Traditional weaving techniques were the first driving force of Carole Solvay work. After searching for her medium for a long time, feathers, a complex, organic and living material became an obvious choice by chance and now form her aesthetic personality.

Filled with fascination with the lightness of being, which is inherent to the feather, and her passion for nature and birds, Carole meticulously selects the parts to use: feather fragments, barbs, spines and calami. She assembles them with fibres, fine iron wires, paper, fabric or small bits of plastic sheet. Her work is conceived as a daily meditation where hand gestures prevail, in a permanent quest for the notion of lightness.

Carole Solvay has explored calligraphy and three-dimensional drawing. Various techniques therefore combine and experimentation with varied media results in poetic, quivering and delicate works, floating installations or drawing-sculptures that connect the actual space or fictive space of the drawing whose territory she redefines in a way. Metal wire, which is very present, becomes a line and drawn installation. The works sometimes take flight, leave the walls and inhabit the space in three-dimensional creations.

Carole Solvay has recently exhibited at the Fondazione Ghisla Art Collection, Locarno in Switzerland and at the Domaine de Chaumont sur Loire in France as part of the Saison d’Art 2021.

Elisabeth Martin, Art Critic