Bette Levy : Fiber

As an artist, I am interested in using historic handwork techniques to create contemporary art and to address personal and societal issues. It is important to me to use these skills in an increasingly technological/virtual world and to maintain an ongoing relationship with the past. 

 For the past 20+ years, I have been a hand embroiderer, using vividly colored silk thread on black grounds. This approach intensifies thread colors and creates strongly contrasting figure-ground relationships. Over time, I have developed a personal language of stitches that enables me to "paint" or "draw" with thread on fabric.  My subject matter is based on my photographic studies that I abstract and manipulate to emphasize seemingly inconsequential structures.  I am interested in textures and how to give form to structures through the layering of stitches and use of color.  Labor- and stitch-intensive, my work often takes considerable time to research and complete.  It is the very detail of this work, however, that provides a meditational focus. 

 Recently, my artistic practice has broadened, and embroidery is playing a less important role in my creative life.  My current focus is in three areas:  hardened crochet on or with rusted vintage tools, sculpted pig gut, and spun paper. Despite earlier focus on asymmetry, random placement, and vivid color, these three processes focus on gridded, circular or symmetrical forms executed in monochromatic colors. 

 By pairing tools with crochet, I am honoring dual modes of production.  This work contrasts men’s work with women’s work, physical labor with sedentary work, outdoor with indoor efforts, and gross motor with small motor movements.  Although handwork and tool-work skills have been largely replaced by technology, by using them in my art, I want address to history, tradition, and respect for family and gender.

 I also have been working with pig intestine or gut, which has enabled me to create two- and three-dimensional translucent forms, much larger in scale than earlier embroidered work.  My work with gut investigates primitive life forms, real and imagined, familiar subjects in my earlier embroidered work.  To me, these sculptural installations represent evolution, and birth or end-of-life issues.

 Another medium with which I have been working is spun paper.  This is a technique I learned on my recent visit to Japan, enabled by a Great Meadows grant.  Currently, I am using the created paper cord to create symmetrical and square or circular grids; I am interested in the orderliness they convey.  While my study of this material is relatively new, I see myself using this material in knotting and netting, techniques I engaged in the 1960’s – true evidence of my coming full circle.  

 While these three techniques constitute my main focus, I also work with a wide variety of textile and other techniques, such as: hand knitting with wire, rust- and walnut ink-dyeing, burning of fabric, faux-calligraphy appliqué, wax resist- or discharge-dyeing processes, and free-motion machine embroidery.  I also am experimenting with the use of non-traditional materials, such as safety pins, loom heddles, and fence ties to create sculptural forms.