This year’s Beyond The Fringe show got covered in the Tempo section of the Taos News. The Tempo cover:

We got a page and a half write up this year.

Abbey’s and I’s art were featured. Woot!

The opening reception for this year’s Beyond The Fringe was the best one yet.

Merce made a banner this year to hang in front of the Stables Gallery.

Before the reception the artists gathered in the back room for a toast. Here’s Abbey looking radiant:

We got a pretty good turn out.

Abbey and Faith talk about The Other Side.

Thebes and Daniel hung out.

More people looking at art:

Abbey and her daughter Samantha goof off for the camera.

We had live music this year! These two women were lovely musicians. Their music really added to the groovy vibe this year.

A group photo with 11 of the 13 artists:

Again, this year’s reception was the best one yet. I was disappointed with last year’s reception and was feeling apprehensive at the beginning of the night. By the time I drove home I was feeling elated. This year’s reception was managed well and the vibe inside the gallery was festive, tasteful, mature and fun. Having a juried and themed show really elevated the art. I got great feedback on my artwork this year which I appreciated.

Thebes took close up photos of the Beyond The Fringe art. Again, I’m presenting them as if you walked into the Stables Gallery turned left and then walked around the space.

Terrie Hancock Mangat
Two Points

Merce Mitchell
Carried

Merce Mitchell
Growth

Deborah Naremore
Release

Merce Mitchell
Inside Out

Kimberly Hamill
Many Way They Come

Monte McBride
Illness

Terrie Mangat
Fatal Attraction

Abigail Z
The Other Side

Lise Poulsen
Untitled

Lise Poulsen
Old Bones

Gail Giles
Sorrow

Gail Giles
Vessels

Gail Giles
Seeing Truth

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Pink Fact #1

Lise Poulsen
Connective

Lise Poulsen
All Cut Up

Lise Poulsen
Skin Deep

Merce Mitchell
Denied

Twilight Kallisti
The Portal

Abigail Z
Frolicking or The Dancing Nasties: An Idle Mind At Play

Kimberly Hamill
Another Hole Was Cut

Jana Greiner
The Right To Bare Arms

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Sunny-D

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Oscar Meyer Lunchables

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Lucky Charms

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Doritos

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Chicken McNuggets

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Go-Gurt

Twilight Kallisti
Just One More Row

Nina Silfverberg
Heart Strings 1

Nina Silfverberg
Heart Strings 2

Nina Silfverberg
Heart Strings 3

Nina Silfverberg
Undone; I Guess The Corset Didn’t Hold It

Mary K. Lyon
Jump For Joy

Abigail Z
Mind Dancers

Mary K. Lyon
Don’t Worry Be Happy

Artist Gail Giles will be in this year’s Beyond The Fringe.

What is your artistic background?
I began to explore my artistic side in my early 20s in San Antonio, Texas when I began working for a gemstone bead importer and began to string, knot, and design gemstone beaded necklaces. This evolved into providing restringing and repair services to most of the fine jewelry stores in San Antonio, Texas for over 20 years, until 2001. During that time I experimented with my own creations out of gemstone and vintage pre-WWII glass beads, selling my work at local art & craft shows, and for a time through Saks Fifth Avenue in San Antonio, a few pieces here and there at a couple of local galleries, and the Blue Fox Gallery in Rumson, New Jersey.

Through the 90s I offered beginner, intermediate and advanced level classes at Southwest School for Art & Craft in bead stringing, knotting, design, on loom and peyote bead weaving, bead clothing embellishment, etc. for adults. Liking my experience working with adults, I created a group of beading and woven bead projects for after school children’s classes at local schools and as well, a summer textile workshop at a Montessori school that was integrated with other teachers in math, science and language skills for 1st through 3rd graders.

