THIRD edition of Art With Fabric Blog Hop: Spring 2017
Celebrating "WOMEN"
Being a West Virginian through and true, I wished to share some West Virginia Artist Love.
Grace Martin Taylor was born in Morgantown, WV in 1903 and graduated from WVU in 1928. She was a printmaker, artist, collage artist, painter and educator and became one of America’s most innovative printmakers of the second quarter of the 20th century. She was most known for her woodblock prints.
Since her death in 1995, Taylor’s art has been exhibited throughout the United States, at widely known places such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Smithsonian Institution, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts,
ACME Fine Art in Boston and the British Museum. Just recently her daughter donated 27 of her prints for permanent display to West Virginia University's Art Museum. She is still highly regarded as one of the most influential 20th century artists from West Virginia.
“Lucie at Piano” by Grace Martin Taylor, 1938, linoleum block print on paper. Isn't it just adorable?!
wvutoday.wvu.edu
"Studio Window", one of her woodblock prints, was inspired by her view from her Morgantown, WV studio. See more
Charleston Gazette and
The Art Store WVor visit the
Art Museum of West Virginia University which is located near the corner of Patteson Drive and Morrill Way at the Evansdale Campus of West Virginia University - if you happen to be driving through Morgantown, WV that is.
And one of her lovely still lifes. You can get the down load
here.
As an alumni of WVU and a West Virginia resident, I wanted to represent an artist close to home! I will be choosing one of Grace's much celebrated prints as inspiration to create my own "Studio View" at Morgantown.
Although I did not have a down-town view, my view is still nice; the back yard with my two apple trees and flower gardens. You can only see one of the trees from the window view.
In the construction of the quilt, I chose to use a blank slate much as Grace would use a blank sheet to transfer her wood block print to. The image was created using applique cut-outs made from fusible cotton fabrics. To fuse the applique pieces to the blank fabric I used Heat-n-bond lite and fabric adhesive.
After arranging each piece and ironing down, the whole cloth was machine quilted with emphasis on tacking each applique piece and creating texture. The machine was set up for free motion quilting (lower the feed dogs and use a darning foot) and using a matching or contrasting thread stitching around the outer edges of the images, adding detail for texture. This is a machine drawing technique that was learned through following some of
Janet Clare's work.
Creating murals are wonderful examples that you can use up some scraps from your scrap basket as well! I haven't decided where this beauty is going to go just yet....Maybe onto a zipper bag??? Got any ideas?
Visit all of the other Artists participating in the
Spring 2017: Art With Fabric blog hop hosted by Alida at
Tweety Loves Quilting.
Monday, May 15th, 2017
Tuesday, May 16th, 2017
Wednesday, May 17th, 2017
Thursday, May 18th, 2017
Friday, May 19th, 2017
