K. VELIS TURAN

I am a mixed media fiber artist and have been working textiles in one form or another from the time I could be trusted with a needle. Like many others, my grandmother got me started early; crocheting, embroidering, sewing, appliqué, mending, repurposing textiles. She was an immigrant and while her situation in life got much better, she never forgot what it was like to be very poor. I started making my clothes as a teenager. 

I am a self-taught artist. I tried many things: oil painting, carving, enameling, ceramics . . . the list is long. I was always doing something with my hands, and when I found art quilting, I knew I was where I belong. Through much trial and error and a few art workshops, I have developed my own techniques and style. While working in fiber is my niche, I still take classes and workshops. I enjoy learning new techniques in other mediums and meeting artists.

My work is usually representational. I see something or I have an idea of something I have seen (or many things put together), and it haunts me until I do something about it. I take inspiration from everyday life and situations. Buildings and roads are particularly interesting to me and fascinating too is how people interact with their environments. I take many photographs and from these I make drawings, revising them until I am satisfied. I don’t aim necessarily to replicate what I’ve seen; that is what photography is for. Instead, I want to capture what has caught my attention in my style, and in the way I see it in my mind’s eye. I then make a final ink line drawing (called a cartoon) that I use to enlarge either for a screen print or as a template pattern for a canvas mosaic piece.

I have two different techniques I use all the time. The first one is called deconstructed screen printing. My pieces start with a drawing, the drawing is then transferred to a silk screen with a sodium alginate and fiber reactive dye solution onto whole cloth.  After the cloth has been dried and washed, I use textile paints to paint into the print. The second technique, which I use less often, is canvas mosaics. Using acrylic paints, I create surface design with painted, stamped, stenciled, dripped, etc., on many large pieces of canvas. I then use a template from the cartoon I have created to cut individual pieces from those canvases to fit a pattern. After finishing a piece in either of these techniques, I quilt and embellish into them.

I work on many pieces at a time. Either they are in process being drawn, already printed on cloth and ready to be painted, being pieced, quilted or finished. I work this way because if I get to a place where I need to think about my next step, I can work on something else while I think about it.  I intricately free-motion machine quilt my work. This gives my art texture and adds layers of color and depth.

I don’t aim to be controversial, and I don’t try to make just pleasant landscapes, sometimes that just happens. I feel everything around me is interesting, from the peaceful calm of small-town rural life of upstate New York where I live, to the excitement and chaos of urban jungles in the large cities I often visit. I want viewers of my art to experience what life is like, at this moment, at this time, through my work.

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