Thoughtful Simplicity for the New Year- Artist as Collector

New Year- May it be Happy Healthy Creative Prosperous and Joyfully- Simple.

Rhythm and Hues
Cotton fabric (hand-dyed), flannel,
embroidery thread
©Kathleen Probst

Starting off on the right track, painter Amantha Tsaros is our guest blogger for the Artist as Collector Series where each week a new artist who opens her/his doors and shares with us a piece of art that they have in their collection by another artist. It's a great way to see how we find and create space in our lives for inspiration.

Textile Artist, Kathleen Probst, lives across the country from me in Meridian, Idaho - but I have got two of her artworks are right here with me in Lexington, MA. Kathleen is my art business accountability partner – we keep each other in line when it comes to business and marketing. I am also an ardent fan of her work.

Kathleen makes minimalist-modern textile art quilts which reference natural elements. She hand-dyes her fabrics and uses machine-stitching in her work.

Rhythm and Hues was a piece that she had just posted on Facebook and I fell in love with it right away. I could imagine it in my home and had a spot for it. Lucky for me I acted fast as she had a number of people vying for the work. 

The colors are wonderful – the leaf shapes are bouncy yet soothy and the autumn colors reference my favorite season.  It is the first thing visitors see when they walk in my home and I love walking past the happy yet soothing shapes.  Her ability to evoke emotion with minimalism is something I admire and hope to emulate. 

Kathleen’s work is a daily reminder to strive for thoughtful simplicity.

Amantha Tsaros lives and works in Massachusetts. Through her paintings and monotypes, she gives form to the internal life in paint, bringing emotional and spiritual states to light.

This is Art- Five in Fiber

The Five in Fiber exhibition is up and ready for the the opening reception tomorrow Saturday, October 26, 2013 from 3-5 pm at Gallery 37 in Milford, Delaware.

Five artists working with plant, paper and/or synthetic fibers, each of us with different sensibilities and yet noticing the threads (can't avoid that pun) that connect us to each other aesthetically and conceptually.

Here's a shot of me putting the finishing
touches on my window installation

My work address what we catch, what we release and how this shapes our identity. Wire and netting are shaped and formed, then dipped into vats of over- beaten pulp that dries over the form like a taut skin. These “nets” are used, along with pages from old books, fabric, dried plants, and other found objects- including pantyhose, (growing up with a father in the millinery business,) to catch the “stuff” of our lives. Once castaways, these vessels serve as filters and homage to time and memory. 

I love walking along the beach and find beauty and mystery in the odds and ends of humanity and nature intertwined and washed ashore, as much as I appreciate coming across a bird's nets using strands of plants and found scraps of paper. 

Deborah Johnson hung her dream like fiber and cast glass spirit boats in the window on the other side of the front door.

Delainey Barclay drove up in her mini cooper (you can even see it in the photo, between Deborah's boat and the wisps of turquoise and violet fiber sails) filled with her string balls. Here she is below installing her airy and celestial sculptures suspended on thin wire on the back wall...

opposite of apparel artist Marilyn Mitchell piece.  And then suspended more in the back gallery juxtaposed to Linda Celestian's cascading green work that feels like waves of an elegant algea. 

And whether you can make it tomorrow or not- just remember...

Simple Beauty Still a Favorite

Linda A. Miller is this week's guest blogger for the Artist as Collector Series.

Mola textile art

A friend returning from travels in the 1980’s brought me this mola textile.  It was my first exposure to the work by the Kuna artisans from the San Blas Islands of Panama.  I was drawn to the simple image and the layers of color.  This piece inspired further exploration into mola art. 

Incorporated into panels of blouses, molas are handmade by Kuna women using a reverse appliqué technique.  Several layers of different colored cloth are sewn together. The design is formed by cutting away parts from each layer and stitching them down.  

My appreciation for the intricate art form has grown over the years, paralleling a return to handwork in my own art making process.  I have since added to my collection, yet this bright image remains one of my favorites with its sweet simplicity of bird essence.

Linda A. Miller is a fiber artist living in Culver City, CA, where she creates fluid, colorful expressions using cloth.