Bio for Liz Kettle
Liz Kettle is a fabric and mixed media artist with a passion for teaching others the joy of making art and fascination in the creative process. Liz began her explorations in fabric by following a traditional approach to quilting. After filling her tool box with the skills needed for success in the traditional arena she began to delve into the world of art and discovered freedom and fun in mixed media.
Liz’s eclectic work is influenced by her beautiful surroundings in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, her love of vintage textiles and story. She incorporates layers and found objects to tell stories of the land and people. When she isn’t creating art, Liz writes about creativity and the creative process. Her articles appeared regularly in Quilter’s Home Magazine. Liz is co-author of Fabric Embellishing: The Basics and Beyond and Threads: The Basics and Beyond. Author of First Time Beading on Fabric and Know Your Needles.
Liz has recently moved from her long term home in Colorado with her very supportive husband. Her three remarkable sons are headed out on their own journeys and her three adorable grandsons are keeping everyone on their toes.
Artist Statement:
My work explores fabric and stitch, texture and rhythm. I am fascinated by the simple structure of the grid and its prevalence in our world. To me the grid represents both the physical structures that surround us as well as the pulse of our society and our attempts to bring order to chaos. I am inspired by many things but the rhythm of the natural world and the human mind weave their way into my work with consistency.
Echoes
Before I started considering how I wanted to use the flour sack fabric in an artwork, I went on line to read a bit of history of the J.R Bruce Ltd company. I found a wonderful little video about their state-of-the-art biscuit factory and the pride they took in the quality of their flour. I was inspired to pull out all my rust and indigo fabric to create a collage that told the story of ingenuity, machinery and hardworking people. But as I held the delicate mended fabric in my hands, I could not put it under the sewing machine needle. Somehow, that seemed too harsh a stitching method. It begged me to hand stitch it, to spend some time with it rather than rush through to finish.
I quickly realized that the indigo and rust fabrics spoke louder than the flour sack panel. I went back to my fabric bins to discover some deconstructed screen-printed fabrics that were perfect. These fabrics felt like memories of the building and the machinery it held, snippets of conversations of the employees echoing in the halls.
I choose to use the Korean Pojagi (also spelled Bojagi) manner of stitching to create this artwork with an ephemeral feel in order to capture the bittersweet echoes of this place and time and remind us of how fleeting our modern technology and tools are.
More details of Liz’s work can be seen on the gallery’s webshop page:
https://fromoutofthebluestudiogallery.com/product/echoes-liz-kettle/
Liz has a Pojagi tutorial on my Vimeo channel if anyone expresses interest in learning the technique: https://vimeo.com/228840388 .
More of the wonderful work Liz creates can be seen on http://www.textileevolution.com/