POSTER ARTIST SHOWING HER TRUE COLORS
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F QUILTING CONJURES UP images of women huddled over calico in a dimly lit cabin, forget that stereotype. Fiber artists like Sandi Garris have redefined the quilting tradition and what it means to create art made from thousands of tiny pieces of fabric, all painstakingly sewn together. After 20 years of art quilting in Pennsylvania, which she began as a way to help pay bills while caring for her small children, Garris has shifted her focus to fabric dyeing and creating intricate framed pieces. Dyeing her own fabric allows Garris to coax the exact hue and saturation she’s after, and her work is known for its intense color. “I’ll dye fabric for about a week, maybe a hundred yards. Then I fill all my cabinets,” says Garris. “I must have 50 shades of red.” The hues aren’t just in her cabinets. The colors are also locked in her head. While she sketches her ideas for pieces in black and white and fiddles with the images in her mind and on paper, she also imagines the exact colors she’ll choose. “I can spend weeks on the sketch and hours changing the shapes and colors in my head. When I can see all the colors working together in my mind and I’m happy with the sketch, then I start making the piece,” she explains. She tries to complete it within a week. Judges chose Garris’ Circleville as this year’s Lakefront Festival of Art poster. Garris says she dyed six shades of each color in the same fabric and assembled the circles using four different shades within each. “So I’ve got 24 shades of blue, yellow, red – all the different colors – and I combined them in different ways. There are hundreds of combinations in this piece,” she notes. The result is a dramatic pull from afar and detailed interest up close – and a whole new way to view fabric. – Laura Patten
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