2019 Artist of the Year Catalogue

Jane Dunnewold 2019 Artist Of The Year

San Antonio Art League & Museum

Introduction

Contents Introduction

3

Beginnings

5

Sacred Planet

8

Etudes 13 Quilt / Not Quilt

22

Transitions

26

Botanicals

32

I

am a self-taught mixed media artist with a love of all things textile. Early influences were my grandmother’s knitting and crochet, dresses my mother sewed for us (I have three sisters) and hours spent as a child— cross-legged under the quilting frame at church on Thursday afternoons—listening to women chat and chide as they stitched the quilt attached to the frame.

Watching the needles dart back and forth through the surface was a meditation.

Of course that was women’s work and it was the 70’s. I had grander plans. I graduated in 1976 with a BA in Psychology and Religion, intending to go to graduate school and study phenomenological psychology.

Or maybe go into the ministry.

A crazy left turn took me instead to Boston, MA, where I had the good fortune to study embroidery and nascent

approaches to art quilting through Adult Ed programs.

Because of these classes I was reacquainted with childhood pastimes.

Another left turn landed me in San Antonio, Texas. When someone asks how I got here, I use that old cliche, “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could.” Although it wasn’t deliberate, for me it has been true. A marriage brought me here and divorce stranded me, but I’ve never regretted it. I love Texas and I love the fact that I could pioneer as a self-made artist—who has come full circle with this award.

As the Chairperson (1990 - 2001) of the Surface Design Studio at the Southwest School of Art (then known as The Southwest Craft Center) I realized I needed an area of expertise. Dyeing, painting, screen-printing,

photo-transfers, gold leaf, and a host of other surface design processes became my focus. In 1995, a publisher approached me with a set of my Surface Design class notes in hand, and asked if I would like to be published. That was the break of a lifetime, and launched twenty years of Complex Cloth—the name of my book, and the name of a movement that amazingly enough, swept across the country, producing invitations to travel and teach that have included trips to the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Teaching workshops allowed me to quit my position at the Craft Center. I was incredibly lucky to be able to teach, write additional books, and travel—all because of the notes I wrote to keep my students organized.

Art as a calling and profession is a funny business. Some artists stick with one style an entire

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Beginnings career. Others perfect a style, but eventually abandon it. I’ve never abandoned my surface design/textile roots but my work has expanded and evolved. I’m still in love with what I’ve always done, but now my pieces are mixed media/textiles as opposed to being crafted using traditional sewn or printed formats. I’m as likely to use spackle, sand or paper in my work as dye or paint.

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I hope in my lifetime we’ll transcend the narrow definition of what Art is, or isn’t. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy exploring these limitations, and as you can see from the work in this exhibition, I am still challenging and questioning.

I want art I make to tell stories, evoke emotional responses and challenge jaded thinking whenever possible. What are

limitations if not opportunities to expand and enhance what other people think of as Art? I hope you will study my work and realize that art is not defined by the materials used. Materials and techniques are neutral. Intention and content make it Art.

M

y personal background included hand embroidery and sewing, but I gravitated to paste papers and photocopy transfers in collage work of the late 80’s, after I was named Chair of the Surface Design Studio at the Southwest Craft Center. I was filling my toolbox and those basic processes were versatile enough to resurface later in other series— even as recently as 2019.

Dyed backgrounds originated as white fabric—cotton and rayon, but most often silk—because it took dye color so beautifully. My intention was to master color and composition by layering dyes and paint on a single cloth substrate.

These works were also the beginning of a conscious effort to build a personal visual vocabulary of marks and elements, while adding to the repertoire of techniques I could use, based on whatever a piece required to

carry it through to a successful completion. Layering color and patterns is at the heart of complex cloth.

It may be of interest to note that Organizing Chaos (page 6) began as a drop cloth protecting the printing table, and the left side of In the Garden (page 7) is entirely covered with b/w photocopied botanical images—transferred to the silk with a household cleaner called Citrisolv.

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In the Garden Organizing Chaos

6

1995 44” x 48” Drop cloth, Lutradur, paint

2011 40” x 44” Left panel: Photocopy transfers on silk Right panel: Digitally printed fabric from an original photograph, hand embroidery

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Sacred Planet T

he Sacred Planet Series was inspired by a set of photographs taken in the Perth Natural History Museum. The reflections from the glass cases lent an eerie quality to the pictures, as if the inhabitants of the cases were literally vanishing into thin air. After recognizing the symbolic potential of these images, I photographed additional plants and animals in other museums, including the Field Museum in Chicago.

The photographs were digitally printed on cloth using spoonflower.com—a print on demand source. Mirror imaging generates intricate designs where, ironically enough, the subjects are again easily lost in the elaborate, overall patterning.

Panels are collages of digitally printed fabrics, dyed and overprinted with map and weather imagery—a comment on our human effort to organize and

mechanize the natural world.

How often do human systems work against graceful patterns inherent in the natural order?

To approach sustainability, we must acknowledge the sacred balance between what is seen and unseen, what is close-up and what is far away. Living creatures contribute to this sacred balance and must not be permitted to vanish from our global home.

