Page Text Reprint

The I.E. Textiles site contains some instances in which text is displayed as images. Much of that text is reprinted here on this page, to make this graphics intensive site more accessible for visitors with disabilities.

Artist's Statement from the Fine Art Gallery
Artist's Statement from the Liturgical Art Gallery
Artist's Statement from the Interior Accessories Gallery
Solvent transfer process description

Fine Art Gallery - Artist Statement

I create original art and custom ornamental textiles for homes, offices, and houses of worship. I push the synergy between materials and technique to give shape to visions and feelings.

Liturgical Gallery - Artist Statement

Art that touches your soul fills a human need for communion with spirit as well as with other people. Art can express prayers or praise. Art can interpret one's faith to others. Art can create objects and surroundings to enhance and focus worship. Music, painting, sculpture, architecture and dance can all manifest faith for these purposes. My medium is textiles --stitched, printed, layered, embroidered, sometimes with other materials as part of the structure or as embellishment.

Textile art is an integral part of many faith traditions: prayer shawls, altar cloths, vestments, banners, tankas, shrouds, chuppas -- the list is long. I make both functional liturgical art, such as vestments, and contemplative art, such as wall hangings. I've even created reliquaries.

I use all sorts of materials: silks and velvets, stretch lurex denim, florists' fantasy wrap, upholstery brocades, tulle… and sometimes copper tubing, river-birch bark, circuit boards. I take the "stuff" of this world and endeavor to invoke the Spirit of this world. Transparencies and shifting light are beautiful, and reflect my idea that each viewer of my art work will see it slightly differently. I use various fabrics and techniques to achieve those effects.

I enjoy working with an individual or a congregation to create a functional or ornamental piece of art that reflects and honours their faith, their vision, their tradition.

Back to top.

Interior Accessories - Artist Statement

As a textile artist I do both fine art and decorative interior accessories because I believe that both are important. I make interesting, sometimes offbeat interior accessories because I think that when the mundane things in our environment -- pillows, curtains, tablecloths, screens -- are beautiful, it adds to our appreciation of our day-to-day lives.

As Catherine Murrell, quoted in the Indianapolis Star on October 30, 2004, said, "Fabrics are the number one thing that makes a room really feel like a custom-designed space." Incorporating textiles is one of the fastest ways to add colour, warmth, and style to your space.

I can add a splash of colour and texture with a couple of custom designed throw pillows, or create an entire environment by using fabric in innovative ways. I can layer, print, piece and otherwise embellish fabric to enliven the atmosphere, or induce an aura of calm with comforting combinations of textiles.

Back to top.

Solvent Transfer Process Description

A print is a transfer of an image from a substrate to paper or fabric. A substrate is the material which holds the ink that makes the print. A monoprint is a hand-pulled print that cannot be exactly duplicated. Planographic prints are transfered from flat substrates.

Solvent transfers are planographic monoprints. In this process the substrate is the photocopy and the ink is the toner on the paper. The photocopy is placed face down on the fabric and burnished, or rubbed, with solvent, which transfers the toner (ink) from the photocopy to the fabric. Each photocopy can be used only once; thus these pieces are monoprints.

After printing the fabric with photocopies of images of found objects, photographs, or drawings, I then machine stitch on the fabric to add layers of embroidery and sheer fabrics to bring the image to fantastic life.

Back to top.