WEN REDMOND

A Jersey girl who ended up in New England! I’ve outgrown several studios in my career, to realize I like my in-home studio best. Yes, it calls me at all hours, but it is easy to get to!

My work transforms 21st century digital photography into non-traditional, mixed media constructions. These substrates are formed from fiber, papers, and other media.

I have been a fiber artist since 1976. I’m a former Home Economics teacher. I started working with batik and weaving, which evolved into folk art quilts and a love of the modern art quilt movement.

            In the late ‘90s, my work centered on abstract expressionism using dyed natural materials and surface design, creating gentle tonal contrasts that interact with each other. I explored direct cutting, without the use of patterns, to construct these works. Since the early 2000s, my work has incorporated photography, either printed, or transferred onto fabric, paper or mixed media substrates.

            I have created several innovative digital fiber techniques, which integrate my photographs with images of painted fabrics and collage. My “Holographic Images,” for example, consist of multi-layered fiber photographs printed on digital silk organza. These pieces create a 3-D effect as the viewer changes position. The dimensionality is difficult to capture in photographs, so I have included an example, and also a side view:

My “Textured Photographs” involve the use of molding paste to create mixed media photographs that are thin enough to be sewn or collaged into compositions. One of them, “The Creative Hand,” can be seen in the background in the photograph of me, above.

I continue to experiment with digital fiber, printing manipulated photographs on various unusual materials, using textural stitching as drawing lines.

I play with presentations, creating new ways to present whole cloth photographic-fiber art, mixed media collage, modular and new work. I feel my investigations in printing photographs contribute to the pioneering aspect of my media and its edge. I’m passionate about coming up with ideas and working out the kinks. This leads to more discoveries: an evolution.  I make the art and then the art makes me.

Each of my pieces has its own story and presentation. “Layers of Meaning” presents a composed digital image overlaid on a created collage. The overlay hovers and breathes.

I started this piece by creating a more colorful collage background, but decided it interfered with my composed digital image so I painted over the collage with white gesso, beiges and grays. For additional texture, I added molding paste, paint, tissue paper, recycled tea bag liners, text, string, gesso and specialty mediums. The collage comes forward, through the printed transparent silk organza, in subtle and almost wistful ways.

The layered manipulated image used in “Layers of Meaning” was composed from photos of a lone boat on the ocean, taken in Nova Scotia, and an exploding pod that had already been layered with texture. The image was printed on digitally prepared silk organza, cut into segments, sewn only on top with a running stitch so it sails above, beckoning the viewer to inspect it more closely.

There are many layers to this piece: digitally, the layered image; physically, the collage layer and the layers of feeling or meaning I express with it. I feel art making is a journey; symbolized by the crossing boat, a lonely but somewhat satisfying metaphor for the artist. The exploding pod represents the way it feels when art making is calling, how it organically spreads its seed to the viewers. The silk organza floats, like the boat and seeds in the air, to be caught, perchance to land.

In general, I am a process person. Part of my process is photography. I can see the most exquisite scenes or combinations of patterns and want to share that beauty. My process is fed by my love of being outdoors and my mad desire to capture thoughts, dreams and the beauty of nature. These moments become my source, my well. I hope to bring that energy into my art making, to communicate the positive. My art represents these moments

Many techniques and presentations are included in my book Digital Fiber Art: Combine Photos & Fabric - Create Your Own Mixed-Media Masterpieces. My work has been included in many juried exhibits, private and public collections.

http://wenredmond.com/