Spotlight: Linda Colsh, Fiber Artist

Linda Colsh creates fiber art influenced by pictures of people she has taken over the years and the land where she currently lives. Using surface design techniques and digital software, her work tells stories to the viewer.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

As early as I can remember, I made art. I remember as a child rescuing old roller window shades to stretch out on the floor to crayon-draw and color big imaginary landscapes 

What do you do differently? What is your signature that makes your work stand out as yours?

My technique involves printing on fabric or paper using screens I make with a thermal imager. While surface designers have used thermal imager screens for many years, the way I prepare images in photo altering software is, I believe, unique and gives my work a look that is different.

People recognize my art by the elderly women and men I choose as subjects and by the way I print their images. I layer screen prints, registering multiple screens by eye, to create my signature look.

What inspires your work? 

For many years, I found inspiration in the city streets of Europe, where I lived and traveled. After 24 years living overseas, I returned to rural Maryland, living on a hill off a small country road and my perspective broadened from an urban focus to finding links between populated places and the natural world.

Does your work have stories to tell?

Definitely. Every character has a story. I choose the people that I include in my pieces for what I see in them, how I see their life.

Like the author who writes a novel, I don’t know their lives, but I create a backstory for each one and often weave their stories together. My workbooks are both immediate and a record.

Ideas progress from first sparks to fully thought-out narratives, with unworkable ideas left undeveloped. I also have what I think of as my master workbook of characters where I keep a thumbnail and character notes as create a person’s story.

My work with used coffee filters reminds me of shared times with friends over coffee and my spiral artworks are books in scroll form, each with a theme and stories unrolling as a narrative.

Several of my artworks explore nature, with or without people. I have interpreted the night sky, which is particularly clear and bright where I live. Trees, creek stones and the seasons appear in my work.

How did you find your creative niche? 

I have always made art, and always thought of myself as an artist. By high school and college, I was working with oils, watercolors and painting wooden wildfowl hand carved by my grandfather. In 1981, I started quilting and turned to art quilting and surface design about 1987.

After years living abroad, we moved to our country retirement home. Here, I now walk small, empty country roads surrounded by woods, creeks and farm fields. It is rare now to see another person. The change of surroundings started me thinking about connections and parallels between urban places and natural environments.

What different creative media do you use in your work? Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?

I’m happiest when in my wet studio where the painting and printing fabric happens.

For years, my work has been dominated by screenprinted figures. For my figures’ backgrounds, I dyed fabrics for years, but have turned to acrylic paints thinned to stain plain white fabric to conserve water (our house is on a well). I’m continually tweaking my photoshop image prep as I make fine improvements to the laser copies that I run through an old thermal imager to create the screens. I rely on several positive, negative and line images for each character.

I have a typical stash of fabric, but also a special stash of people printed on fabrics to combine when the idea for a particular crowd narrative arises. The composition takes place on my design wall where I move pieces around until I have the design that works and that tells the story. Once that is decided, I draw the composition to work out the math and start to cut and piece and then baste and quilt. 

My signature palette tends neutral, and my compositions strive for simplicity. I often include large quiet areas of plain painted fabric. Over the years, I have eliminated extraneous imagery, letting elements such as a person’s clothing, hat, shopping trolleys, bags and stance suggest his or her story.

How do you manage your creative time? Do you schedule start and stop times? Or work only when inspired?

I work fewer hours now. However, the creative urge is an irresistible force and I find much happiness and comfort in the studio. It is easy to zone out and lose track of time there. Often, when I’m on my iMac doing other things, I detour into altering one of my photos to prepare for screens, tinkering with details and contrast to get it right.

Because inspiration hits often, I don’t really plan to work or set aside special times to go into the studio. I just do.

Do you have a dedicated space for creating? If so, what does it look like?

I am fortunate to have a well-lit comfortably large work studio. The wet room is lined with 2 walls of open shelves for supplies, paints, brushes, markers and the stuff of inspiration like stones, grasses, sticks, antique printing blocks and Korean wood window frames. This printing/painting room also has a design wall, a large sink and studio washer and dryer. I have two large custom-made worktables. One is dedicated to painting and printing and the other topped with a mat for cutting large fabrics, marking and other tasks. 

