Ps and Qs, Part 2

Lorie McCown is another member of Fiber Transformed with pieces in the museum exhibit. She recycles old clothes for her work by using reclaimed fabrics and adding photo image transfers during a layering process and enhancing the work with large hand stitches.  Her work is meant to tell the personal stories of the people in the photos.

Swedish artist, Lotta Helleberg, uses eco-dying and botanicals in her mono-printed works.  She is known for her negative images, as well as combining them with a ghost image, or as in “Pecan, Spring” where each print was a single image. 

She also had this lovely cyanotype print in the show.

And this one.

Graphic Artist. Jill Kerttula, uses photos printed on fabric and then heavily embellishes the work with thread and other found items.

This one is called Ginkgo Street.

Sculptor Mary Beth Bellah contributed two quilted spider web pieces to the exhibit. These photos are from the piece titled “Autumnal Watch”.  

She sprayed the web with an ink and then holding up the fabric walked through the web picking up the image as she moved and the web made contact with the fabric.  She believes in “more is more” and thus further embellished her pieces with lace and mixed media constructed spiders.

Elizabeth very much enjoyed the explanation and discussion of the work in the exhibit as it certainly helped in understanding the artist’s mission and motive in creating each piece.  This exhibit is scheduled to be at the museum until May 20, 2017.

Ps and Qs, Part 1

After the lecture at the Virginia Quilt Museum by Dawn Flores about The Forest Project, the museum brought in box lunches for everyone and then we reconvened in an upstairs exhibit space for the Ps and Qs exhibit curated by Jill Jensen.  Jill led us around the exhibit telling us about the P (Printing) aspects of the different pieces in the exhibit. The Q stands for Quilting.

Jill is part of a group called “Fiber Transformed” which was recently highlighted in the most current edition (April/May 2017) of Quilting Arts Magazine starting on page 30.  A wood block print carver, she made this large block,

which was printed with black oil based ink on white fabric and then painted in with the blue water based textile paint for the water and boats.  She had to pay special attention when carving that the left and right sides of her block would be continuous ends for her prints.  The pieces were all printed prior to painting in the color and sewing so that the seam allowance would not interfere with the print process by creating a raised lip.

Continuing on around the room, she had two other pieces in the exhibit, the farm field scene which was also printed from one solid wood block;

and the baby Christening dress which was too old and fragile to salvage as a textile; so she painted it to make it stiff, rolled paint on the dress itself with a roller and then made a mono-print of the dress onto a piece of fabric which had been eco-dyed with both “Silver Dollar” and “Baby Blue” eucalyptus leaves.  She has used prints made from the dress in several other pieces of work but this was the only one in this exhibit. 

Work from 4 other artists in the exhibit will be shared in tomorrow's post.  The Fiber Transformed group is made up of  6 fiber artists living and working in Virginia and includes Jill Jensen, Mary Beth Bellah  (founder of the group), Jill Kerttula, Lorie McCown, Lotta Helleberg, and Wrenn Solcum.