True story: many years ago I went apartment-hunting and almost moved into the Brooklyn loft of artist Pattie Lee Becker. Of course, I didn't know her at the time, but I did find myself standing in a fantastical space full of giant-size puppets, paintings and drawings of all sorts, and purple and green window frames. She has since relocated to the Rocky Mountains, but I recall often wondering what it would have been like to live in a space created by Pattie Lee; would I be able to soak up some of her creativity?

Rope Pile Triptych, 2010 by Pattie Lee Becker

Only later would I truly learn of Pattie Lee's craft of extracting the wondrous and complex details that exist both in nature and in her imagination. Tiny patterns comprised of diamonds, checkers, stripes and dots make up the textural surfaces of both inanimate and living organisms. Her subjects also contain both a pattern and palette that seem informed by what a scientist sees through a microscope as well as the patterns once worn by Harlequins and characters of fairytales.

Ropes are the latest subject of Pattie Lee's transformative powers—and one can easily imagine her standing in the rope aisle of Home Depot closely examining the threads within each of the varieties: sisal, jute, polyester, nylon, cotton, braided, and so on. With colored pencils, Becker extracts the lines of the rope, but also their microscopic construction, imagining the inextricable threads that make up this functional everyday tool. The result is an Escher-like tangle of twists and turns—ropes without ends that find themselves in infinite loops.

Ropes in Aqua, Rust and Brown, 2009 by Pattie Lee Becker

For those of you fortunate to be in Boulder, a collection from this series is currently on view at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMOCA) through May 23rd. We've also gotten a firsthand report from Sarah McKenzie, also a Rocky Mountain resident, that this is a show not to be missed, so if you happen to be passing through, be sure to stop on by.

Ropes
Pencil drawings and sculptures by Pattie Lee Becker
On view 'til May 23, 2010
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street
Boulder, CO 80302

Pattie Lee's website is also rife with her drawings, sculptures, puppets and stories, and she has two editions, Ramona's Bright Idea and Down By the River My Lungs and I still available on 20x200.