William Wiley
So Serpent, Frightened by Color, Abstraction & Time, 2004
Jacquard tapestry
75 x 91 in.
edition of 6

William Wiley has produced a number of tapestries with the Magnolia Tapestry Project, depicting a host of mythic and politically charged figures with characteristically adventurous formal gusto. Their freewheeling wordplay, uninhibited bolts of color and bold charcoal strokes are all charged with Wiley’s contagious joie de vivre. In So Serpent, Frightened by Color, Abstraction & Time, the artist juxtaposes color and black-and-white, the figurative and the abstract to imagine a conflict between the controlling forces of order and empire and the jubilant realm of unfettered imagination. -Nick Stone