Featured Artist: Nancy Bardach

During the seven weeks of '"Size Matters" we'll focus on individual artists here on our blog. Every week, several artists will be featured. Today, we're pleased to introduce to you: Nancy Bardach.

My art quilting combines:
•    Original images
•    Commercial and artist-designed fabrics
•    Stitching lines of varied colors and patterns

I focus on images where fleeting light and permanent concrete objects intersect. This “snapshot” approach is especially appropriate at a small scale. Using the physical format of a 12” square is like squeezing a moment in time into one concentrated image.

Often in my work abstraction is combined with real or symbolically real images to convey more meaning. Similarly I employ and piece many types of fabrics with varying colors, textures, commercially designated mood and “symbols” or fabrics that have been hand-manipulated for unusual effects.

Title: Wetlands/ Drylands, 2009     

Wetlands/Drylands

•    A popular environmental theme even before the Deepwater Horizon rig swamped the Gulf waters and wetlands
•    Opposition of ideas indicated by fabric imagery and colors, a commercial pattern of beauty and a hand-dyed marbling pattern of sludgy scum
•    Diagonal seaming and cross-cutting directional placement reinforce the difference between healthy and damaged ecologies
•    Quilting stitches, varied in color, add emphasis to the difference
•    Sequences alternating vertically express optional policy and economic choices that can be made

Title: A Healing Process, 2010            

A Healing Process

•    This is one of a series of health and healing pieces responding to the theme in various colors but with the same overall mood changes and morphology.
•    Gradations of dense to light, from compact or chaotic to open and playful fabric patterns parallel the process from poor health to healing
•    Stitching lines of varied color and density reinforce the movement from disease to health and the synergy between the two
•    Small scale is required working with the chosen fabrics. Programmatic “feeling” and scale of shapes in the commercial material and visual effect of their colors and patterns often dictated the step width
•    The 12” x 12” format is ideal for such an exercise, taking advantage of scale in fabric patterns, colors and complexity and concentrating the idea for better effect.

Title: REFLECTIONS: Glass and Teak Railings, Shipboard, 2010 
 

REFLECTIONS: Glass and Teak Railings, Shipboard

One of a series capturing sharp light effects, especially unusual and abstract ones. Concentrating both the field of view and a moment in “time” make a 12”x12” condensed format very appropriate.

•    Piecing fabrics to capture almost photographic moments of fleeting light effects
•    Concentrating on a small, well-framed part of the entire shipboard visual experience
But for one, fabrics are all simple solid colors:
•    Stark white is used to emphasize bright, late afternoon light reflecting on clear glass and the water beyond.
•    Warm sienna embodies the teak railing’s oval profile, with a highlight along its length
•    Ocean-colored fabrics are pieced in curving patterns similar to wave action and light shining on the water’s surface
•    Reflected geometric shapes on board and rectilinear aluminum framing of glass guardrails contrast with the organic nature of the waves.