LIZ HAMILTON QUAY, Sculptural Fiber & Materials Artist

I consider myself a Sculptural Fiber & Materials artist because I live to play with materials in three dimensions. In the studio, nothing is more pleasing to me than bringing a flat piece of fabric to life through piecing, binding, and repetitive stitch.

My parents were industrious craftspeople and artists. My father was deeply embedded in American pre-revolutionary scrimshaw, muzzleloaders, and leatherwork. My mother recreated Victorian-era porcelain dolls, all the way from the casting process to designing and sewing the highly detailed garments. They are both traditionally trained as photographers but have always been exceptionally skilled with their hands. I was always encouraged to follow my desire to become an artist, which I realize is a highly-privileged perspective and I am grateful for my parents’ support. Having been exposed to their processes  as a child has undoubtedly shaped the way in which I work and think about my own craft.  

As an undergraduate, I came in through the Art Education department, and I dabbled in just about every medium but I wasn’t truly passionate about anything in particular. I assumed this was okay for someone going into the K-12 art education world because it was the teaching aspect that enthralled me. However, around my junior year I needed to fulfil a Craft course requirement, and “Non-Loom Fibers” was the only course that met the criteria and my schedule. The fibers studio was warm, filled with floor looms, and the most majestic pair of handmade paper wings adorned the wall. It felt magical. Barbara Schulman, a fellow TSGNY member, was to be my professor. That course was the beginning of a mentorship, eventual friendship, and life-long passion for fiber arts. 

The material and techniques from that course felt exhilaratingly fresh, yet comfortingly familiar. I knew that this was to be my path forward as an artist. I focused on the female form and began to experiment with ways of stitching pieces of leather onto a three-dimensional form. I leaned heavily on my discovery of Louise Bourgeois’ figurative, soft sculpture pieces. It was truly a turning point in my work. 

My earnest desire to learn more about the incredible world of fibers and textiles led me to enroll in a graduate program at Tyler School of Art in Textiles & Material Studies directly after earning my BFA in Crafts and my BSEd in Art Education from Kutztown University. Conceptually, my work slowly broke away from the confines of the literal figurative form and moved into abstracted motifs of the body. I was attempting to bring the notion of balance of my emotional health through layers of my physical form.

Attempting to avoid the painful struggle of really understanding my own concepts, I experimented with other mediums. Video work and projection interlaced with fiber, which again expanded my notion of what fiber art can be and can be experienced as. I began to create immersive worlds of sound, texture, and light, but felt there was something missing—more of my hand in the work. I realized that the physical act of stitching, layering, and piercing was needed to fulfil my concept of emotional balance. My thesis show consisted  of soft sculpture and video art that inhabited the floor, walls, and ears of the viewer. 

After finishing my master’s degree, I had to condense my studio practice to fit into a corner of a Philadelphia apartment. I relearned how to work small and neat. During the day I worked in an art store and by night I repaired textiles for a local framing shop. Needlework and weaving became my main practice, but I craved working on a larger scale in three dimensions.

Serendipitously, I was hired as the Assistant Professor of Textiles & Material Studies at Kutztown University. In my new position, I immersed myself in my new curriculum for intro through studio level Textiles & Material Studies and Weaving. It was once again an awakening for me. My own studio work exploded in scale and concept. The techniques and material that I covered in class crept into my own practice. 

The arrival of my daughter dramatically enhanced and expanded my concept of the physical embodiment of maintaining emotional balance. My work began to deeply focus on the clashing of soft and hard; the transformation of plain or seemingly ugly materials to reveal their beautiful and delicate qualities; and a renewed sense for the act of piecing and binding. I continued to further abstract the female body down to the essential elements of what creates a mother’s body. My emotional state that derived from this transformative experience was one of confliction. There was much celebration but also feelings of emptiness and divorce from my body. Much of this was explicitly explored in my transformation of materials and monotonous layering of stitch, which gave new life and form to my flat fabrics. This led to the creation of a fifteen-piece series, “What is Mother? …And Other Related Ephemera.”

Currently, in my practice, I am continuing to explore my role, emotional state, and body as a mother. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been focused on brushing up on techniques that can easily be replicated, demo-ed, and videotaped in a home studio for my studio curriculum. Some of these techniques and materials, such as natural dyeing, hand quilting, soluble interfacing, advanced 3-D felting, and eco-printing, have progressed their way into some of my experimental samples for my larger works. Ultimately, the journey is never smooth; therefore, I aim to capture the various stages as they emerge.

www.lizhamiltonquay.com