Louise Cadoux will exhibit 5 works in the exhibition DRAWING THE LINE, a show I curated for the Pelham Art Center, Pelham, NY (February 16-April 2, 2023). Two are wall installations she created with wire, wire mesh and metal hardware and three are sculptures on pedestals she created with wire, wire mesh and other media.
DRAWING THE LINE will include 8 artists – Louise Cadoux who draws with wire in 2D and 3D – and 7 other artists who create contemporary abstraction and draw with traditional media, including graphite, pen and ink, or colored pencil, and artists who draw with untraditional media, including quilts that show drawing with fabric, paint and embroidery, woven collage that show lines with paper, paint, cord and linen, low relief assemblage that show shapes and lines with wood, wire, and hardware, and 2 artists who create assemblage that create shapes and lines – one with safety pins and one with chenille pipe cleaners.
The 2 images, above, are Louise Cadoux’s mixed media wire drawings that will be included in the exhibition at the Pelham Art Center. Both are dated 2022. The artist created IF YOU WANT TO FEEL GOOD with wire, wire mesh, aluminum hardware, sinkers and leather (60”H x 35”W). The artist created WHEN YOU WANT TO FEEL GOOD with wire, aluminum, hardware, and leather (55”H x 38”W). Both works will be installed on the wall next to each other (one higher and one lower). Both works invite you to see angel wings and ask yourself how you might become an angel and wear the angel wings. Louise Cadoux says children and adults often stand in front of these works and take a selfie with the wings behind them. She says the wings make children giggle, and even adults enjoy the interaction, so the wings serve their purpose. IF YOU WANT TO FEEL GOOD is largely crocheted. WHEN YOU WANT TO FEEL GOOD is made with hanging strands of wire and tiny aluminum washers.
SCULPTURE CREATED WITH WIRE
The next 3 works are the artist’s mixed media wire sculptures that will be exhibited on pedestals at the Pelham Art Center.
The image above is titled SOUL VESSEL and stands about two feet tall on the pedestal. Notice how this work is built with a wire that winds around in increasing and decreasing diameter to create the open vessel shape with a closed bottom and open top. Notice how the artist wrapped thin wire over and around wires, across and through wire mesh, and attached metal shapes that are pierced with circles that look like eyes. SOUL VESSEL is a 3D drawing in space.
The image above is titled EGG VESSEL and stands about two feet tall on the pedestal. Louise Cadoux says she built this vessel like a basket. The eggs inside are painted wood.
The image above is titled WHAT’S COOKING? and stands about two feet tall on the pedestal. The legs make a tripod base. The artist says you can place the vessel in a fire, a traditional way of cooking in Sweden. I asked Cadoux about the bird inside. She said: “There is no way out for the bird.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Louise Cadoux says her formal art training didn’t start until she moved to the United States at age 26. Her parents were opposed to her becoming an artist, and being an only child, she obeyed, and got a degree in international business. Once she moved to the US, she pursued art and took life drawing classes at the Art Students League, and painting classes at Parsons School of Design. She got a degree in textile/surface design from FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). Some years later she studied sculpture at the Stockholms Konstskola for a year while her youngest child attended a Swedish high school. She keeps taking classes in different disciplines and says she wants to try everything. Louise Cadoux was a pattern maker professionally and had a business making floor cloths and designing wall patterns, often working with interior designers to create one-of-a-kind designs for their clients. She created everything by hand, never on a computer.
The artist says she started out as a painter, and now mostly makes 3-dimensional work in wire, wood, concrete, and clay. She says her work is the result of processing current events, fiction and poetry, seen through a filter of magical realism and myth, and adds: “I try to make sense of, and sometimes have a good laugh at what I experience, whether it’s music, politics, environmental threats, science, technology, or religion.” Louise Cadoux is a storyteller: many of her works have titles from fairy tales; many of her works represent personal stories.
When I asked Louise Cadoux how she started drawing with wire, she said it all started by accident when she was in her studio and realized she was staring intently at the patterns on the wood floor, not focused on the work in progress. She says she immediately started to improvise – to draw the wood floor patterns with wire. Over time, she added other media – wire mesh, metal hardware, wood, yarn, rocks and sinkers (sinkers are weights that get attached to fishing lines or nets).
