Huguette Despault May stumbled across and old piece of Korean War era rope that inspired a beautiful body of work entitled the Hawser Series. May’s knotted and twisted black and grey rope drawings are metaphors used to represent overwhelming feelings of every day tension and frayed nerves. She works with an exaggerated scale to enhance the viewer’s encounter with these meticulous renderings. Each of the works in the Hawser Series are between 50 to 70 inches in height. The Hawser rope that May had hanging in her studio while creating this work is very large and heavy. It is 12 inches in circumference and weighs about 75 pounds.
