ERIKA ALIN

Brite Ålin (1934-2014) grew up watching her mother weave rugs on a home loom and helping her father in his tailor shop in the city of Borås, a center for the textile industry in south-central Sweden. The youngest of three children, she took her first weaving class at the age of twenty. After marrying and moving to Long Island, New York, in the early sixties, she no longer had access to a loom and didn't resume weaving until her late thirties, when she and her family lived for several years in the Swedish port city of Göteborg. While there, she began to experiment with open weave designs on a floor loom in a local vävstuga (weaving cottage)... In Brite's early works, circular shapes woven from cotton rag strips alternate with expanses of exposed warp to create large free-flowing wall hangings. The colorful Fireworks (1973) and more muted, earthen-toned Cosmos (1974) are examples of her interest in using warp and open space as an integral design element in her weavings. While living in..