I had started taking weaving classes for the first time at Southwest School for Art & Craft around 1990, after beading for many years, and having a longing to try it. I found that I really loved it and many of the techniques in my first sampler using lace, intricate designing, various joining techniques, and adding beads to accent my piece, showed my love for the intricacies that weaving entailed. I had also developed a lot of patience from working with bead designs of my own, as well as the challenge of creating for someone else, making the pieces fit well, having to provide professional work and finishing techniques due to my clientele in the jewelry business for so many years.

I had been attending the local community college off and on for years since finishing high school, and had taken a few art classes that allowed me to explore other artists, history, and techniques, but was not confident in my drawing or painting classes working on paper. I did not like working with clay, as I found I liked my hands clean, I found I liked manipulating fibers, and remembered that I had always like batik, after trying it in high school on a project, and the graphic quality it evoked. I admired photography, as my father and my brother, although not professionals, were quite good at it, so I was taking in all of this it seems, over the years, as to what brought together a good image and how would I translate that somehow.

I started going to University of Southwest Texas in San Marcos in the mid-90s and decided that I was going to work toward a BFA in Textiles that was offered. I found that I was one of two students that wanted to take weaving, and so continued there for a while and took professional weaving workshops, including with Rebecca Bluestone, Robin Reider, Micala Sidore, and a few others over the next few years, and entered a juried show now and then. My tapestry weaving took a back seat for a number of years in between the other things happening in life and is finally now becoming a part of who I am and how I express myself and my life.

Why did you choose the medium of fiber to express yourself?
I feel that tapestry weaving best expresses what I want to say, and used the problem solving skills and techniques that challenge me. I used to like designing with loom controlled fabric, but found I got bored just throwing the shuttle, even with having to pay attention with intricate loom treadling designs. I found that I excelled at tapestry weaving in a way that I have found in no other medium thus far.

What is your process from original idea to finished piece?
I have an image in mind, generally of one of my digital images that I have taken that has inspired me, where I can see a series of possibilities as to how detailed I want to be. I use the image as a cartoon, which rests behind my warp, and which I use as a guide to weave the piece, allowing for my own interpretation from the image as I weave.

What do you love about fiber art? What do you find frustrating?
I love the texture and the feel of the fibers. I love that the wool that I have chosen to work with, after trying other softer wools, is the Norwegian Spelsau, a wool allot like New Mexico Churro, of a nearly extinct species of sheep, that was revived to some degree after WWII, and is produced now by only a few family farms, is hard, durable, and allows for a single line to be seen crisply in the design.

I like the history of fiber and textiles, and wrote a paper back in college called, “Weaving: Nothing Less Than A History of Mankind”. I realized that textiles told the story of our history on every continent and almost every island nation around the world. I wanted to be a part of that heritage and express my creativity with that in mind by weaving in tapestry with materials and techniques that were timeless and archival in quality.

Sometimes the most frustrating thing about weaving, especially on a loom, is the warping of the loom. There is as much time, and sometimes more, depending on the type of weaving project, in preparation to weave, tensioning the warps, especially in tapestry, as it is woven under high tension, in order to not later have tension issues on the loom to counteract. And also, in the taking the piece off the loom, and doing the finish work to secure all of the warps and the piece, so it will retain its shape, and prepared for mounting on the wall. The frustration at wanting to see the image complete as imagined, but always with surprises of its own as it is being revealed, lessons learned along the way, and evolves into gratitude for the experience in the completed work.

What is your artistic vision?
To be able to show my work in a few galleries in New Mexico, and eventually participate more in offering adult and children’s classes in textiles and weaving in my community. I have been offered the opportunity to show my work at Weaving Southwest here in Taos, so I am looking forward to that in the next few months perhaps, or by the fall 2011. Presently, I do not hand dye my yarns, but will be learning to do that so that I can comply with my work being woven of all hand dyed or natural yarns, as some of my work has commercially dyed wool, so that is a new endeavor and new experience to add to my repertoire of textile skills.