The artist says “It’s sometimes hard to make the wire do what I have in mind, and it’s also hard on the hands – there is often blood – but no tears”.
Louise Cadoux lives in Connecticut and belongs to the Artist Collective of Westport, CT. She is a member of the Upstream Gallery in Hastings on Hudson, NY and the Silvermine Guild of Artists in New Canaan, CT.
OVERHEAD MAPS
The image above is titled MAP OF MY HEART and created with wire, wire mesh, yarn and aluminum. It’s 55”H x 42”W. See this work, and others in the Overhead Maps series at her website. According to the artist, she typically constructs the wire “frame” first as an armature and fits the remaining wire images onto it. The process is additive, organic and incremental like a drawing. Notice all the different wires and the lines they create. Louise Cadoux says the title MAP OF MY HEART refers to the shape of the piece. I think this work also tells a personal story. Louise Cadoux grew up in Sweden, spending the summers in the archipelago of Stockholm. Her family lived on the water, and her father went fishing early in the morning almost every day. In the evenings he would put out a small net to catch small fish to use as bait. He kept the extra fish bait in a tank under the jetty. Cadoux said she never enjoyed fishing and would sometime let the fish out of the tank. As I look at MAP OF MY HEART, the wires make me think of fishing lines and water all around. The title is apt – it’s a map – and home is always heart-felt.
The image above is a close-up view of MAP OF MY HEART. I first saw it installed at Louise Cadoux’s solo show at the Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, and took this photo because the wires and wire mesh cast the most amazing pattern with shadows that becomes a double drawing.
The image above is titled TENT CITY IN THE SKY. Louise Cadoux says this work started as a wire circle 48 inches in diameter. She attached wire, wire mesh and metal hardware to the wire circle. The image also shows 5 smaller, closed and open 3D wire and wire mesh spheres nearby, installed from the ceiling.
WALL HANGINGS
The image above is titled FULL MOON. It’s 36” H x 26” W, created with wire, wire mesh, aluminum and heavy nails. See this work, and others in the Wall Hangings series at her website. The nails create a soft echo of lines. Wire mesh and aluminum strips create the image of the full moon. Cadoux says she wanted to create a shimmering sense of light “like whispers of clouds passing over the moon.”
The image above is titled DARK MOON. It’s 42”H x 28” W, created with wire, wire mesh, thin metal rods at top and bottom, and tiny sinkers on the bottom right that create multiple shadows behind the panels. The moon is divided. One half is dark; one half is light. The artist says DARK MOON symbolizes yin/yang energy.
The image above is titled CONSTELLATION. It’s 43”H x 36” W. Louise Cadoux says the vastness and possibility of space fascinates her. She wove wire through layers of mesh to create lines within and across shapes that create the image of the constellation. Notice the 2nd section added at the bottom of this work, and how the 2 sections are connected in the middle with thin black wire that creates undulating lines that become an enclosure for a small white sphere. CONSTELLATION is more sculptural than other wall hangings and contains 3D spheres that mimic the circular wire mesh shapes in this work.
When I asked the artist “What’s next?” she said: “I’ve been missing color lately and would like to incorporate it into my work. I can’t even tell you if the new works will be 2D or 3D.”
Louise Cadoux recently participated with the Upstream Gallery at the 2022 Affordable Art Fair in NYC, and a collector purchased two fish sculptures that he can hang on the walls in his home. Happy collector!
Visit the artist’s Instagram site and see wall sculptures of fish, birds and what the artist calls trophies of animal heads with media that look like fur. See her series titled Fairy Tales and Other Stories.
Please save the date. The opening reception for DRAWING THE LINE is Thursday, February 16, 2023 (6:00-8:00 pm). Here’s a link to Future Exhibitions at the Pelham Art Center that tells you a little bit about me as the curator and says the exhibition is a show with drawing, collage, weaving and installation with lines, dots, circles, spirals and grids.
I am preparing interviews for each of the 8 artists in DRAWING THE LINE. Each interview will be posted at Art of Collage. Thank you for reading this post. Your comments are welcome.
Art of Collage 
These look so wonderful Nancy!
Sent from my iPhone
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Thank you, Neala. I’m so glad you think Louise Cadoux’s works are wonderful.
Louise Cadoux’s work is amazing!