Home STAR-3: collage

Illustration: Judith Plotner Adirondack Journal I

Many creative journeys are supremely private; others less so, many are degrees in between. The work of textile and mixed media artist Judith Plotner, although largely falling into the former category, can still be considered purely as an example of the rich world that can be composed from the elements that go to make up a mixed media base.

Illustration: Judith Plotner Slate Valley

Plotner uses the broad spectrum of the creative arts, bringing into her compositions the sensibilities of a fine art painting background, as well as that of printmaking, collage and textiles. The great strength of mixed media is the fact that layering and juxtapositioning can be achieved not only with the raw materials available within the different mediums, but also with that of mediums themselves. It is always fascinating to observe how sometimes a medium can complement another, while at other times the opposite can be both the aim and result. This can cause tension within a composition which can be intentional on one level, but have reactions and unforeseen results, sometimes on more than one level.

Illustration: Judith Plotner Adirondack Journal III

The compositions chosen for this article seem reminiscent of small contained packages as if they were enclosed personal observations of the artist themselves. In some respect that is exactly what they are. These observational diary pages if you will contain information, thoughts and muses, often scattered and seemingly random, though often connected by both the individual and the experience.

There is a sense of confinement that is physically attached to the compositions. The surrounding and inert space of these observational essays can seem to isolate the experience, but in fact it is much more a case of the outside space allowing the artist to pinpoint an experience. This helps to discover and identify the completed observation and in some ways allow the outsider to study at least some elements of the parameters that contain the thoughts and processes of the artist.

Illustration: Judith Plotner Autumnal

Although the outside observer is not privy to the internal creative workings of the artist, whether that be personalised or externalised observations and encounters, they can in some respects be privy to the journey itself. By understanding the practical application of mediums and materials, whether that be through layering, stitching, stamping, dyeing, painting or printing, this functional part of the creative journey can be both observed and admired.

It is said that all creativity is subjective, and in many respects that is true. However, often the practical working journey of materials and processes used by the artist can be objectively followed, sometimes producing profound or at least interesting analogies and discoveries.

These five compositions of Plotner's are finely tuned and specifically composed. They are an interesting example of both the personalised experience of an artist, but also of the sometimes complex procedures that can entail the practical application of a mixed media artist. The compositions are wide ranging in their use of mediums and materials and show the genuine creative scope that can be found within the mixed media world.

Illustration: Judith Plotner Global Warming

Judith Plotner has exhibited extensively across the US. She has her own comprehensive website where many more examples of her work can be found. A link to the site can be found below.

All images were provided with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:
Judith Plotner website

Illustration: Mariska Karasz Calla Lily embroidery 1951

The Hungarian American designer and artist Mariska Karasz approached the craft of embroidery with the sensibilities of a fine artist. Karasz is perhaps one of the earliest examples of an increasingly expanding genre within the general textiles framework, one which today we is familiarly known as textile or fibre art.

Karasz herself spent much of her career as a clothing designer. However, after the Second World War she reinvented herself and put her energies into the development of a highly successful second career in textile art. She used as the basis of this art, her Hungarian background and heritage of textile crafts, particularly that of embroidery. It was this craft that fuelled her imaginative compositions that took her all the way through the second half of the 1940s, but particularly through the following 1950s. This was a decade that saw an ever widening and large scale expansion within the craft world in general, with craft workers taking on many of the aspects of a fine art sensibility. There were a number of particularly fruitful and creative crossovers including a number of individuals from the fine art world who found themsleves working in ceramics, glass and textiles, sometimes for the first time.

Illustration: Mariska Karasz Babble embroidery 1955

The work that Karasz produced during the 1950s is an interesting blend of vocabulary from both design and art worlds. The artist plays with backgrounds and foregrounds, colour, tone and texture in order to produce a layered, abstract compositional framework that seems perfectly suited to the medium of embroidery. While the work is definitely set in its era with compositions producing abstract and colour textures that were so much a part of the 1950s, the work of Karasz is also timeless in its abstractness. The work of the artist was an exploration of a medium rather than an end result. However, more specifically it was that of a journey of discovery of a craft discipline, one that up until that point had, with some exceptions, seen little contemporary examination of its purpose, and more particularly its potential for the inventive and creative expansion of its parameters.

Illustration: Mariska Karasz Honeycomb collage 1959

It is individuals such as Karasz that have become the universal access points of all future creative explorers. To highlight and remember the work of artists and craftspeople such as these is to encourage all future exploration within and across disciplines and to constantly question boundaries, conventions and suppositions as to the role of such potentially diverse and adaptable disciplines as embroidery. Contemporary craft is fast reaching a point in its development whereby it is beginning to take on the maturity of a discipline that can explore its own reasoning. It is not an exaggeration to say that it has been a hard and long journey, but individuals such as Karasz have given both inspiration and much needed understanding within and without the craft world.

Illustration: Mariska Karasz Star Clouds collage 1959

Karasz work was extremely popular during the 1950s as indeed was she as an individual celebrity. She toured, lectured and wrote throughout the decade and is still remembered today as a pioneer of the fine art sensibility grafted onto the craft tradition. In the Reference links section below is a link to a very good and comprehensive website dedicated to the life and work of Mariska Karasz. Also listed below are a number of the books produced by Karasz still available on Amazon. You might also be interested to know that an exhibition presently being held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Textiles Recycled/Reimagined running from March 10 to September 5 2010, has some examples of Karasz work within the exhibition.