Mixed Media Artist Judith Plotner

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

Anders Zorn Tapestries

Illustration: Anders Zorn. Dalecarlian Scene tapestry panel, 1909

Anders Zorn the Swedish fine art painter is probably better known outside of his native Sweden, as that of an accomplished and highly successful nineteenth and early twentieth century portrait painter. Zorn travelled widely in both Europe and North America and his portraits made him wealthy and acclaimed. However, as if a tonic for the often unrewarding profession of portrait painter, Zorn had a keen interest in the traditions of his native Sweden. The representation of both a rural and traditional basis of life in Sweden became more important to him as his life and career progressed, so that nearer the end of his life the subject of the traditions of Swedish life and culture became much more acute.

Zorn produced a number of compositions with subject matter that were based on the ordinary traditions of rural life in Sweden. These came in a number of disciplines, most admittedly within fine art painting, but some within the traditionally strong Swedish discipline of textiles. This was not particularly unusual for the period as many fine artists were keen to be seen as pan-discipline workers, producing efforts not only in textiles, but also that of ceramics, metal, glass and wood. That much of this work was art rather than design based did often limit the results, but it is still interesting to note the results of the process of a fine art sensibility being transposed into craft or design.

The examples shown here are relatively straightforward transpositions from a fine art origin to that of woven tapestry. Although there is no overly unique interpretation from Zorn, it is interesting to note how he has interpreted his compositions towards a textile based medium. The work has all the appearance of a graphic based dimension, with figures and backgrounds appearing both fresh and spontaneous, giving the impression of an element of contemporary vitality and spontaneity to the traditional rural scenes. Admittedly, this is not always the impression that has been immediately connected to either rural or traditional lifestyles, particularly by those of a more urban disposition.

Illustration: Anders Zorn. Dalecarlian Scene tapestry panel, 1909

All three tapestries are connected and should by rights be seen as a triptych of panels showing various aspects of the one theme. That theme was to illustrate the life lived in the Dalecarlian region of Sweden. Dalecarlia or Dalarna, is an area of the country that had become associated since at least the mid-nineteenth century as being in some respects, the heartland of both Sweden and its culture.  The native Arts & Crafts movement was particularly interested in using Dalecarlia as a metaphor for all that was considered vital in preserving and prolonging the traditions of Swedish life.

Perceived heartlands were a particular necessity for a number of Arts & Crafts movements, more so in Europe than elsewhere. Specific regions and areas were often interpreted as literal vaults containing the uncontaminated traditions and root culture of a nation. Although much of this was clearly romantically misplaced sentiment, it does not change the fact that areas like Dalecarlia became the subject of intense retrospection and rich subject matter for a wide ranging list of creative individuals that included fine artists, designers, craftspeople, photographers, critics, musicians and writers.

These particular pieces by Zorn were even displayed at the 1909 Exhibition of Swedish Applied Art that took place in the capital, Stockholm. Zorn was not the only fine artist represented at the Exhibition, a number of popular and well-placed names in both Swedish fine art and design were represented such as Alfred Wallander, Carl Larsson and Gunnar Wennerberg. Zorn's tapestry work can be seen as a fine example of both the traditions of Swedish craft and culture, along with the sensibilities of a contemporary artist to those traditions.

Illustration: Anders Zorn. Dalecarlian Scene tapestry panel, 1909

Anyone interested in good selection of the fine art work produced by Zorn during his career might wish to follow the link to the Anders Zorn website which can be found below in the Reference links section, along with some relevant books on Zorn that can be found on Amazon.com.

Reference links:
Anders Zorn website
Anders Zorn
Anders Zorn Rediscovered
ANDERS ZORN, His Life and Work
Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s
Greeting Cards: Anders Zorn Paintings
Anders Zorn In the Woods 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 Print
Anders Zorn 1860-1920: An Introduction to His Life and Achievements
The Prints of Anders Zorn
Anders Zorn 
The Etchings of Anders Zorn: From the Collection of the Springfield Art Museum
Dagmar, 1911 Giclee Poster Print by Anders Leonard Zorn, 24x32

Mariska Karasz Embroidery

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.

Illustration: Mariska Karasz Hieroglyphics embroidery 1960

Reference links:
Mariska Karasz website
Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz
Adventures in stitches;: And more adventures-fewer stitches
The Good Housekeeping See and Sew: A Picture Book of Sewing
How to make growing clothes for your baby
Design and sew,
Growing Clothes
See and sew,: A picture book of sewing

Contemporary Textile Work of Artist Marlene Cohen

Illustration: Marlene Cohen Healing

Marlene Cohen is a British textile artist that has taken her own strong and contemporary attitude towards her chosen medium, and created a distinctive style of composition and layering that is entirely her own. Cohen uses both printmaking and fine art disciplines, along with the usual aspects of textile work such as layering and stitching, to produce work that although technically part of the quilt medium, has managed to stretch that medium farther than most.