How did you find that vision?
I find that the weaving idea I have in mind just wants to express itself. I find myself “mind weaving” constantly, as I see a sunset or change of light in nature or on a building, or an image that strikes me. I find I enjoy mentally figuring out how I would weave that image and in the inspiration it gives me.

What challenges you as an artist?
To express in tapestry the feeling I get from an image or idea I want to weave. Choosing the colors, or values that best express that image or idea, the degree of intricacy, as that determines the sett, or spacing of the warps. I tend to work with a single 2-ply finer yarn with a warp sett of 10 epi to get the detail I want to achieve. I find that I unweave as much as I weave in a piece, so that I can achieve the results in the particular detail I am wanting to express, often times changing the technique entirely for different parts of the weaving.

The main challenge is to allow the tapestry weaving to evolve and express itself. Allowing patience when I feel a need to go back and move a line over to get a better result, and realize that there is an intuition, that if listened to, can sometimes result in achieving exactly what I want, but was not sure how to do. I love working with color, but have found that I also like juxtaposing one or two colors with black or neutral grays to give the image a boldness that I might miss in using too many colors at once.

How do you handle personal road blocks in your artwork?
I have had to put my tapestry and creative work aside for long periods of time due to job constraints, being a family caregiver for my grandmother with breast cancer, ending my bead stringing business in San Antonio, Texas to relocate to Oklahoma City, so I could do so, and then shortly afterward, and taking care of my great-aunt with Alzheimer’s, and in finding my own way to where I feel I want to go.

After assisting with care of extended family, going back to school at Rose State College in Del City, Oklahoma to get an Associate’s Degree in Legal Studies in 2003, while working as an executive assistant for a non-profit and at the same time, being office manager for an insurance firm. I graduated in 2005 and became a nationally Certified Paralegal in January 2006, moving to Fort Worth, Texas to begin my first law firm job, which I ended after two years after a grueling federal trial that totally exhausted me. As the trial ended, that same day, I went to the Fort Worth Main Street Fair in April 2008, and was inspired, once again, to find a way to express myself creatively with my tapestry work in a more meaningful way.

After working for myself for a year afterward, doing some freelance as a Texas mobile notary and process server, and doing a bit of paralegal work I decided to move to the Santa Fe area in August 2009 from Fort Worth, and try to concentrate on making my tapestry weaving an integral part of my life. I am presently in the process of doing just that and it is wonderful to finally be doing so.

Where do you find inspiration?
In the colors of the sky as the sun sets for the day, the change of light and shadows on the landscape around New Mexico, and in living in an area where there are abundant other creative people who are writers, poets, photographers and especially textile artists who share my passion for the arts and living in a place that allows one to do that and share it with the public that appreciates all it entails.

Let’s say you have a huge grant to build an art piece of your dreams. What would you make?
I would make a series of tapestries that told a new story of what our world could be about… Truth… Peace… Love… so we remember who and what we are…and become that.

Do you have any upcoming projects or art shows this year?
My work in Southwest Weaving, images of sunsets in New Mexico and Texas, is on display at the Tapestry Gallery in Madrid, NM since last September 2010.

I am a member of Las Tejedoras Fiber Arts Guild in Santa Fe, and plan to participate in a group show in Los Alamos during August-September, as well as at Ghost Ranch Conference Center that will hang in September-October.

I have been invited to show my work at Weaving Southwest, here in Taos, so I will be planning some pieces to weave and hang there by perhaps mid-summer or fall.

How can people contact you?
Please go to my website to see more images of my work and for information about where my work is presently being shown. I have a FaceBook page now that can be accessed from my web page, and I may be contacted at my home/studio at (505)471-2477 in Santa Fe or by email at gail @ ggilesweaving.com.

Thebes took photos of the art in this year’s Beyond The Fringe show. I’m presenting them as if you walked into the Stables Gallery turned left and then walked around the space.

