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Maude Kerns Art Center Presents
A Color Runs Through It:
Textile Group Show
Exhibit Dates:
January 9 – February 6, 2015
Opening Reception:
Friday, January 9, 6 – 8 pm
The Maude Kerns Art presents “A Color Runs Through It: Textile Group Show,” opening on Friday, January 9, and featuring the work of five Oregon textile artists: Diane English, Georgia French, Laura Jaszkowski, Paulette Landers, and Deborah Sorem. The public is invited to the Opening Reception on Friday, January 9, from 6 – 8 pm. “A Color Runs Through It” is on display through February 6.
Working with a wide range of materials, including felt, tule, cotton, yarn, cheesecloth, and silk, each artist expresses her own style with machine- and hand-stitched, commercial and hand-dyed fabrics pieced together. The exhibit title refers to a series that will be part of the larger exhibition. Each artist has selected a particular color that is carried through an entire group of pieces. In this way, mood, atmosphere and emotion are defined through choice of color.
Diane English, of Eugene, has shown her work in venues in Oregon and Washington, including in juried shows of the High Fiber Diet/Columbia Fiber Guild. She chooses the fabrics for her quilts with great care. Sometimes she starts with a favorite fabric, while at other times she begins with an idea that is sketched out. English arranges and re-arranges her fabric pieces on a design wall to make sure they “play” well with each other.
Georgia French, from Roseburg, has shown extensively with the Studio Art Quilt Associates in multiple venues throughout Oregon. French, who has a natural affinity for cloth, thread, texture, and color, says that what she values most is the creative process. “It’s like finding your way in a new country,” she says, “ without a map, with just the faintest hint of what you’re seeking. You just have to keep looking, and trying, and looking some more.”
Laura Jaszkowski, of Eugene, had a solo exhibition at the Jacobs Gallery (2009), and has shown her textile pieces widely in juried exhibits in Oregon. She has also exhibited her work internationally in Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, as well as in Southern France. Jaszkowski, who has a degree in anthropology, is influenced by the “diversity of human culture and the expansive landscapes that still exist in some places on Earth.”
Paulette Landers, of North Bend, has displayed her textile art in California, Texas, and Oregon, including in exhibits sponsored by Studio Art Quilt Associates. In 2011 she won first place in the category of large abstract art at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Landers works in a non-objective and experimental style, creating collages that intermingle fabric and paint.
Deborah Sorem, of Salem, has shown her work in Oregon, Washington, California, and Minnesota, including in an exhibit titled “Fabrications: The Art of Quilting,” in Bend (March 2014), the only juried art and contemporary quilt exhibit in Central Oregon. Sorem came to textile art later in life. She comments: “As I embarked on this journey, I learned that it was the process of creating my own designs, playing with color, learning, and experiencing serendipity which motivated me.”