Although Cohen works in a wide range of colours, tones and textures, I have chosen instead to concentrate on a series of pieces that she has produced in a much lower and more minimal colour scheme. Shoah is a series of pieces that, although seemingly stark and severe, are in fact full of the most astounding build up of imagery and text that is strong in graphic, illustrative and fine art techniques.

Illustration: Marlene Cohen Target Zero

These pieces, to my mind at least, seem to have a number of reference points that lead to the drawing of similarities to some aspects of the leading edge of European graphic design work in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly those artists and designers who dealt with the exciting photomontage medium. However, Cohen's work could never be said to be derivative of that era. What it does share is that same powerful and uncompromising imagery that places it at the forefront of the senses. This work is not meant to be harmonious with its background, but is meant to make an uncompromising statement and in this it shares a position with so much of the fine art and design work that that was at the forefront of the Modernist movement.

This series of textile pieces is extraordinary in it's focused awareness of what is truly achievable through the textile medium, rather than what is expected or delivered. It is uncompromising and skilful, and although dealing with historical issues that are highly personalised, the compositions can also appeal on a much wider level, those dealing with compositional balance, graphic awareness and strident ambience.

Illustration: Marlene Cohen Cover Up

It is artists such as Cohen who are both pushing the boundaries of what is expected and accepted as textile art, and also and perhaps more importantly, expanding the parameters of fine art itself, allowing it to ultimately include aspects of textile work on an equal basis. Cohen's work seems to deliberately cross over various discipline boundaries and so her work can well be appreciated by individuals who have a background and interest in general textiles, quilting, printmaking, graphics, illustration and fine art.

The more expansive and uncompromising textile artists become in both their focus and their range of creativity while at the same time retaining the unique aspects of the textile medium, the more seriously textile art will be taken outside of the immediate discipline. Cohen is an artist that is at the forefront of this movement towards fine art acceptability.

Illustration: Marlene Cohen Mixed Messages

Marlene Cohen has exhibited widely, she lectures and writes profusely and has her own comprehensive website where much more of her work can be seen, along with the imagery shown in this article. The website link can be found below in the Reference links section.

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

Reference links:

Marlene Cohen website

Barbara W Watler and the Fingerprint Collection

Illustration: Barbara W Watler Fingerprint series #50: Unity

The textile art work of Barbara W Watler is intriguing in more ways than one. She gives us blown up images of small, intimate areas of life that we might well recognise as belonging to part of the near micro world. Through her unique imagery of the natural world that she sees around her, the artist allows us to connect to the intimate and the solitary, pinpointing the stand alone elements that make all aspects of the natural world unique. She helps us to understand how utterly unique and diverse this world really is.

Illustration: Barbara W Watler Fingerprint Series #46: Vortex

Watler has a number of differing projects and sets of work, but probably her most well known series is that of her Fingerprint collection. This series of art pieces that now number more than fifty, is continually growing and transforming as it develops. It deals with the all too human twin obsessions of identity and the loss of that identity. Fingerprinting is a near unique aspect of our human world, one that cannot be quantified, packaged, or mass produced. It has been a unique feature of the thousands of generations before us, the six and a half billion of us today, and of the thousands of generations that will follow us. In some respects these are large abstract maps of our own individuality, showing us that we are more complex than we often appreciate.

Illustration: Barbara W Watler Fingerprint Series #46: Vortex (detail)

By concentrating on this aspect of human development she has in fact pinpointed, through compositional means, both a uniqueness that is such an integral part of the ideal of the individual, and through that the uniqueness that can easily be attributed to each of her works in this series. All are unique and all stand alone. This one of a kind perception underlines and matches the same values that can be found in the human species.

Watler takes the simple idea of honing in on a small element of the human body and expanding it to utterly fill a composition. However, although the idea itself may appear to be simple, it is full of meaning and sophistication. By highlighting the seemingly inconsequential aspect of the end of a finger and allowing it to fill a compositional space to the edge, the artist gives the fingerprint the emphasis it has always had in nature, but which is so frequently neglected in our own human world.

Illustration: Barbara W Watler Fingerprint Series #16-20: Painter's Prints

The uniqueness of each and every one of us is often underplayed and trivialised even amongst our own species. We have become, over the last century and a half, standardised consumers. The retail, financial and media empires regularly bracket us within spending and lifestyle parameters. To class us as individuals within our contemporary world is counter productive. It is a world that no longer values our uniqueness, but sees us as part of the mass production machinery.

Watler gently reminds us that although we may well be part of a mass organism of six and a half billion units, each of those units is a specifically unique, never to be repeated individual. For us to forget that fact puts our humanity in jeopardy.

Illustration: Barbara W Watler Fingerprint Series #42: Elephant Print

Barbara Watler work has been seen in various exhibitions across the US. Her unique style, both within the Fingerprint series and beyond, has proved both popular and successful. She has a comprehensive website where much of her work can be seen, a link to which can be found below in the reference links section below.

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

Reference links:

Barbara W Watler website