Artist Statement and Biography

 

Born into an artistic family, I grew up in a mid-modern home filled with Finn Juhl furniture, paintings and prints, Scandinavian glass, and textiles. My father was a picture framer and worked at the Ringling Museum for a while, before he moved to England, where he got his Fine Arts Degree at the Ruskin School of Drawing, at Oxford. I lived in Sarasota and Nantucket before I went to boarding school in the UK, I lived there until 1978, when I got my BA (hons) in Woven and Printed Textiles. Returning to the USA, I lived in Nantucket, Albuquerque (where I got my Master’s in Architecture), Boston’s South Shore and then returned to Sarasota. Now retired, I began my textile practice in 2018 and am I am enjoying it greatly.

 

My journey as an artist has always been with non-traditional materials, and with combinations of traditional methods in non-traditional ways. Trained as a weaver in the 1970s, the family of materials I now work with are all related to the materials used in weaving, be it wool, silk, cotton, or linen- stitched, embellished and combined, even paper made from fibers from plants growing in my garden and hanji (Korean mulberry paper) which can be felted in layers, stitched, shaped, and treated like a textile. Most recently I have started exploring the cloth like properties of momigami, a Japanese paper technique.

​

Combining these materials has provided me with a vocabulary for my artistic expression. A palette, if you will, to use to express my view of my surroundings, of nature, the city, my secret thoughts, and my memories.

 

www.alienlandscape.net

Instagram #rebeccalevinequigley