Autumn had only just begun when I looked outside and saw that it was raining. Water was streaming down the window and it seemed like my inspiration was washing away. Surprised by the impact the weather had on my mood, I wished I could create something as powerful as the rain. Soon I realized that even if it’s possible, competing with nature is not something I want to do. A collaboration would be nice, though. Maybe I could change the impact the rain had on me.
I hung big pieces of cotton fabric in the backyard, with a stripe of water-soluble paint on the washing line. As soon as it started raining, the paint began spreading through the fabric. The rain was painting, creating a wash of color and a pattern of drops on the cotton. After it had stopped raining and the fabric had dried, it was my turn. I cut and sewed the fabric to stretch it around umbrella frames, creating umbrellas that let rain through instead of protecting from it, and of which the patterns change whenever exposed to water again.
Each umbrella in this installation shows a variation of my ongoing dialog with the rain. Every time I repeated this process, my method slightly changed, and the rain reacted in a different way. Sometimes I would make the umbrellas first and add some paint to the cap on top. I would hang them from a single string to let them move freely in the wind, sometimes with more umbrellas underneath, to catch the excess drops. In such a way, a unique pattern appeared on each umbrella, determined by the wind, gravity, and the intensity of the rain.