Terrie Hancock Mangat
Two Points

Merce Mitchell
Carried

Merce Mitchell
Growth

Deborah Naremore
Release

Merce Mitchell
Inside Out

Kimberly Hamill
Many Way They Come

Monte McBride
Illness

Terrie Mangat
Fatal Attraction

Abigail Z
The Other Side

Lise Poulsen
Untitled

Lise Poulsen
Old Bones

Gail Giles
Sorrow

Gail Giles
Vessels

Gail Giles
Seeing Truth

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Pink Fact #1

Lise Poulsen
Connective

Lise Poulsen
All Cut Up

Lise Poulsen
Skin Deep

Merce Mitchell
Denied

Twilight Kallisti
The Portal

Abigail Z
Frolicking or The Dancing Nasties: An Idle Mind At Play

Kimberly Hamill
Another Hole Was Cut

Jana Greiner
The Right To Bare Arms

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Sunny-D

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Oscar Meyer Lunchables

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Lucky Charms

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Doritos

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Chicken McNuggets

Linda Michel-Cassidy
Go-Gurt

Twilight Kallisti
Just One More Row

Nina Silfverberg
Heart Strings 1

Nina Silfverberg
Heart Strings 2

Nina Silfverberg
Heart Strings 3

Nina Silfverberg
Undone; I Guess The Corset Didn’t Hold It

Mary K. Lyon
Jump For Joy

Abigail Z
Mind Dancers

Mary K. Lyon
Don’t Worry Be Happy

I’m in this year’s Beyond The Fringe.

What is your artistic background?
I majored in Art for a time in college. Then while living on a commune I learned to crochet. Crochet led to knitting which led to spinning and felting which led to fiber art.

Why did you choose the medium of fiber to express yourself?
I really feel the fiber chose me. I experimented with other art like oil painting, colored pencils, charcoal, clay and pottery but nothing “stuck” like fiber. When I started doing fiber art I felt a creative spark that I hadn’t with other mediums.

What is your process from original idea to finished piece?
When inspiration strikes I make a few preliminary sketches in my art journal. Then I let the idea simmer for awhile. When it’s time to start the project the idea will dominate my thoughts and I become so obsessed with it that all other projects are put on hold so I can begin.

I’ll prep my canvas first. Then I prep the fiber palette-this could be carding wool, spinning yarn or recycling yarn from sweaters. This part often takes a couple months. Then I start painting my canvas with fiber. More and more fiber details are added until my vision becomes reality. Finishing touches can include embroidery or beading. Finally I frame or install the piece.

What do you love about fiber art? What do you find frustrating?
I love being able to touch the material while I create. Painting with a paintbrush feels so far away from the art. I like to get my fingers into the fiber. I find it frustrating that many don’t take fiber art seriously as an art form.

What is your artistic vision?
I create artistic pieces that explore Pagan imagery and myths. I’m currently exploring the connection between cellular beings and the macrocosm around them.

How did you find that vision?
Lots of spiritual exploration, vision quests and communing in nature.

What challenges you as an artist?
Finding enough time to work on all the projects I want!

How do you handle personal road blocks in your artwork?
When I get frustrated or blocked with a project I’ll put it in time out and work on something else. Small knitting projects make for nice distractions. I’ll often go out for a walk in the woods to clear my mind.

Where do you find inspiration?
Being in nature and dreams are my biggest inspirations. Looking at artwork and listening to New Age music also inspires me.

Let’s say you have a huge grant to build an art piece of your dreams. What would you make?
I’d like coordinate a multi-state yarn bombing where statues, light poles and street signs are covered in yarn. This would take place on a specified day and be documented online. I envision hundreds of knitters being involved and tons of outdoor yarn art being created.

Do you have any upcoming projects or art shows this year?
I have plans but nothing official yet. Stay tuned to the blog for any announcements.

How can people contact you?
twilly23 @ gmail.com
Crafting Chaos

Last Thursday the Beyond The Fringe artists had to drop their pieces off in the morning to be hung in the Stables Gallery.

Merce made a cool banner to hang outside the gallery.

