The Free Flowing Work of Peggy Brown

Illustration: Peggy Brown. December Ice.

Peggy Brown approaches textile art from the perspective of a watercolour artist. She produces fine art painting on both paper and fabric and is able to drift between the two mediums without the usual barriers that are often thrown up between textile and fine art painting.

As far as textiles are concerned, Brown applies watercolour paint on to white fabric and then builds up layers of intensity of colour and texture as the mood takes her. These painted fabric pieces are then used within a built up collage composition. She also regularly uses paper within the composition as well as fabric, paper giving a different textural quality to that of the fabric.

 Illustration: Peggy Brown. Another Form.

Interestingly Brown uses the organic and free flowing quality of the watercolour paint to emphasise that very fact, that water is both free and fluid in its seemingly random journey across both fabric and paper. However, she also manages to give this free flowing quality an element of containment. All the pieces shown in this article have at least one area of the composition, sometimes the majority and sometimes a small fraction that features an angular bordered off area. In the piece entitled Echoes for example, it is difficult to judge whether that free flowing element of the watercolour medium, is flowing into the ordered geometric area in order to obliterate it, or in fact retreating in order to make room for a very different element.

Illustration: Peggy Brown. Echoes.

The free form coming up hard against the contained is an interesting and clever concept. To use both the image of the free and seemingly independent organic flow of a natural element like water and the obvious constraints brought about by the use of a human right angle throws up some interesting questions and observations about the world we inhabit. It is this uneasy juxtaposition that now seems to dominate how we see the planet, but is also part of the complexity of our relationship with nature. It is inevitably up to the individual as to how this unlikely relationship between the organic and the artificial construct is interpreted.

Illustration: Peggy Brown. Collaboration II.

By balancing the allure between both the independence that is summed up in the element of free flowing water and the security that can be obtained from self containment, Brown has produced work that reflects who we are, who we want to be, and perhaps who we will never be.

Peggy Browns work, both fine art paintings and textiles, have been seen across the US in various exhibitions. Her work can also be seen in a number of public and corporate institutions including universities, banks, museums and art centres. She also has a comprehensive website with a much wider selection of her work on show. The website can be found here.

All images were used with the kind permission of the artist.

Illustration: Peggy Brown. Winter Water.

Reference links:

Peggy Brown Website

Catherine Kleeman - A Multi-Layered Balancing Act

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Identity Crisis, 2009.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Identity Crisis (detail), 2009.

Catherine Kleeman is a textile artist that uses the idea of layers as a central theme to her work. It would be more exact to say perhaps that Kleemen builds up whole systems of multi-layers and even layers within layers, producing work that has a wealth of detail and exactness to it that corresponds to hours of labour.

The work is both colourful and vibrant, but what makes it especially so is the fact that she is able to dye her own fabrics to her own specifications. However, the relatively simple process of dying fabric for her own needs is not enough for this multi-layered artist. Kleeman also hand paints, stamps, silk screens and batiks the fabrics as well as using various mark making techniques which make her fabrics well and truly her own.

 Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Family Reunion, 2008.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Family Reunion (detail), 2008.

It is the mark making that perhaps gives us a hint that there is more to Kleemans work than just textile art, though that would be adequate for most. The mark making has turned her textile art into a form of fine art painting. From a distance, the textile pieces look truly to be in the realm of abstract fine art painting. It is only on closer inspection that the numerous individual fabrics and threads become visible. Mark making is one of the basic tools of an artist and Kleeman uses it well to express herself within her chosen medium.

Layering is never an easy option in any creative medium, as juxtapositions of differing colour tones and textures are notoriously difficult to blend and mould as one. In the pieces shown in this article, all produced within the last two years, Kleeman has used two separate levels of layering, the much more subtle tones of the background composition and the much more strident abstract shapes of the foreground layers. These two systems of layers are then, in their turn, blended together so that the composition does not allow one ground to dominate another, but also without the background and foreground becoming indistinguishable. This is not an easy task to perform.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Hidden Agendas, 2008.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Hidden Agendas (detail), 2008.

Every aspect of Kleemans work is finely balanced. Her system of multi-layering has to take into account the many elements that go into each piece. From the overall importance of the composition, to being acutely aware of both colour tone and texture and the vital role they play in bringing together the piece. However, on top of this she also has to be aware of the medium that she is working in, and has to be sympathetic towards the differing qualities that textile art can bring to a piece. Having said that she also has to tie together elements within that textile medium such as quilting and collage, and to balance their contribution.

I believe that she fully succeeds in her finely tuned balancing act and that her work expresses a rare fine art painting quality to the medium of textile art while still maintaining the essence of textiles, which is a very difficult and complicated process to achieve.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Window Paint, 2008.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Window Paint (detail), 2008.

Catherine Kleeman has her own comprehensive website where many more examples of her work can be seen. The website can be found here. She also has a blog called Fiberstudio where you can keep updated as to the latest work produced and her working methods, the site can be found here. 

Kleeman has been exhibiting regularly across the USA since the mid-1990s. She has a number of future exhibitions booked for the rest of this year and into 2010. To go along and see her work, check for dates and venues all of which can be found on her website.

All images were used with the kind permission of the artist.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Blue Moon, 2008.

Illustration: Catherine Kleeman. Blue Moon (detail), 2008.

Reference links:

Catherine Kleeman website

Fiberstudio blog

Valerie Goodwin and the Human Environment

Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. African Burial Ground II, 2009.

Valerie Goodwin is a textile artist that probably approaches the medium through a realatively unique perspective, that of an architect. She has both a degree and Masters in architecture and has taught architectural design. This gives her a strong and definite edge to her work akin to that of the fairly structured disciplines of cartography, archaeology and architecture.

 Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. City Grid IV, 2007.

The use of planned and structured surfaces could give her work a cold and clinical appeal with quilts appearing as hard and intransigent geometrically set grids, but instead her work, although much of it based on the city grid map, takes into account the human element that makes a town or city. What at first glance  what seems to have been both scientifically and geometrically planned within an office as a concept or task, takes on the role of an organic human landscape.

This becomes more apparent when looking at Goodwin's work in detail, as what appears at a distance to be a regular street plan of any typical city or town across the planet, at a close up level shows numerous human interventions. Buildings and outhouses show that they are of different sizes and shapes to suit the needs of individuals, and house boundaries quickly become a fluid patchwork of interlocking properties which softens the geometry of the architectural office, producing a haphazard but liveable environment. After all, these maps are drawn to show human patterns of habitation, not that of the benefits of producing tight geometrical grids.

Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. City Grid IV (detail), 2007.

Goodwin has also taken the element of archaeology as an interesting added layer to the story of human habitation. Architectural archaeology allows the city to be peeled back or layered forward, depending on the time frame. This allows Goodwin to play with transparency and density, layers and half-layers and colour combinations, juxtapositioning generations of human habitation in a grand collage of life across countless generations of our ancestors.

Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. Labyrinth of the Hidden Goddess, 2005.

While some of her quilts show segments of city life though the arrangement of partial maps, most are self-contained and are a literal self-functioning organism, which seems very reminiscent of the countless Bronze Age city states that were scattered throughout the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa. Indeed some of the themes of the quilts do seem to be reminders that the city was not always the planned and faceless machine like grid that we often associate with modern city living, but a spiritual and organic part of the landscape. A city that both grew and retreated, was built over layer upon layer, walls within walls, countless ancestors becoming part of the fabric of the city, in fact a human environment for living rather than existing.

Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. Labyrinth of the Sleeping Goddess, 2005.

Goodwin has exhibited across the US and holds a number of workshops, which are mostly design orientated with an emphasis on the processes and development of art and design. She has a comprehensive and detailed website Studio Quilts. For those interested, there is also a flickr gallery with many of 'work in progress' photos, which can be found below.

All images were used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:
Studio Quilts - Valerie Goodwin website
Valerie Goodwin Flickr gallery

Lisa Hochstein: Paper Collage, Textile and Fine Artist

Illustration: Lisa Hochstein. Compass salvaged paper collage.

Paper work is very often considered to be, within the textile world at least, an integral part of the process of both textile design and textile artwork. In many cases the paper work is the first stage of a fairly lengthy process whereby ideas are first formulated, often changed and manipulated before being transferred to another medium, whether that be textile printing, weaving, quilting, embroidery, or indeed fine art painting. However, it should be noted that paper collage is in its own right an art form and should not be seen as a mere process towards another medium or idea.

The work of the California based artist Lisa Hochstein shows us through her varied work, excellent examples as to how an artist can use a medium like paper collage in tandem with both textile and fine art painting without the paper collage medium feeling an awkward second best. Through her work, she is able to show us the maturity that paper collage can achieve in its own right.

Illustration: Lisa Hochstein. Detour acrylic on canvas.

Paper collage is a fairly wide ranging process with raw materials coming from a number of sources, whether that be found paper and card, pre-coloured or textured papers, or in fact a combination of the two. The collage can also be constructed in a series of processes, from using strips to create formalised pattern work, to a much looser compositional piece that takes its ideals from that of fine art. Paper collage should not be confused with general collage, which is a much looser term that can incorporate anything from vegetation to buttons, newspaper to broken glass or ceramics.

Hochstein, through her salvaged paper collage work, shows us that this form of collage can be assembled from the throw away world around us. The work can appear randomised by using odd pieces of card and paper that have not necessarily been hand painted in a range of colour tones dictated by the artist. However, the collages are clearly not just a result of random effects, but have been cleverly built up in an evolutionary format whereby the collage itself can take on a life of its own, and can in some ways dictate its end result.

 Illustration: Lisa Hochstein. Key to the City salvaged paper collage.

Although all of the pieces shown here by Hochstein could quite easily be interpreted as being based on her paper collage work, they are in fact all independent of each other and no one format dominates the process. Therefore the fine art painting, textile work and paper collage are all able to stand by themselves as finished pieces. However, it is still interesting to note the connection that all the mediums share with that of the paper collage work, and it is the construction of these pieces that seem to influence, at least to some extent, the textile and fine art painting, which then creates a linkage which brings the three mediums together.

Interestingly Hochstein has been a fine art painter and collage artist for the last twenty years, but only expanded into textiles in the last eight or nine years. She wanted to explore the possibility of developing her ideas within another medium and was intrigued as to what effect and result that would produce. The result has indeed been very effective, and now the three mediums of collage, paint and textile seem so intertwined, and naturally so, that the images shown here bear such a strikingly close relationship to each other that they could well appear to be interchangeable.

 Illustration: Lisa Hochstein. Sunday Best hand stitched on salvaged fabric.

Lisa Hochstein has been involved in a number of exhibitions across the US and being the type of artist that she is, they have been exhibitions that are not one-dimensional medium wise, but include fine art painting, collage, mixed media, and textile art.

I have only chosen five examples of Hochstein's work to illustrate this article. However, she has many more, in all three mediums on her website, which is well worth a visit to anyone interested in the relationship between paper collage, fine art painting and textile art, or indeed anyone who wants to see how these mediums can be interpreted in their own right. I would also like to thank Lisa for kindly allowing me to use the images from her website and being most cooperative in the writing of this article.

Reference links:
Lisa Hochstein website

Illustration: Lisa Hochstein. Something to Remember You By salvaged paper collage.