12 SQUARE WORDS AND GOLD LANDSCAPES BUILDING A LIFE IN TEXTILES Anna Walker A simple weave structure is established with a warp and a weft. The threads meet on a grid, interlocking at right angles. It is this grid that the artist Olga de Amaral has continued to investigate, reinvent, and expand over her prolific career. The square building blocks that underpin her weavings are reminiscent of her training in architectural drafting—the process of planning physical structures on a grid. For Amaral, these squares are “the ‘words’ I use to begin creating landscapes of surfaces, textures, emotions, memories, meanings and connections.” 1 After an introduction to weaving in 1954–55 at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Amaral began exhibiting her fiber work in the 1960s, quickly becoming one of the leaders of an international fiber-art movement defined by its innovation in scale and use of alternative materials. Since that period, Amaral has continued to experiment within the medium of fiber, establishing her own visual vocabulary using horsehair, gold leaf, gesso, brilliant colors, and off-the-loom constructions. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1932, Amaral closely identifies with Antioquia, the native province of her paternal grandparents. Located northwest of Bogotá, much of Antioquia is dominated by the Andes Mountains, and the scenery is described by Amaral as having a “riot of colors and countryside dotted with vividly painted houses.” 2 The atmo- sphere in Bogotá is quite the opposite. For Amaral, the city is “cool, gray, and rainy, nestled in a landscape of deep, dark-green vegetation.” 3 The structure, colors, and materials of her tapestries are inherently reflective of these dichotomous landscapes, and their influence is seen in works ranging from the dark and moody Muros tejidos (Woven Walls) series of the 1960s to the vibrant and ethereal installations of Brumas (Mists) (2013, pp. 102–103) . “On entering into the essence of weaving—its function as a protection from the elements— it is inevitable to look at the landscape and not be surprised by the paradox that arises: landscape, inversely, begins to be perceived as an abstraction of weaving,” Amaral says.