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 or drawn 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
Growing up on the coast of Maine with a deep respect for anything handmade, I have always been happiest working with my hands, puzzling my way toward realizing imagined images and objects.
I received a BA with honors in Art at Middlebury College in Vermont, taking time during my junior year to study watercolor with Karen Guzak in Seattle, WA. After graduation I worked in graphic design and as a free-lance illustrator, continuing to paint and learning to draw with pastels. Lessons from each of these disciplines provided the springboard I use now to examine color, process, and my affinity for arrangement and order. Travel to Asia and years spent living in Hawaii, San Francisco, and Washington State offered a wonderful variety of artistic exposure that has heavily impacted my aesthetic.
Fortuitously, becoming a mother ushered me back to sewing in my search to find an art form that would mesh well with raising a young family. My explorations with textiles have not only been a path for merging elements from the varying media I’ve previously studied — shifting those principles into a single focus — but they have opened the door to a new means of discovery through dye, resist techniques, and intensive stitching.
In an effort to maintain an open community of ideas, I began a blog in 2014, Eye of the Needle. It not only provides a regular window into my studio practice, but is also a means for sharing the questions and insights spurred from my art reading and the exhibitions I attend.
I have exhibited nationally and internationally, including the “2019 Rijswijk Textile Biennial” in The Netherlands. My 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 Fall 2021 Surface Design Journal exhibition “From Confrontation to Catharsis, SDA International Exhibition in Print”. I am an Art in Embassies artist with work chosen to hang in the US Embassies in Riga, Latvia and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
My studio is in Waterbury Center, VT where I live with my husband and pooch Quinn (frequent model and studio assistant). We have two grown children. My love of gardening and reading heavily impacts my artwork.
All rights reserved ©Elizabeth Fram