Tara Ritacco started her career in the Los Angeles garment industry for an evening wear company and later developed textiles and dyed fabrics for the Walt Disney Company, Character Costuming.
How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?
My journey started with my mother teaching me to sew a young age. This creative hand-to-heart connection created a very strong bond.
Tell us more about your experiences in the garment industry.
My college days lead me to an arts and science path and specifically to patternmaking, design, textiles and fiber arts in school. This provided an avenue to work in the garment and costuming industries.
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My dying skills were essential in my job with the Walt Disney Character Costume division, creating garments that the walk around characters used in parks worldwide. The costumes had to withstand daily laundering and sun exposure. Developing these fabrics with the textile mills required endless testing.
Dress and Headdress, 2014, Dress: 66” x 35” x 10” Headdress: 66” x 35” x 10” contains LED and EL wire lights, hand dyed fabric using a drill to spin the fabric, dyed using shibori techniques.
Worn in Port Townsend Wearable Art Show, shown at Palos Verdes Art Center, Oceanside Museum of Art and PHES Gallery.
How has your professional textile experience influenced your fiber art quilts?
Having practiced with textiles, color theory and design I was led to the world of quilt arts. Dying and printing my own fabrics excites me and ignites my creativity. I will often use unconventional items and specialty fabrics that I’ve collected over the years. I love exploring new techniques, ideas and challenges.
Our family spent a lot of time at Seal Beach on weekends and summers. In 1983 a terrible storm washed away the middle section of the pier. We took many walks on the pier and made fond memories there. Shown at Mancuso Shows, Quilt International Long Beach and Road to California.
Lavender buds are sewn into the framed binding reminding us to breathe in this healing scent. The mountains in the distance are near Palm Springs giving beautiful desert sunsets admiring nature’s bounty of the lavender fields in Beaumont, California.
This was shown in SAQA’s Regional Desert Beauty Exhibition in Phoenix, AZ.
Temecula Valley has many fine wines to experience with family and friends. Celebrating sunsets, friendships, and good wine!
Temecula History Museum and Road to California
Do you have a dedicated space for creating? If so, what does it look like?
My studio is a dedicated bedroom in our home which is adjacent to the laundry room that has an industrial sink, essential to any dyer. The outside porch houses my dye pots and burners.
Hygieia in ancient Greece was the goddess of health, and from her name we have our word “hygiene.” Gustav Klimt chose her as one of his subjects in a famous painting for the University of Vienna, balancing symbols of life and death. During the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, this painting spoke to me. My quilt depicts the virus lurking to the figure’s left, but a a pregnant woman to her right indicates that life continues. Shown at Poway Art Center, SAQA Regional Show, Newport Beach Library, and Pasadena Museum of History, Road to California, Mancuso Shows
Do you teach classes and/or workshops?
Classes I have taught include graduation dyeing, marbling, Shibori, indigo and natural dyeing, stamp making and mono printing.
Shown at Road to California, Pasadena Museum of History, and Quilts Inc.
The coat of the leopard is beautiful in its markings and allows it to camouflage itself in nature. Solitary, strong and determined, these cats take their prey up the trees to keep it away from other predators, unlike other cats. They are territorial against their own gender. Mancuso Shows and Road to California
With the trails being closed in March 2020, the animals freely roamed in their lagoon habitat. This protected aviary area is primitive and full of life. We walk the trails almost every day and look forward to the wonders that nature provides in its natural beauty. Hand dyed silk and specialty fabrics. Shown and purchased at Greenly Art Space
Monarchs travel up to 3,000 miles to migrate from North American climates to Central Mexico for the winter. The population has been on the decline since 1996 from 1.2 million to 1,900 last year. Pacific grove, CA known as “Butterfly Town USA” experienced not a single monarch, this past year due to the wildfires, insecticides, & herbicides. They are now on the watchlist for possible extinction. Help slow this process by planting native milkweed. Shown at Road to California, Mancuso Shows and Road to California.
Reminiscent of the folklore behind the giant krakens that had the capacity to bring down ships. Shown at Mancuso Shows, Road to California and Visions Museum of Textile Art.
Where can people see your work?
My work can be seen on my website: www.tararitacco.com
As well as these other locations:
Front Porch – Lift the Sky
Quilts on the Wall
Violet Protest
Galleries, Museums and Traveling Shows:
Greenly Art Space
International Quilt Festival Long Beach
Oceanside Museum of Art
Pacific International Quilt Festival and Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza (Mancuso Shows)
Palos Verdes Art Center
Pasadena Museum of History
PHES Gallery
Port Townsend Wearable Art Show
Quilt Show Reno
Road to California
Visions Museum of Textile Art
Temecula History Museum
Inspiration Gallery
Studio Art Quilt Associates
Texas Quilt Museum
The Studio Door
Interview posted July 2024
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