming, which is a method of plating, non-metallic, organic materials with metal. As he crimps and manipulates paper-thin sheets of copper sewn between cotton fabric, wire is used to create flowing entities. Thick moving waves of drapery present an organic edge, dependent upon the proximity of wires. Final adjustments are made, carefully bending and applying layers of patinated color, until form and surface become inseparable.

Jay Hartley Newman and Lee Scott Newman describe this method of plating in their book, Electroplating and Electroforming for Artists and Craftsman, “Both electroplating and electroforming are a method of covering objects with layers of metal by means of electrodeposition. If the object being covered is permanent, such as a copper earring being plated with gold, the process is electroplating. If the original form is removable, or temporary, the process is called electroforming. The object over which the metal is to be deposited is called a matrix. In electroforming, the matrix is covered with a thick layer of metal, until the metal plating becomes the form itself and duplicates every detail of the original matrix with precision. The matrix that served as the basis for the thick plate is then removed.”

This procedural resurrection implies that the whole or spirit is a conglomeration of those parts that physically create the larger, symbolic form. There is also a sense of movement, as while the configuration may appear static in its general sense or whole, the components appear to be in a constant state of flux, shifting and moving in increments, inferring an ever-mutating edge of subtle changes between each unit over the entire work’s surface and depth.

These forms are not light-hearted experiments, but weighty chunks of life. They simulate the movements of densely massed branches, thrusting forward in tight, rounded curves, intertwining toward active, ambiguously spiritual ends. Their paths do not have a particular beginning, middle, or end, but express themselves as complete infinite entities, likened to deviations of circadian loops.

For Connet, these ancient techniques are based on experience, observation, and a body of knowledge handed down throughout the ages. They foster a means for individuation or self-actualization. Like life, the process in dyeing is not a slow climb to the summit, but a continual unfolding challenge. Connet’s encompassing approach suggests a profound cycle wherein our bodies finally nourish the Earth and become the dyes and fabric of eternity’s continued existence.

Ed Krantz
Gallery Curator
Elgin Community College