The artists in Blue Spiral’s early-winter exhibit Print + Pattern go to great lengths (and long hours) to expand the notion of traditional printmaking, applying pattern and interest to textiles and 3D forms. The show is curated by Casey Engel and features work by Eleanor Annand (participating artist), Jeanine Coupe Ryding (participant artist), Julian Jamaal Jones (althea Murphy-Price), Kristen Necessary(peter Olson), and Heidi Tarver.
Annand has moved through many mediums, working everywhere from “IBM to Yee-Haw Industries” and doing two stints at Penland School of Craft. Annand, who was a letterpress founder, well-known painter, and paper artist, recently switched to wall-mounted clay sculpture. This is glazed and etched with the same foggy, meditative colors that gave her her unique look.
Starfangled Press, founded by Necessary in Brevard, is a boutique business that makes notecards, clothing and other household products with whimsical imagery that celebrates the mountain scenery and wildlife. For the Print + Pattern exhibit, she’ll show all the work behind the whimsy, displaying her black-and-white wood carvings that can take hundreds of hours to complete.
“As curator, I find myself responding to the other works in the exhibition, [which is] different from how I normally create,” says Engel. Vibing with the other artists who are working outside the parameters of traditional printmaking, she will exhibit her original woodcuts and hand-quilted textiles, including two conceptual “windows” named after her parents, Gary and Shirley Mae.
Engel finds thrifted linens and uses them to create her soft sculpture. “It is deeply important to me that the textiles I am selecting have already lived a life of their own within the home,” she states. After using all-natural dyes like indigo, iron, or weld, she then collages her work with scraps of garment fabric before attaching it to the (typically) unusual surface.
“The works on display may come across as unexpected,” says Engel. “This exhibition celebrates artists who are earnestly breaking the rules.”
Blue Spiral 1 Fine Art + Craft, 38 Biltmore Ave., Asheville. Main Gallery, Nov. 4-Dec. 28. www.bluespiral1.com.