When the artist Ruth Laskey started her newest weaving collection, she was effectively conscious that it will be a complete yr earlier than she noticed the completed product. That’s by design: Her course of is methodical, each step deliberate. As soon as she settles on the design for every new piece in a collection, she hand-dyes, dries, and measures her threads, then strings them up on the pegs of a warping board inside her San Francisco studio. Solely then does she begin on the loom, slowly weaving the reverse of every picture, thread by thread. It’s not till the entire collection is full that the bolt of linen is reduce from the loom, flipped over, and seen face-up for the primary time.

“I like how sluggish all of it is,” she says. “There’s not a lot that’s sluggish.”

Laskey has been working this manner for 20 years. She initially educated as a painter, and first tried weaving in an effort to make her personal linen canvases—a method to pump the brakes on what was in any other case, for her, too speedy an artwork type. She realized weaving itself was her calling, so she purchased an previous loom off Craigslist and, in 2005, started her Twill collection, an ongoing assortment of exquisitely plaited, summary textiles made by the identical thought-about course of.

Loops, from 2023, is the most recent member of the Twill household. These works, collectively along with her Circles collection, from 2022, are on view in a brand new present at San Francisco’s Altman Siegel, Laskey’s debut with the gallery, via April 20. The exhibition intersperses the eight Loops and 7 Circles, inserting them in dialog. “I just like the dialogue that’s occurring,” Laskey says. “There’s a very nice rhythm between the 2 our bodies of labor.”