Silicon Valley Open Studios
Connecting artists to art enthusiasts
Libby Raab is an architect and paper weaver based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along with running her architecture studio, she works with photo and paper weaving as an exploration of colors, textures, and pattern. Libby believes that like architecture, weaving is a form of spatial expression and material experimentation. Her work explores the intersection of geometry, digital technology, and nature. By hand weaving original photos that have been digitally altered, Libby aims to create a dialogue between tradition and innovation, organic and synthetic textures, reality, and illusion
Email: libby@libbyraab.com
Website: www.libbyraabart.com
Instagram: liesel.scribbles
This weave is about disintegration and the passage of time. Color gradients and digital textures were added to photographs of melting ice shadows to mimic wear and aging. Paper raffia represents decay that has scarred over while other areas were eroded leaving gaps in the structure. It is an interplay between the idea of natural vs. synthetic with paper strips and raffia representing our organic world and the manipulated photos representing our digital world.
Photos on archival paper - woven with custom weave pattern. Plasmodial slime molds play an important role as decomposers and are commonly seen on rotting wood. This paper weave celebrates the raw beauty that can be inherent in decay with brightly colored cells highlighted against the blue swirling fibers of a tree trunk. It also considers the achievements that are possible when individuals come together and work in tandem.
Archival Matte Fine Art Paper, Aurora Art White 250 PaperWhile on a walk I was drawn to a tree trunk that was so gorgeous and graphically compelling, I knew I needed to work with the strong geometry of the bark as a warp image in a paper weave. I wove it and then embarked on un-weaving it to make the fissures recede allowing the graphic bark islands to pop.
