Art Cloth Mastery Program 2012: Cindy Stentz

alchemy: the ancestors breath, 2012, 35" x 20"

silk noil, hand dyed,discharged, printed with thickened dye and textile paint, hand and machine stitched

alchemy: the ancestors breath - detail

alchemy: rebirth, 2013, 21 x 23

silk noil, hand dyed, printed with thickened dye and textile paint, hand and machine stitched

alchemy: rebirth - detail

alchemy: lunar water, 2014, 27" x 38"

silk noil, silk organza, dyed, discharged, printed with thickened dye, beaded, hand and machine stitched

alchemy: lunar water - detail

Artist Statement

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering."

Ben Okri

I am a mixed media textile artist. Creative expression has led me throughout my life. Being often alone as a child elicited an active imagination leading me into the natural world around me as well as the inner landscape of the dream and spirit. My inspiration is born from my love of the inherent mystery coursing through both of these landscapes, and the way each intersects in the psychology of our humanness.

My engagement with textiles is therapeutic for me. The current forms I use began many years ago as an attempt to "piece" together and visually manifest my experience in life. I have studied the work of Carl Jung for forty years and have been deeply moved and informed by his exploration of psychological alchemy. My current work is an attempt to express how these transformational images live in me. I experience an ancestral link to this ancient idea of making Life and Beauty from the basic material of our humanness. I see these explorations in textile art as process and a significant engagement with my own prima materia. I work with dreams, words, fabric, dye, paint and stitch as my daily practice.

Biography

Cynthia Stentz is a mixed media textile artist. Her work has been included in juried exhibitions; including The Pacific Northwest Quilt Show (1999), the biennial fibre art show at the American Art Company in Tacoma, Washington (2011 and 2014), The Surface Design Association member show "Dancing Surfaces" (2013), and won third prize in the category "Master's: Surface Design" in the LaConner, Washington International Quilt Fest (2013). Stentz has completed a two and one half year Mastery program with Jane Dunnewald in San Antonio, Texas and has studied with many excellent teachers, including Elin Noble, Ann Johnston and Carol Soderland.

She is also included in the Twelve Voices from One Exhibition at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, curated by Jane Dunnewold.

The Mastery Program

This exhibition represents three years of intense and dedicated study on the part of the participants. The Art Cloth Mastery Program 2012, in which they were enrolled, required five week long sessions in the San Antonio studio, in addition to demanding assignments which were addressed during the interim periods.

Artists interested in surface design processes are at a disadvantage in this country. Most opportunities for study require either enrollment on site at a university or college, or are offered as week-long workshops through adult education summer programming. The inability to relocate to a program venue inhibits artistic mastery, as does the limited experience of a week’s class without a systematic follow-up.

The Mastery Program was developed to address this reality. The selected participants study surface design techniques on cloth, and also color, design and the articulation of a personal visual language. Each artist is required to develop a research project related to the dyes, chemicals or paints used as part of the patterning palette. Assembled together, these projects will eventually become a catalogue of research to contribute to the surface design field at large.

Professional behavior is also a topic of discourse. Artists prepared a resume, visual documentation, an artist’s statement and a biography as part of the requirement for completion of the program.

This exhibition is a sampling of the finest work being presented by serious students of surface design today. I expect each of these artists will continue to generate studio work for exhibition after the program is completed. Initially, the work of these artists will be a featured exhibition at the international Houston Quilt festival in the Fall of 2014. Later, these artists may choose to extend their circle of influence by teaching. Others may decide to write a book or produce some other lasting contribution to the field. The future is rich with possibility. It has been my great pleasure to accompany them on this exciting path. I congratulate each on the efforts of the past two and a half years.

Art Cloth Mastery Program 2012

Click for details on each artist.

Pages

Cindy Stentz

No comments:

Post a Comment