Natasha Kempers-Cullen

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COLOR JAZZ2003nine panels;
each 23" width, 58" height
NOT FOR SALEcotton, tulle, metallic confetti, metallic, variegated rayon, and quilting threads, hand painted fabrics with fiber reactive dyes and textile paints, woven collage construction, machine stitching, machine quiltingCOLOR JAZZ developed out of a need I had to explore color relationships once again, this time in vivid hues. I also wanted to work in a large format with the technique of weaving strips of my hand painted fabrics to create panels. I had recently completed a commission employing the weaving technique on very small panels and I always find it challenging and exciting to change scales of work. This is a very large piece, measuring close to five feet tall and eighteen feet across! Once again, this work developed as a component system: nine smaller panels to be hung together to create the sense of one large piece. There is one panel for each color: red, yellow, blue, purple, green, orange, black, white, and brown. Within each of the panels, I inserted one piece of each of all the other colors into the woven structure. This makes all the panels interact with each other in a very lively and playful and colorful manner. ItÕs like jazz! And, like jazz, these panels can be arranged and rearranged in any combination or sequence! ThatÕs the fun of it.As with much of my work, I hope the viewer will be treated to two different experiences as he/she sees the work from afar and subsequently from up close. From a distance, one will see nine single color panels. The closer one gets to the work, the more details of line, pattern, varying colors, and movement become apparent, and the viewer will see that the painted panels are not just made up of solid colors, but are created with many variations of any color and even with blips and strips of contrasting colors here and there. My love of grid systems is very much in evidence here: the woven structure is a grid of sorts, then the tulle fabric overlaid on the weaving is another grid, and finally all of the machine stitching is another grid. Layers and layers!EXHIBITIONS2003-04 20/20 ENVISION, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine20/20 ENVISION, University of New England Gallery, Portland, Maine



Natasha at work in her studio.

Statement of PurposeMy work is part of a continual process of discovery. Working with fabric to create my work seems to be so natural to me: I don't even question it. It is an extension of my being and the education I received from the women in my family. Having developed a collage construction process, I can focus now more deeply on the concepts, the beliefs, the images, the interplay of shapes that energize the work.There are three themes that interact and appear in most of my work: a reverence for nature, positive human spirit, and the concept of house and home (the house or shrine shape that occurs in most of my work) as safety and love and strength.

BiographyI have been devoting my time to creating art quilts and mixed media environments since 1987, after sixteen years as an art teacher in the public schools. My work has appeared in many juried exhibitions, including Quilted Constructions: the Spirit of Design (at the American Folk Art Museum, New York City), Quilt National and Visions (Quilt San Diego). I have also shown works in a number of invitational exhibitions throughout the nation and overseas, including the Full Deck Art Quilts project and Women of Taste: Artists and Chefs Collaborative. My commissioned work includes both private and public projects, notably several One Percent for Art commissions in Maine. I continue to teach, mostly at quilt conferences and at art schools including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine and Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.A number of my works have received awards and various pieces have been published in books and magazines. One of my pieces is in the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and another is in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City. I don't think I shall ever retire!