Statement
I stitch and I draw, each practice informing the other.
While my subjects comment on the ordinary, their significance lies in their familiarity. I focus on everyday observations, such as a clutter of dishes left on the counter or the topography of a face. Too often the merit of such sights goes unnoticed in the bustle of our busy, digital lives. Yet there is a secret power to the ordinary: it offers pleasure, even comfort, in a world that at times feels overwhelming. Making room in our consciousness for quiet statements can be a source of hope, reminding us that beauty is always within reach.
Inspired by the formalities of composition and shape, I rely on pattern, color and fields of stitched, drawn and painted marks to create and organize space. I am interested in building an exchange between image and texture that is both tactile and visual. My hand-worked processes are many-layered and slow, echoing the same appreciation of time and presence that was necessary for recognizing the value of each subject in the first place
Bio
Elizabeth Fram’s practice incorporates embroidery, drawn and painted imagery, and resist dyeing — sometimes separately, more often in combination
She graduated with a degree in Art from Middlebury College in Vermont and studied watercolor with Karen Guzak in Seattle WA. Her early graphic design and illustration work has since served as an influence and springboard for developing her love of color, composition and process.
Fortuitously, in her search to find an art form that would mesh well with the demands of raising a young family, motherhood ushered her back to sewing, a skill learned in her youth. Beginning with art quilts, she soon realized she could freely integrate unexpected “fabrics” and processes by being open to following the trail of “what if?”. The one constant within her work has been hand embroidery. As her children grew and time allowed, her explorations with textile processes expanded into paint, dye and incorporating found materials.
She returned to drawing regularly in 2015. It has since become an indispensable part of her practice, ultimately leading to a fusion between drawing and textile techniques. Her embroidered watercolor portraits are an example of this marriage.
Fram has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the “Rijswijk Textile Biennial” in The Netherlands. Her artwork is included in private collections in the US and Europe, and has appeared and been written about in numerous publications, including TextileArt around the World by Ellen Bakker, the Dutch publication Textiel Plus, and in the Surface Design Journal exhibition “From Confrontation to Catharsis, SDA International Exhibition in Print”. She is an Art in Embassies artist with work chosen to hang in the US Embassies in Riga, Latvia and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
In an effort to create a community of ideas, she maintains Eye of the Needle, a blog she began in 2014. It not only provides a regular window into her studio practice, but is also a means for sharing the insights and questions spurred from her art reading and the exhibitions she attends.
Born and raised on the coast of Maine, Fram has traveled to Asia and Europe and lived in Hawaii, San Francisco and Washington state, locales which have all shaped and had a lasting impact on her aesthetic. She returned to the Green Mountains of Vermont in 2009 and maintains a studio in Waterbury Center.
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