Roserock

“Roserock” captures the visual brilliance of Maine’s jagged, granite shores and extends a tactile invitation to feel its brilliant flow and grandeur. The bold, 13-foot-wide tapestry includes shapes that evoke images of geologic structure, while maintaining the fluidity and movement of fabric found in a flag. While tapestry requires a structural fabric form that often begets a singular, static visual backing, Hemenway manages to assert her signature collage-forward assembly in a way that facilitates the impressionistic quality of the most beautiful abstract work.

Roserock graced the cover of two of Hemenway’s major catalogues: Aqua Lapis from the Art Institute of Chicago, Edinburgh City Art Centre, Farnsworth and Huntsville exhibitions in 1983-6 and Ahead of Her Time, her full posthumous retrospective in 2018, hosted by the University of New England’s Joan Whitney Payson Gallery and seven other museums and public locations.

The larger, structural segments include a rectangular striped form which dominates the upper left to central space in the tapestry, and a stacked, two-toned beige-on-white form serve as an oblique version of a backing canvas. Streaks of contrasting color stream nimbly over the work, as if Hemenway is stratifying its own composition in bursts of impressionistic zeal.

In post-war America, abstract expressionism flourished. Honoring manipulation of the artistic form, prioritizing movement and dynamism in static work, and the visibility of art makers through the process of creation began to claim prominence in art spaces across America. While these freedoms explored by artists are often represented and archived in the works of American painters and sculptors, Hemenway found her liberation in fiber.