Sacred Planet: Zebra/Smoke Tree/Thistle

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2009 30” x 40” Digitally printed fabric from original photographs screen printing, stitching

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Sacred Planet: Shorebirds/Human

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2009 30” x 40” Digitally printed fabric from original photographs screen printing, stitching

Sacred Planet: Agave/Tiger/Carp

2009 30” x 40” Digitally printed fabric from original photographs screen printing, stitching

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Etudes E

tudes are musical studies employed by musicians to achieve mastery of an instrument. Through a series of conversations with musician friends I realized that etudes are also a form of meditation. The potential exists for the playing to center the player. This explains why a player with a career spanning thirty years would continue to play etudes. The daily practice is its own reward.

I was surprised to recognize etudes as one more example

Sacred Planet: Degradation

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2009 30� x 40�

Digitally printed fabric from original photographs screen printing, stitching, paint, sand

of how individual meditation practices unfold. Some people sit zazen and Om every day.

Others are part of a prayer circle. Musicians practice their instruments. As an artist, I achieve my daily centering in the studio.

Selecting the color palette, the tools, and the materials prior to beginning this series encouraged discernment on the value of limitations. Daily fuel for the practice emerged as a comingling of spiritual belief with

a visual language crafted over twenty years.

The result was an approach to making that encouraged me to stay in present time. I could focus on the work at hand, which disallowed comparing one moment to another and hence, one piece to any of the others that preceded it. They were alike and they were different. The constant was the joy I felt as I created them.

Etude 13: Number Seven: Open Heart

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2011 12� x 36�

Dyed silk, India ink, re-purposed pattern pieces and clothing, sand

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Etude 16: Metamorphosis 16

2011 12� x 36�

Dyed silk, India ink, rice paper, printing

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Etude 42: Embraceable You

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2011 12� x 36�

Dyed silk, India ink, repurposed clothing, paint

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Etude 27: Love Song for Zenna

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2011 12� x 36�

Dyed silk, India ink, vinatage book pages, sand, rice paper

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Quilt/Not Quilt I

am drawn to old quilts, especially those constructed from bits and pieces of salvaged clothing. They are, perhaps, one of the original inspirations for recycling.

The original inspiration for this series was a poorly constructed, vintage baby quilt in a traditional pattern—of which there are

hundreds. Looking at that quilt so soft and worn, and now discarded as past its prime and ruined—I wondered what would happen if I worked into it with materials that were intrinsically at odds with quiltness. Spackling to stiffen, colored pencil to prevent washing, and sand to roughen the touch. Impossible to stitch.

The reworked quilt is symbolic of transition and paradox. Once soft, now stiff and scratchy. Once a quilt—what is it now?

Quilt/Not Quilt?

Beautiful or not?

And in whose opinion?

X 22

2019 30” x 40” Vintage quilt blocks, vintage embroidery, spackle

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Sister 24

2016 40” x 30” Re-purposed vintage quilt blocks, paper, spackling, gold leaf

Uneasy Transition

2015 30” x 30” Vintage quilt blocks, paper, spackling, gold leaf, printing

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Transitions I

continue to be drawn to old quilts, especially blocks that were never assembled into a quilt. What happened to the maker? Why did she never complete the quilt? The individual blocks represent an unfinished story with which I am honored to engage.

I acquire unfinished blocks, assemble them, add the substrate

of spackling—transforming from soft to sturdy. Cut paper shapes from Bible and dictionary pages follow the pieced pattern of the quilt, which changes it by adding new information—symbolic memory. Evidence of thought evolving. Gold leaf to represent the best of what we recall. Every day no matter where we are, transition is occurring. The story unfolds.

Now cast-off bits of a covering are transformed into Art. These transitions exist on several levels simultaneously. Loss of memory and memory retrieved.

Function as covering. Function as Art. Serviceable cloth and enigmatic gold leaf. The paradox of the surface and also the paradox of who I am as the maker.

East/West I 26

2019 30” x 30” Vintage quilt blocks, vintage embroidery, paper, gold leaf

27

East/West II 28

2019 30” x 30” Vintage quilt blocks, vintage embroidery, paper, gold leaf

Structure #1: Messengers

2017 40” x 30” Vintage quilt blocks, spackling, gold leaf, pigment

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Structure #3: Transitioning 30

2017 32” x 71” Vintage quilt blocks, spackling, gold leaf, pigment

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Botanicals T

he Botanical Series combines the best of both my worlds. Surface design processes used for 25 years partner with prints of actual leaves and flowers. The tannin in the leaves transfers to watercolor paper or fabric through a combination of steam and pressure—sometimes enhanced by the

addition of copper or iron solutions as dips for the leaves.

Through the magic of the toolbox, additional color is added using vintage silk ties, dyed lace, and even colored paper. Once the prints have been steamed, cooled, and dried, further enhancement includes hand painting, gold leaf, and stitching.

Nature speaks a quiet language through plants and flowers.

There is a slowing down—a centering inherent in working with seasonal botanicals.

Leaves that printed one color in the Spring may produce an entirely different effect late in Autumn. Each print is a surprise and a lesson.

Pink Coral Vine: Summer 32

2019 15” x 10” Arches watercolor paper, Pink Coral Vine, iron, wax

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Pink Coral Vine: Summer II 34

2019 16” x 11” Arches watercolor paper, Pink Coral Vine, iron, wax, gold leaf

Lush Life

2019 16” x 11” Fabriano watercolor paper, Fig, Vitex and Golden Raintree leaves, gold leaf

35

Vitex Dance

2019 16” x 11” Fabriano watercolor paper, Vitex blooms and leaves, India ink

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