“Helena Hernmarck’s work is for those who can still be uplifted by masterful handling of material, virtuosity of design and visual pleasure.”
Hernmarck's signature is her ability to harness light and color as conduits for spectacular illusion in handwoven textiles. Using a technique of her own invention, she conjures details from our visual world: sunlight on water, sails swelling in the wind. The gloss of photo paper, the graininess of xerox copies, even creases in a weathered page have served as sources of technical inspiration in the continuous evolution of her technique.
Each tapestry begins with an image, and is realized over months of weaving row-by-row at the loom. Skeins of yarn are rolled into balls and arranged according to the logic of the rainbow. These colors blend in countless variations as the weaving progresses, creating a sense of visual impact unique to Hernmarck's technique and to the lustrous rya wool that is her primary material.
Seen from a distance, Hernmarck's tapestries present a powerful, unified impression. Up close, her compositions dissolve into innumerable color mixtures interlaced as warp and weft.
Helena Hernmarck was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1941. Her mentors were three Swedish pioneers of the modern movement in textiles: Alice Lund, Edna Martin, and Astrid Sampe. After graduating from art school in Stockholm in 1963, she moved her studio to Canada and later to England before settling in the United States in the mid-1970s. Hernmarck now maintains an active studio in Connecticut, USA. She has supported Swedish textile arts throughout her career, collaborating with Swedish spinners, dyers, and weavers on each major commission. Her closest collaborators have been Wålstedts Textilverkstad, a spinning and dying mill in Dala-Floda, Sweden, and Alice Lund Textilier, a weaving atelier in Borlänge, Sweden.
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