Archive | January, 2014

Valerie S. Goodwin offers laser cutting workshop

on January 31, 2014 in Artist Profile, Events

A new workshop for quilt artists interested in exploring laser cutter technology

by Valerie S. Goodwin

The physical means of making has always been a part of my professional and artistic life. Immense professional satisfaction and artistic expression has come from making things by hand throughout my career. On the other hand, I understand and have an interest in current technology. Much of the work I do as a quilt artist combines both the digital and physical realm of creating. Sometimes I am split between using the digital and staying true to a handmade object, the physical.

During the summer of 2013, I was selected to participate in a 3-week residency at Florida State University’s (FSU) Facilities for Arts Research (FAR). The title of my project was Mapping Time and Place. During the first week of my residency, I tested laser settings on over 30 natural and synthetic fabrics. In addition to exploring combinations of layered materials for my experimental fiber artwork, I created a binder with fabric samples and laser cutting settings as a resource for future FAR researchers.

In the final weeks, I laser cut and engraved large fabric panels. The panels will be combined and layered in the final work which documents the displacement of Seneca Village, an African-American community that once occupied the current site of Central Park. The final piece is still underway in my studio. This link provides a small glimpse of my residency experience: Mapping Time and Place Residency

The laser cutting workshop

My experience with the laser cutter and its interaction with fabric sparked a desire to share my knowledge with other quilt artists. Since doing the residency at FSU, my department at Florida A & M University’s School of Architecture has acquired its own Epilogue laser cutter. As a result, I am very pleased to be able to offer a 4-day mixed media fiber art workshop this summer entitled: The Laser Cut Edge.

Workshop participants will experience the new possibilities of creating a work built up of laser cut surfaces with transparent and opaque properties. They will create small art pieces comprised of laser cut samples, (within the machine’s 1′ x 2′ dimensions). The laser cutter not only cuts, but it can score and etch. Some materials will be provided as part of a kit, but artists can and should bring their own fabrics as well. A variety of techniques will be demonstrated and experimentation will be encouraged. Students will tackle ways of creating layering and transparency, pattern as well as texture.

Our School of Architecture has a great workshop space where students will work with the laser cutter. Also provided is a separate, secure and air-conditioned studio space where students can work and get further instruction and critique. We provide a creative atmosphere for experimentation and learning. To register click here: Laser Cut Edge

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Jayne Gaskins debuts at Invitation to Imagine

on January 24, 2014 in Events, Quilt National Artist, Quilts

The Seventh Street Gallery in Fernandina Beach, FL invites you to “Invitation to Imagine,” an one-woman show introducing the extraordinary art of Amelia Island resident Jayne Gaskins. Each piece, meticulously created, is a marriage of two diverse mediums: modern digital photography and textile art, one of the oldest known mediums. How she combines the two is a process Gaskins calls “fiberography.”

Options by Jayne Gaskins

Multiple digital images set the stage as Gaskins creates the scene she envisions, manipulating an image before transferring the completed design to cloth, to be overlaid with thread. This, in a thimble, is the definition of “fiberography.” Literally, it is painting with thread.

I really don’t care if you call my work photography, fiber art, mixed media, or even painting. It’s art. Everything else is irrelevant”, says Gaskins.

Gaskins works with a needle and thread, blending, overlaying and interspersing colors to create subtle hues, textures and realism as a painter would with a brush. Portions are heavily “painted” with a sewing machine and multiple colors of thread to produce a painterly effect, then stuffed and sculpted with small hand stitches (trapunto quilted). The effect is a photo-realistic image with a heavy relief. The viewer can hardly resist touching a piece, it looks so real. Is feeling believing?

Another hallmark of Gaskins’ work is her use of strong directional light. “I am fascinated with the effects of light and light sources, and have been heavily influenced by Rembrandt and Vermeer. Both used strong directional light, but in different ways, to achieve dramatic results and I try to emulate these effects in my work.”

Jayne Gaskins

Gaskins’ work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the US and Europe and has earned numerous awards for excellence. Gaskins’ art has been shown in prestigious exhibits such as Xe Triennale Internationale des Mini-Textiles in Angers, France, Quilt National, and FiberArt International, and it has been published in books such as 500 Art Quilts by Lark Publishing and The Natural World: Profiles of Major Artists Galleries and Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Portraits both by Martha Sielman. Gaskins holds a BFA in Graphic Design and an MBA with a double concentration in Marketing and Management. In 2006 she retired from a long successful career in communications and moved to a barrier island off the Atlantic coast of Florida where she devotes herself to her art and extensive travels. To see more work by Gaskins go to JayneGaskins.com

Invitation to Imagine

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 8, from 5 to 8 p.m.
The show is also open on Saturday, February 15 and 22, from 9 -1pm or on weekdays by appt.
Seventh Street Gallery, 14 South 7^th Street, Fernandina Beach, FL
Call (904) 432-8330 for more information.

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Quilt National 2013 moves to Columbus, OH

on January 17, 2014 in Events, Quilts

Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery

The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery will be showing Collection C of Quilt National 2013 from January 30 through April 13, 2014.

Opening Day

Thursday, January 30
10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Free guided tours of the exhibition with Kathleen Dawson, Quilt National director, are on opening day, Thursday, January 30 from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and then on Friday, January 31 from noon to 1:00 p.m.