I enjoy behind the scenes photos.

Pearl waits to be hung. Two of Abbey’s and I’s pieces were so large we were asked to help hang them. The skeleton took three of us to hang up. It was a little nerve wracking but we did it.

Abbey talks about her piece Frolic.

Artist Terrie Mangat will be in this year’s Beyond The Fringe.

What is your artistic background?
Artistic paternal Grandmother, asked for fabric for Christmas at age 6, went to Singer Sewing school at age 11, Art in high school, majored in Printmaking and Pottery in college (textile class from Home Ec Dept.), BA in Art with award to outstanding graduating Senior, 1970,University of Kentucky, attended and viewed Art Exhibitions around the world obsessively

Why did you choose the medium of fiber to express yourself?
I have always loved cloth since childhood. It is soft, colorful, comforting, and you can paint on it, sew beads and other things to it, and sleep under it to keep warm.

What is your process from original idea to finished piece?
I usually start with an idea about something I have observed or seen. Sometimes it is something that seeps into my mind over a long period of time, like sticks on the trail I hike regularly. These sticks and stones have become part of my stable of imagery. Other times it is about things that have happened in my life. There is one quilt I started when I first got married and I finished it almost 20 years later, when I was divorcing. I carried that quilt in a little box through 7 moves and when I figured out how to finish it, it became a shrine to the beginning, a stone encrusted grotto.

So, I have the idea, I draw sketches, and then I start in with fabric, to build the images required to express the idea. Sometimes I just start by sewing together two large pieces of fabric, with a horizon line. Then I start cutting into it to put in the figures, stones, etc, whatever it is about. Other times I make a cartoon and piece together the images in fabric. It is always a back and forth, just like a painter. Sometimes I paint as I go, or paint later. I usually try to hold off on sewing on beads, etc until after the quilt is quilted. I had my early quilts quilted by hand (in Kentucky) but now I get them machine quilted, after moving to New Mexico.

What do you love about fiber art? What do you find frustrating?
I love the feel of the fabric, and I love the imagery in each piece. Fabric offers so much more than paint, in some ways. There is the color and the value and also imagery within each piece. So you have to think about how the fabric reflects light, and scale of imagery in addition to considering the color and value. And then, I can still add to all that with paint marks, and with beads,and other things that have to do with the idea or are required for the over all statement.

What is your artistic vision?
I have always made things that occur to me. The ideas line up in my head and I work on whatever I am the hottest about. Lately I have been fascinated and obsessed by making retro aprons, the putting together of three fabrics (that I have designed) and that wrap your body in a flattering way. So, then I had the sewing group send me all the stacks of cutting scraps. I love the little stacks. I take these stacked scraps and introduce them to another contrasting fabric, stitch them together in long rows, cut those apart, introducing yet another pre-pieced fabric, and them pin these together on the pin up wall, until it balances according to value, color and scale of mark.

How did you find that vision?
I do warm up exercises, like log cabin quilts, when I need to think and get to a new Art idea. Maybe the aprons are a warm up thing, but the scrap bag quilts are where it leads. Most of my work is something personal that has universal expression, something I have experienced that is also what others experience.

What challenges you as an artist?
One of the biggest challenges is staying focused, and having enough time to get the work done. Making Art is a very isolating occupation, so it requires many hours alone working to get it finished. It takes so much self discipline when taking on a new idea, to commit to the hours it takes to see it through.

How do you handle personal road blocks in your artwork?
Sometimes I have to put something aside for a while to think and wait for it to resolve in my mind. I also attend as many museums, art exhibitions, etc as I can. I do scrap bag quilts as warm up exercises to get things flowing again. If I am working on something particularly difficult to figure out, I take a break and do something easy until I have the stamina to do the difficult piece.

