Elegant Rebuttal (wo ai ni). Photo: Angela McElwain.
By Daniel Johanson
A solitary silk glove was the beginning of Angela McElwain’s “Elegant Rebuttal (wo ai ni).” Its missing partner suggested lost love, and a love letter from a World War II sailor serving in the Pacific became the next material she added.
“Creatively the two things seemed destined for each other,” McElwain wrote in an email interview.
The glove brought a practical problem with it. Draped over other objects, the soft silk didn’t have the dimensional presence McElwain wanted for the Construct.
“By sewing thread thru the ends of the glove’s fingers then drawing the thread thru holes drilled in the box and fixing them I was able to spread the fingers giving the glove a more substantial presence in the piece,” she wrote.
“This created tension,” she wrote.
The thumb takes a different position from the spread fingers. McElwain folded it over a bird’s wing, describing the gesture as a kind of restraint.
“Despite the beautiful handwriting I felt it was necessary for the letter to be folded up tightly and concealed away instead of out in the open for anyone to see,” she wrote.
“Thus, it got tucked behind the glove still visible, but its message protected, secreted, unseen,” McElwain wrote.
The work also includes a long black braid and spent fireworks. Each material arrives with an earlier use that remains part of how she thinks about it, even as its place in the Construct changes its meaning.
“Nearly every element in my work has meaning but by being removed from its normal ‘setting’ and deposited into one of the constructs, its common function is both suggested and negated,” she wrote.
In “Elegant Rebuttal,” the glove’s familiar shape remains visible while the threads hold it in a new position. The letter remains present too, with the words folded away- a relationship McElwain makes through what the materials reveal and what they keep to themselves.
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