Taking you back to 1992 in #Savannah when I was studying #fiberart at @scaddotedu.
I started grad school there in 1991 as a painting major and couldn’t figure out why my professors and other grad students hated my beautiful (I thought) paintings with subtle colors and layers and layers of transparent paint. But they were mostly making constructions out of trash (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) and were of the opinion that if something was beautiful it couldn’t have any real meaning or depth. When I was on the verge of quitting, a professor from the Fibers department came to one of my critiques and said I was simply in the wrong department!
I took a tour of the Fibers department and knew she was right. The paintings I was doing already looked like surface design on fabric! I changed my major and learned how to screen print and do block printing on fabric. I learned how to dye and sew fabric and all kinds of other new ways to say what I wanted to say with new materials and techniques! I’m not currently doing fiber art, but the skills I learned stayed with me and inform what I currently do. I still do a lot of detailed pattern and layering in my drawing and encaustic work.
First three are printing on fabric, bottom two images are watered down acrylic painted on unprimed canvas.
