It is all about the stripes. It is about the way the stripes represent systems, labor, and relentless reproduction. It is about the way each stripe is at once an individual and also one part of many. It is about the net effect of the stripes, when they join together to create a tapestry-like sea of vacillating vertical lines.

There is much about the stripes in Danica Phelps’ Stripe Factory exhibition at Sister Gallery to take in. Rather than simply experience the incredible swath of information implicit in each of Phelps’ Stripe Factory drawings, we must also wade through the other elements:  fugitive, unframed drawings that represent the members of the Stripe Factory at work, and an installation in the back room that includes a roughly composed assortment of documents related to stripe production.

In her letter describing the output and story of the Stripe Factory, Phelps says that the stripes, which used to directly represent her own financial information, “are now going to come unmoored from my personal data, and instead, the stripes will be purely visual.  They will only represent their own production.”  Whether or not they are purely visual, they certainly do represent their own production.

After the density and volume of the stripes Phelps used in her drawing—each piece includes between 20,000 and 200,000 carefully executed stripes—became too much for her to handle alone, Phelps hired helpers. Now, Phelps and the workers in her Stripe Factory have a demanding production schedule, producing work for Sister Gallery, Kavi Gupta Gallery and others. They charge $0.15 per stripe.

When you look at a stripe factory painting, you see an assemblage of miniscule reproductions, but you also see an expressive, wavering field of color that plays with your perception in a way not too far removed from the effect of the color-field work of the 60's. None of the information on the drawings or production remnants add anything to the gulf of information already conveyed by the mass-produced, but handcrafted strips of stripes.

- Catherine Wagley

(*Images, from top to bottom: Danica Phelps, Stripe Factory, February 9 - March 22, 2008; Sister Gallery, (20,000 stripes) detail, 2007, Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper on wood, Courtesy of the artist and Sister Gallery, Los Angeles. Danica Phelps, Stripe Factory, February 9 - March 22, 2008; Sister Gallery, Stripe Factory Sample for Sister (20,000 stripes), 2007, Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper on wood, 20 x 15 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Sister Gallery, Los Angeles. Danica Phelps, Stripe Factory, February 9 - March 22, 2008; Sister Gallery, (20,000 stripes) detail, Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, Courtesy of the artist and Sister Gallery, Los Angeles. Danica Phelps, Stripe Factory, February 9 - March 22, 2008; Sister Gallery, In-studio detail, 2007, Courtesy of the artist and Sister Gallery, Los Angeles. Danica Phelps, Stripe Factory, February 9 - March 22, 2008; Sister Gallery, (20,000 stripes) studio detail, Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, Courtesy of the artist and Sister Gallery, Los Angeles.)