About

Spring Moon

Summer Moon

Winter Moon

Autumn Moon

Artist’s Statement

Trained as a painter, for many years I painted large abstract landscapes, but from childhood sewing and playing with fabric were a first love. Eventually I pursued how this passion might become the medium and expression for my art and for several years the “art quilt” was my format. Currently I have adopted the archaic form of handmade felt as my creative canvas. In this medium, saturated colors migrate through the entire structure, resulting in intriguingly sensuous surfaces that are enhanced with stitching, mono-printing, appliqué, and found objects. PhotoShop is used in some works to create a digital collage. In this way I juxtapose current technology with the ancient textile felt form, which predates spinning and weaving by several thousand years.

My subjects focus on architecture and nature devising a language of symbolic images and archetypal forms. Rooms are open and closed, accessible and inaccessible, providing both protection and exposure. Windows and doorways appear to be simultaneously inside and outside, in different times. The architecture may belong to a zoomorph in the form of a shell, cocoon or nest, seeming visceral sanctuaries of safety, serenity and solitude. Landscapes appear in contrasting seasons.

Biography

I grew up in the flat lands of northern Indiana, but for college went east to the rolling mountains of Virginia where I earned degrees from James Madison University (BA, Art Ed.; MA, Painting and Ceramics). Noho Gallery in Chelsea (New York City) represents me where I have had 17 solo shows. In 2009 my work was included in “Art of the State,” an annual juried show at the State Museum of Pennsylvania. An art quilt is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art and Design and was included in their New Acquisitions exhibit in 1995. I participated in the Allentown Art Museum’s Affordable Art Soiree, curated by Jacqueline Atkins, Curator of Textiles, 2006. New Jersey Council on the Arts awarded me fellowships in 1991 and 1999. Through the New Jersey Art Annual: Crafts Exhibitions, my work has been exhibited in the Jersey City Museum, the Newark Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, the Hunterdon Museum, and the Morris Museum. In 1994 my stitched constructions were part of an international embroidery exhibition at six Takashimaya Galleries in Japan. Included in over twenty books, it appears in The Art Quilt Book by Robert Shaw and in Beautiful Things, published by GUILD.com and juried by Michael Monroe, former curator of the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery. Most recently my work was included in Fiberarts Design Book 7, edited by Susan Mowery Kiefer.

Comments Widget

About

© 2009 Erma Martin Yost