Quilted Assemblages: Beatrice Gilbert & Dr. Donald Talbot. On view from November 8 – December 31, 2013
Artist Talk by Dr. Donald Talbot November 15, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Artist Demonstration with Beatrice Gilbert
December 7, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Maine Fiberarts’ Holiday Open House Dates
Dec. 5, Open House to join MF’s Advisory Council, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Dec. 6, Holiday Open House & Sale, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
Dec. 7, Holiday Open House & Sale, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Artist Statement: Beatrice Gilbert
My artwork has always been a reflection of a deep response to color. Unexpected layers and vibrant color is used to engage the viewer. For me, color is content. Simple in form, my work focuses on the drama that can come from playing with value, color, and contrast. My home in North Yarmouth, Maine continues to provide a grounding that is essential and inspiring to me for blending art and life. The country setting and my earth-bound interests in family, gardening, raising sheep, and spinning wool provide an environment that inspires graceful simplicity in artwork. In addition to creating silk-stitched wall hangings, I also work in ceramics and in fiber, specializing in the use of luxury fibers—silk, alpaca, yak, and camel. My artistic goal is to create beautiful pieces that enrich everyday life—to be lived with, not just looked at. Since 1996, my art has been featured in over 60 galleries and shows nationwide.
Artist Statement: Dr. Donald Talbot
“Based on Beverly: A Post-mortem Creative Collaboration.” In August 2010, Beverly J. Semmens, Professor Emeritus, University of Cincinnati, died of cancer. She was 72 years old. I first met Beverly when I was accepted as a graduate student in her fibers program at the University of Cincinnati in 1997. During my two years at UC, Beverly became one of the most important mentors of my life. She taught me how to think and work as an artist. After I graduated in 1999, Beverly and I remained devoted friends. Before her death in 2010, Beverly entrusted me with a truly unique gift: her journals and sketchbooks dating back to 1954—almost 60 years of her creative explorations and personal life preserved in words and sketches. Like me, Beverly had degrees both in English and in fine art and was passionate about both. She appreciated good art, but she loved a well-turned phrase more. Her journals and sketchbooks reveal a complex and multi-talented woman who was both very much of her time while, in many ways, being very much ahead of it. During summer 2011, I started to study Beverly’s thumbnail sketches for art projects conceived over the past 50 years. Like most artists, she sketched more ideas than she actually executed in finished projects. Some art pieces were started and abandoned. Others were never attempted. A few were taken to completion. I began to wonder what it would be like to use Beverly’s sketches as the starting point for my own creative work. My new body of work based on Beverly’s sketches has been a collaborative effort. My goal was to reinterpret Beverly’s ideas—to use them as starting points for my own new work—not to slavishly replicate her ideas/sketches. Consequently, I learned about how she thought and how she evolved as an artist by using her ideas to inform my work. In particular, I learned about her sophisticated use of quiet symmetry, her rhythmical repetition of shapes/motifs, and her balanced interplay of geometric and organic shapes.