Piecework

May 5 – 30, 2015 at Mill Arts Project, Eastworks, 116 Pleasant St, Easthampton, MA

Featuring emotionally evocative printed textile collages and quilts by Esther S White, a dreamscape of mixed-media paintings and soft sculptures by Cathe Janke, and a live multi-media collage and performance piece by Meghan Minior. A chapbook of collaged creative writing inspired by the exhibition, edited by Halie Theoharides, and published by Sister Sister Books. This dynamic multi-media installation invites audience participation, with artwork that can be heard, handled, touched, read, and even hugged.

Piecework is the appropriation and combination of disparate elements to create something new. Piecework takes the discarded and makes it valuable, even beautiful. Piecework is finding time to make work.

In PIECEWORK, Cathe Janke and Esther S White use found objects, remnants, and scraps. They combine materials and methods to create work that challenges the distinctions between drawing and painting, printmaking and quilting, sculpture and textiles.

Janke’s “The Continuous Story” is over 150 feet long, inspired by her many travels to India and East Asia, her family and friends. She has used milkweed with seed pods that float on air currents, and sparkles that attach to people’s feet to travel with them.

White’s printed and dyed textiles and quilts combine found objects, everyday materials, and traditional American quilt patterns. Her work often incorporates her own clothing and family textiles, drawing out the narrative and bringing the figure back into work that may otherwise appear abstract. Fabric has memory: it is changed when it is worn and used, evidenced in creases and folds, tears and stretched fibers.

Exhibition Information [PDF]

PRESS: Daily Hampshire GazetteMasslive, Boston Compass, WHMP

more information: fugitivearts.org

Esther S White, Everyday is Different, Everyday is the Same, 2015, 34”x33”; cotton, found objects, watercolor, colored pencil; watercolor silkscreen monotype printed, machine stitched and quilted