Capturing The Sunset Moment With Woven Roscolux Colors

Artist and Weaver Annette Heully is best known for her work creating grand woven textile experiences. During her 20+ year career, she has woven pieces for fashion designers, interior designers, and art installations. One of her latest works was an interactive environment design she created using Rosco gels that she wove together to capture and explore the fleeting moments of a sunset.

Annette was invited to join the Ojai Jail Arts Initiative for an exhibition at the historic Ojai Jail in Ojai, California. Multiple artists were brought in to display their pieces as a way to reposition the site as a generative, community space for arts and culture. While she was scouting the jailhouse space, Annette took inspiration from the perspective of the prisoners and their limited view of the outside world. She noted how time was their only reference point as they watched the sun passing through the small window of their cell.

Knowing that this piece would become a color study about the time of day, Annette began searching for materials that would enable her to weave together sunset tones. Recognizing that sunset is the one time of day when we are most aware of the sun’s position, Annette's hope was to blend together translucent yellows, oranges, and pinks to cast the iconic colors of sunset into the space. By doing this, she hoped to explore what happens when the colors of this daily ephemeral moment are available to experience for a longer period of time than they would naturally occur. As she searched through a variety of different materials to create her sunset tones, Annette stumbled upon the Rosco swatchbook that her filmmaker husband happened to have at home. She began exploring the different colors inside and observed how the Rosco gels were flexible enough to be woven together, while also strong enough to not break apart during the weaving process.

Next, Annette needed to find the specific Rosco gel colors that would work best for re-creating her sunset lighting effect. Her final choices were Roscolux R13 Straw Tint, R16 Light Amber, R17 Light Flame, and R318 Mayan Sun. These four colors provided her with the color saturation she desired, but they were also congruent in such a way that she was able to weave them together into a stunning ombré of sunset hues.

With her ideal Roscolux colors in hand, next was the actual construction of this giant textile. Annette began by hand-cutting strips of the Roscolux gels, and then she began weaving them together with a cotton thread using a Dobby loom and a pattern she developed herself. The result was a 13’ x 33’ panel of woven color that she entitled “MOMENT.” Annette strung her installation between four trees outside the historic Ojai jail cell. With enough room to walk under this hanging textile, visitors could capture the experience of bathing themselves in sunset illumination. Annette noted that the color the textile created was so rich that visitors assumed the orange glow would also feel warm to the skin.

Through rain and shine, this beautiful hand-woven textile hung at the Ojai Jail Arts Initiative for visitors to experience. We admired how Annette took a set of filters most often used for re-creating sunsets on stage and on camera to create an art piece that explores how we perceive time and experience the duration of moments. Looking at it from the other direction, we also love the idea of weaving together large gel textiles to color sunlight during daytime events or to create golden hour on a film set.

After the Ojai Jail Arts Initiative was over, Annette was thrilled to receive a public installation grant from Fiber Art Now magazine and “MOMENT” was featured in their Winter 2023 issue! You can find out more about Annette Heully and her work at annetteheully.com or by following @annetteheully on Instagram. If you’d like to learn about the materials that Annette used to create her woven art installation, please visit the Roscolux product page or explore our myColor web app to research all of our various gel and filter materials.