Works by fiber artist Missy Stevens, Left to Right: Out Beyond Ideas--Star Guardian, The Spirit of Togetherness
Dear Friend of the Art Center,
If you have an interest in fiber arts --knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting, rugging, felting, knotting, paper making, beading, weaving, etc.--we hope you will join us for a trip to Washington Depot, CT to visit the studio of Missy Stevens and hear her insights on the Fine Art of Fiber. Missy is an acclaimed artist who has shown her extensive and varied fiber work in numerous galleries and museums, including the American Craft Museum. You may have just recently seen her work at SOFA in NYC. In addition, we will tour her artist-made home designed by Missy and wood artist Tommy Simpson and enjoy her magnificent garden which should be in full bloom.
In a review that appeared in the NY Times about a show of Missy's work at the Nancy Margolis Gallery, critic Ken Johnson said, "Using needle, thread and beads, Missy Stevens makes tiny tightly-knit tapesties of riveting optical and material richness. With jewel-like colors, satiny and nubby textures, intricately patterned borders and glass-beaded fringes, her works look as if they were made by an inspired medieval artisan. Her images may seem whimsically simple-minded, but as in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, formal ingenuity and heartfelt moods ranging from ecstasy to grief give the work a complex depth that belies the seemingly naive surface." For Missy's insight on her work, read her statement below.
The May 19 trip, organized by fiber artist and collector Suzy Miles, will depart from Garrison Art Center at 9am. After the visit to Missy's studio, we will have lunch at the locally known GW Tavern. The cost for the trip is $30. (Guests are responsible for cost of lunch) We will return to Garrison Art Center around 4pm. Please let us know by May 15 whether to reserve a seat for you, so that we can organize drivers and vehicles. 845-424-3960
For those who are unable to stay for lunch, we can arrange for return after the studio visit.
Sincerely,
Carinda Swann
Executive Director
Thread Paintings: Where to Find Them
There are states of awareness that are not waking and are not sleeping, that are not even the edges of awake or asleep but are in a vast territory not defined by awake/asleep. In the same way there are many dreams that are not daydreams nor are they sleep dreams. Not dreams of your future or of what might have been. These dreams are an open door to another awareness. These dreams allow the dreamer to walk through, over the threshold, into another today, another place with other ways of being alive, of being whole, of being true. True in the sense of being fully oneself, expressing the lost and hidden and unknown, unappreciated qualities that each of us has. When we find our way to this door and cross the threshold there is much to be experienced, to explore. From this vast ocean we encourage a rivulet and nurture it into a stream, coaxing and inviting it to flow home with us and become a part of our waking and sleeping lives.
I like to go to this place of dreams like a gardener, basket in hand, to harvest. But how to harvest an ocean? A basket full of water will never be an ocean. It will only be wet. But even simply the wetness holds the mystery of another today and it may stir some heart memory when felt. I go to gather images, wet with this ocean’s waters and bring them back with me, their mystery and healing still clinging to them. If all goes well I give these images new homes, living in my thread paintings. To give these drops of water from the ocean of the other today a chance to splash you with their being.
Missy Stevens
