Suzanne Taetzch

Untitled (trees 2), 2013, 38.5" x 41.5"

resist dyed silk, cotton thread, paper lamination, hand stitched

Untitled (trees 2) - detail

 Breakdown (red and blue), 2014, 41.5" x 40"

resist dyed silk, cotton thread, hand stitched

 Breakdown (red and blue) - detail

 Her Story Had Holes In It, 2014, 31.5" x 44.5"

silk, painted paper, pencil, cotton thread

 Her Story Had Holes In It - detail

Artist Statement

It seems I was born with an acute sense for rhythm. Tap dancing. Dragging a stick along a picket fence. Walking bass lines. Baseball card in the bicycle tire. These are examples of repetitive sounds with subtle variations that will capture my attention. As a visual artist, I express this rhythmic sensibility by creating work with repetitive marks that harmonize, and contrast, overlap and reverberate to form a composition I can see, hear, and feel.

In the studio I am drawn towards processes that result in interesting surfaces by their nature, and allow these marks to inform the work. I prefer basic, low-tech tools, and marks that are direct and primitive. My current fiber of choice is silk noil, which I dye using resists and bindings, methods that I've adapted from traditional Japanese techniques. When the dyeing is complete, hand stitching allows me to further contemplate a piece and to add another syncopated beat, a final percussive layer.

I am constantly paring down, whittling away to the essence of the expression, seeking combinations that might feel accidental and imperfect, and at the same time, exactly correct.

Biography

Suzanne Taetzsch is a contemporary fiber artist living in Rhode Island.

She earned a BFA in metalsmithing from SUNY New Paltz in 1985, and after ten years of making and exhibiting in metals, she began to look for an art form that was less labor intensive from start to finish of each piece.

Around 1993 she had the opportunity to explore photography, and working with long exposures and moving subjects she created several bodies of work that were abstract, graphic, and textured. The surprise and serendipity of this work was exciting, but didn’t lend itself to any additional marks made by hand, and the process felt removed and impersonal.

She began experimenting with fabric about 2008, and in 2012 a scholarship to Jane Dunnewold’s Art Cloth Mastery Program provided an opportunity to expand her understanding of the properties of fabric and dyes and the many tools and techniques available in textile surface design. Her current direction in fiber seems to satisfy both her love of serendipity as well as her need to be hands on.

Her exhibitions in 2014 include Fiber in the Present Tense, at ArtWorks!, New Bedford, MA, and Twelve Voices From One, International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX, curated by Jane Dunnewold.

SuzanneTaetzsch can be reached by email.