Artist Love: Gabriel Dawe

Gabriel Dawe is a mixed media and installation artist based out of Texas. I came across his site a week or two ago when one of my twitter friends posted it, and with my true love for thread and string, you can imagine that I have been completely obsessed with his work! He creates large installations out of brightly colored thread.

Check out his site and also his facebook fan page for updates on his current shows. 

Gabriel Dawe was born in Mexico City where he grew up surrounded by the intensity and color of Mexican culture. After working as a graphic designer, he moved to Montreal, Canada in 2000 following a desire to explore foreign land. In search for creative freedom he started experimenting and creating artwork, which eventually led him to explore textiles and embroidery—activities traditionally associated with women and which were forbidden for a boy growing up in Mexico. Because of this, his work is subversive of notions of masculinity and machismo that are so ingrained in his culture. By working with thread and textiles, Dawe’s work has evolved into creating large-scale installations with thread, creating environments that deal with notions of social constructions and their relation to evolutionary theory and the self-organizing force of nature.

After seven years of living in Canada and gaining dual citizenship as a Mexican-Canadian, Gabriel moved to Texas to pursue graduate school at the University of Texas at Dallas where he is presently a candidate for an MFA in Arts and Technology. His work has been exhibited in Dallas, Houston, Montreal, Toronto and Barcelona.