Fiber Art
The textile art in this exhibition depicts activities and locations where people are exerting significant effort to repair and restore the soil, water, flora and fauna destroyed or threatened by humans. Each piece represents a place where considerable environmental damage has occurred but where there has been some success in restoring an ecologically sound environment. In planning this series, I put out a request to artist friends around the country, asking if they were aware of locations in their vicinity where environmental restoration efforts were having some success. The response was overwhelming, leading to nine pieces honoring restoration processes that offer hope for a repaired and healed earth.
Rather than producing landscapes, I strive to create a sense of place through choice of color, shape, texture and materials. These pieces are hand dyed, printed and stitched on hemp and with few exceptions use totally natural materials. This series is optimistic, anticipating that some of us can find a piece of our personal worlds where we can restore and heal even a small part of the earth.
The Copper Basin in the southern Appalachians consists of 32,000 acres in Polk County Tennessee and Fannin County Georgia, near the state border with North Carolina. Not a true basin, this area is a cluster of low hills surrounded by mountains, a geologic formation that resulted in nine distinct copper deposits. Until the Treaty of […]
Mount Vernon Ohio, approximately 50 miles north east of Columbus, was once a thriving center of manufacturing, including the Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant, a commercially successful factory that opened in 1907 and occupied 70 acres in the center of town. These buildings were constructed during an era when industrial wastes were not recognized as hazardous […]
One of the most fragile and damaged ecosystems in our country is the Florida Everglades. This is a large watershed that begins with the Kissimmee River, near Orlando, runs to the shallow Lake Okeechobee, and, in the wet season, becomes a wide 100 mile long river that flows over limestone to the Florida Bay at […]
The Pettaquamscutt River, known to locals as the Narrow River, is a tidal inlet that opens into Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It is marked by surf at the opening, strong tidal pulls along the shore, side channels, mud flats and salt marshes. These salt marshes are significant to the health of Narragansett Bay, […]
Rather than a single location, this piece explores a wide swath of geography, from the Canadian border through the eastern United States to the west central highlands of Mexico. Annually, millions of monarch butterflies take this journey that spans more than 2,500 miles. Arriving in Mexico in late October, they cluster on the tops of […]
Though we associate prairies with the large, flat midsection of our country, Kentucky originally contained areas of true prairie – ecosystems with moderate rainfall and temperate climate, with vegetation that is predominantly grasses, herbs and shrubs rather than trees. In the Pennyrile district, where prairies predominated, there may be some original prairie land remaining. However, […]
Onondaga Lake is a lake in Central New York located northwest of Syracuse, and considered by many to be the most polluted lake in the United States. Onondaga Lake is traditionally regarded as the birthplace of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy. The five tribes of the Iroquois nation were at constant war, […]
The 125 acre Red Thistle Ranch was purchased by Mike and Alice McElfresh in 2000, a couple totally committed to bringing back the native species to this small piece of earth. Situated in the Diablo mountains by the Livermore Valley, they are approximately 30 miles east of San Francisco. The ranch is a world unto […]
The Valle de Oro is the newest “urban Wilderness” in the national Wildlife Refuge System. I chose this location not because of an individual’s passion for this particular piece of land but because it represents much of the contemporary efforts to establish and maintain a conservation ethic. Formerly the Price’s Dairy Farm, this 570 acre […]
