Shaker Rug 1935 - 1942

Alois E. Ulrich’s Shaker Rug, made sometime between 1855 and 1995, is a work on paper with a kind of humble grandeur. I can picture Ulrich hunched over this thing, delicately building up layers of watercolor to evoke the rug’s plush, almost topographic texture. There's a strange balance between representation and something more abstract—the rug’s design flattens and expands into pure shape and color. A certain blobby flower asserts itself in the top corner, surrounded by fields of gray and umber that ripple like sand. Ulrich's piece reminds me of the obsessive mark-making you see in outsider art. There’s something so human about the desire to fill every bit of space, to create a whole world within the frame. You get the feeling that Ulrich wasn't just documenting a rug, he was building a reality, stroke by stroke. It's like he’s inviting us to touch the thing.