Attend a free family workshop

On Sunday, February 23, the gallery will offer a free Family Workshop with quilter Kate Gorman. Many of the Quilt National 2013 quilters narrate stories through their works of art. In this workshop, children ages 6-17 are invited to tell their own stories on a small quilt top through drawings, doodles and words. Registration is required as space is limited; all children must be accompanied by a registered adult. Register online between January 30 and February 19, 2014.

On Thursday, April 10, 2014, guest poet Katie Daley will offer a poetry workshop stitching together snippets of poetic phrases and metaphors into a narrative poem. Register online between February 28 and April 8, 2014. Riffe Gallery educational offerings are sponsored by OAC’s Arts Learning Program.

Quilt National Artists focus on content

The quilts in the collection reflect the artists’ interest in using their medium to give voice to a concern for either the world at large the environmental and/or political issues addressed by the works or to express feelings relevant to the particular quilt maker’s inner world. For many of today’s quilt makers, the graphic and technical elements are the foundations which support the primary concern the content of the quilt’s message. The following artists and their works will be shown at the gallery.

First Name	Last Name	Name of Quilt
Brooke	Atherton	Spring Field
Susan	Brooks	Together
Peggy	Brown	Soliloquy II
Rachel	Brumer	Large Regional Still Lives
Marianne	Burr	Thru the Lens
Christine	Chester	Layers of Memory
Sue	Cunningham	Net Work 1
Sheila	Frampton-Cooper	From a Seed
Kate	Gorman	Bernadette in Artichokes
Sandy	Gregg	Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain
Leslie A.	Hall	Casual Query #3
Judy	Hooworth	Creek Drawing #8
Lisa	Kijak	El Cortez
Paula	Kovarik	Round and Round It Goes
Susan	Lenz	Circular Churchyard
Linda	Levin	Central Park West Sunrise
Denise	Linet	Letters to Myself-Page 4
Kevin	Womack	Swaddling to Shroud - Birthing Bed
Eleanor	McCain	Swaddling to Shroud - Birthing Bed
Miriam	Nathan-Roberts	Salt and Pepper
Katie	Pasquini Masopust	Dolente-(sorrowfully)
Mary	Rowan Quinn	High Expectations
Luanne	Rimel	Enigma with a Flower
Pam	RuBert	Seattle - Wish You were Hair
Dinah	Sargeant	Old Child
Anne	Smith	Gabriel
Lura	Schwarz Smith	Passage
Kate	Themel	Morgans Flight
Martha	Warshaw	Textiles Nine Patch 8
Carol	Watkins	Vintage
Kathy	Weaver	Biomechatronics Development Lab 2 v2
Marianne	Williamson	Hidden Falls
Marian	Zielinski	Goodnight, Sweet Prince

About the Riffe Gallery – The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery showcases the work of Ohio’s artists and the collections of the state’s museums and galleries. The Riffe Gallery is located in the Vern Riffe Center for the Government and the Arts, across from the Statehouse on High Street in Downtown Columbus. Please note: we do not accept proposals from individual artists. If you are interested in learning more about our exhibition process, e-mail Mary Gray, gallery director.

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Nature’s Voice: Regina Benson’s sculptural fiber art

on January 13, 2014 in Artist Profile, Events, Quilt National Artist

Regina Benson discharges fabric in the snow.

To say that Regina Benson is in touch with nature is an understatement.

“My pieces are very graphic and intricately detailed at the same time. I want the viewer to be enveloped, surrounded, and drawn inside my work.”

In Regina’s show Nature’s Voice at the Art Center Sarasota, Emma Thurgood has chosen art quilts that showcase the broad range of her surface design practice. These works represent particular views of the natural world, its landscape at a distance and close-up. Each work incorporates the use of dying, discharging, rusting and burning techniques within the execution of the piece itself.

Night Bloom by Regina Benson

As an example, Night Bloom, a convex work, was created by pre-dying white cloth with several colors, including black, and then discharging directly on snow using rocks and pebbles as resists. In Unearthed, a multiple convex curved work, she used found rusty objects, metal shavings and wire to layer rusty patterns on silk. Within each work is a dimensional and architectural element that requires a specific armature that will hold the art quilt invisibly in a 3-d, concave or convex orientation.

Learn more about Regina’s techniques

Creating textile art in concert with nature, Regina has re-designed ancient mark-making techniques to work gently with the earth, textile and art. She will illustrate the many ways she removes dye from her own surface-designed cloth and how she creates permanent rust-markings on silk, cotton and rayon cloth. She will discuss how she pre-dyes cloth to create complex tonal designs in her discharge process, the resists she uses, and how various fabrics can be permanently rust layered and still retain fabric softness and pliability.
Regina will also illustrate her spatial aesthetic and how she designs textile art that hangs invisibly in convex and concave shapes. She will have a “see and touch” table with samples of the actual materials she uses in constructing the internal supports. Using images of her own works that are juxtaposed flat and dimensional, Regina will further address the planning, surface design, fabrication, and materials’ considerations that must be involved in successfully floating works off the wall.

Regina Benson in her studio

Regina Benson’s work has been shown in galleries and museums in The Hague in the Netherlands, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Pittsburgh. Her work has been credited with maintaining artistic integrity, technical innovation, and visual excitement. She continues to press the boundaries of contemporary textile art.
Plan to attend this wonderful show if you are anywhere near Sarasota, FL.