My sewing room is on the second floor, with my Bernina 930 sewing machine, two design walls and a closet for the stash. My windows overlook our hill with the mountains in the distance. I’m often entertained by little birds on the windowsill and hawks soaring above the valley.

Do you use a sketchbook or journal? How does that help your work develop?

My workbooks teem with sketches, words, clippings, quotes, inspirational writings, ideas for titles and characters and whatever I’m thinking about. For the last 10 years or so, I start a new one each January.

I have a master character notebook with a thumbnail of each person, notes about their character, maybe a name if their image suggests one to me. My master character workbook is the most important workbook I have. Other workbooks are more fluid and disorganized, but just as essential to my process. I also have a binder in my sewing room for cutting and sewing diagrams and swatch and color sample books in my wet studio.

How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

I work on several projects at a time. That’s why my design walls are often layered with 2, 3 or more project strata like an archaeological dig. Occasionally, if I don’t want to disturb a composition on the design wall, I move fabric pieces around on the “design floor.” Many ideas and characters are works in progress on my iMac. 

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?

The women on this double scroll represent caryatids. Caryatids are the stone architectural supports carved in female form of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis. The 3D form is a double scroll with two volutes that replicate the form of an ionic column capital. I screenprinted onto used paper coffee filters the images of 32 ordinary, anonymous women photographed in the streets. I save and repurpose the filters as memories of friends and conversations shared over coffee. The other side is printed with stone patterns on fabric. Drawing from the concept of caryatids as strong women, I chose the elderly women because of my interest in how experience and stamina enable people to cope with the often-overwhelming world they navigate.

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

Surface design on fabric is the part of my process I most adore. I love pushing wet paint on fabric and paper or through a screen. I enjoy time spent altering my photos on my iMac.

The challenge for me is staying intrigued during stitching. Deciding on a composition is an enjoyable challenge, but my interest is harder to keep at an intense level for the more mechanical cutting, sewing, quilting, binding, and finishing.

How is your work different than it was in the beginning? How is it the same?

My screenprinting and knowledge of acrylic paints is much more refined than when I was still experimenting. I still learn with every project, but discoveries are finer and more in the details of my process. My progress since 1987, when I first started working with surface design, turned from dye to discharge to painting on fabric; and, in the early 2000s, screenprinting, specializing in printing the human figure. The common thread is the surface design. 

Now, living in a very rural location, I explore parallels between the natural world of woods, streams and the quiet solitude of a country setting. I use quilting patterns both from my past (for example, oriental wooden window designs and strong verticals of columned buildings) and from my present (flowing lines of a creek’s wandering current or imagined lines made by wind coursing through branches and curling around tree trunks).

Tell us a bit more about the people in your work.

I write a story for each person in my workbook and reflect that story in the art, taking clues from clothing, what they hold, gait and posture. I usually didn’t know the person when I photographed them, but I become very close to each while working with their image. I relate them to each other much as I relate to each one of them—we become a crowd. 

Now that days pass without seeing other people, the people of my artwork are my community. I seek connections between their stories and the stones in the creek below my home, or the trees in the forests, farm animals in the fields, or even the indecipherable mystery of the pandemic. 

How do you know when a piece or project is finished and needs no additional work? 

I just know. I don’t go back to older work and revise. When the binding is on and the finishing is done, I am done too. The work is ready.

What have you learned about who you are through your creative endeavors? 

Silently walking urban streets and observing the people around me, I was the foreign one, the migrant, the other. I focused on how to bring the collected figures together to become my community.

As I worked with the images, I came to know the people (or who I imagined they are). I could be alone as the foreigner or alone living on a hill above a quiet creek in farm country. Solitude is not loneliness, solitude is a place where I can think, work with my hands, and create. 

Where can people see your work?

My website: www.lindacolsh.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/lcolsh/
I am a member of New Image Artists (www.newimageartists.com) and Studio Art Quilt Associates (www.saqa.com)