I am a visual artist who recently took up quilt making after returning home to Northeast Ohio. I had previously lived and worked in Baltimore, Maryland, as an art educator and visual art program supervisor in a large school system. My art practice focuses on found natural and repurposed materials.
The quilt work I do with cotton fabric is improvisational and based on colors, shapes, and patterns, I relate to specific places: my mother’s backyard garden, a forest on the coast of Maine, and the Lake Erie shoreline. I begin with a sliver of an idea, which typically comes from my experience of a place. I choose a color palette and let ideas develop on their own through experimentation, trial and error, and lots of moving things around on the design wall.
I have recently become enamored with the colorful piles of discarded plastic grocery, newspaper, and retail store bags I found collecting in relatives’ garages and in bins at local strip malls. I saw an opportunity to connect my previous work repurposing materials to my work in fibers. I have added this plastic to my artistic dialogue, focusing on the colors and, patterns, and shapes created by the text and logo designs printed on the bags. I laminate the plastic, using heat to combine four plastic layers into one sheet resembling Tyvec.
Erie Sun
40" x 38"
2023