Where do you find inspiration?
I find inspiration in everything I see, whether it is on Earth, or man made, like buildings with license plates installed all over the side in a quilt pattern, or the sticks laid out by rushing water, or things that happen to me and others. Also fireworks-I love the fire part, but also the marks the smoke makes on the sky, and how the land looks in the colored light of the fire, and how it reflects in the river or snow. Things like that that you see in life.

Let’s say you have a huge grant to build an art piece of your dreams. What would you make?
Maybe a big carved bed with an embellished quilt that goes with the idea, or a spirit house from sticks left over from construction that has a quilted, padded interior, something with painted wood, mosaic and quilted cloth.

Do you have any upcoming projects or art shows this year?
I have a fireworks quilt I am trying to finish in time for a Saqa show (Saqa is a quilters organization) I would like to be included in.

I am gearing up to draw new fabric designs. (I am planning to have a booth at Terruride Bluegrass festival with my daughter (she makes amazing jewelry) to sell my aprons, hydrating quilted backpacks, and baby quilts)
And I am making the scrap bag quilts that I would like to exhibit, about 12 to 15, as a group showing the progression.

How can people contact you?
Terrie Mangat
PO Box 1950
El Prado, NM87529

terrie @ taosnet.com

my website

Kimberly Hamill will be in this year’s Beyond The Fringe.

What is your artistic background?
I come from a family of artists. All of my siblings make their livings in the arts. I started making art with cloth, thread and yarn when I was about ten years old. I have also done a lot of painting and drawing in my past. Now I mostly weave.

Why did you choose the medium of fiber to express yourself?
I guess the medium of fiber chose me. I am quite certain that there is a weaver archetype that I did not chose, but simply am.

What is your process from original idea to finished piece?
It varies a lot. Sometimes I use yarns that I spin myself. Other times I use commercially spun yarns. I always dye my own yarn. Control and creation of color is central to my inspiration. I dye my yarns using the dye stuffs I have on hand (onion skins, chamisa flowers, madder roots, indigo, etc.). What I have on hand depends on the seasons and other factors. (It takes about a year to eat enough onions to make a dye bath with the skins). Sometimes I chart a basic pattern for a weaving and start warping when I see that I have the colors I need. Other times I start with color, set up a weaving and make up the design as I go.

What do you love about fiber art? What do you find frustrating?
I love the intention that goes into fiber art. The process of finding fleeces, spinning them into yarn, dyeing colors and finally weaving makes me feel as though my final piece is casting a powerful spell. All that time and focused energy makes a piece of art powerful in a way that is hard to explain. I struggle with the limitations that the weaving medium has on my creation of images. I miss painting and want to get back to it someday. I struggle with finding enough time to do it all. The limitations are at the same time confining and freeing. It is exciting to create imagery within the grid of a weaving. I am constantly working to push the limits of what I can do as a weaver.

What is your artistic vision?
I find this question hard to answer. Ideally, my vision is to create art that comes from a place other than my conscious understandings. My best works have been ones that I did not understand until they were finished.

How did you find that vision?
I think it helped me a lot growing up in a family that is so supportive of the arts. Really it is a matter of being in a place that is open enough for the vision to find me.

What challenges you as an artist?
I struggle with making time to make my art central in my life. As a Mother, wife and teacher I have to constantly remind myself that I am also an artist.

How do you handle personal road blocks in your artwork?
Ideally I just continue, come what may. Often that means I have to finish all the unfinished business going on in the rest of my life. For me, roadblocks seem to be most often connected to procrastination.

Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere.

Let’s say you have a huge grant to build an art piece of your dreams. What would you make?
I would travel the world in order to study all of the weaving traditions still in existence. I would create a huge installation with a weaving to represent each of them.

Do you have any upcoming projects or art shows this year?
Beyond the Fringe, Stables Gallery, Taos, New Mexico, March 25- April 3. I also will be teaching weaving classes in Taos all year (Navajo style, backstrap style and walking loom style). A schedule is available on my web site Manos Weaving School.

How can people contact you?
kwhitneyh @ gmail .com
Manos Weaving School