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Updated: Sunday, November 01, 2009
CB fiber artist displays silk paper artworks, teaches at NB gallery
Silk means elegance, luxury, wealth. Silk is lustrous and resilient; it shimmers and it caresses. In the hands of fiber artist Liz Brende, silk is accessories and silk is art.
Next month she will offer a class, Making Silk Paper, at Easy Lane Frames Select Art Gallery, North Bend. Don’t let the name mislead — you’ll make paper, yes, insofar as your project will have a moldable structure, but this won’t be something you’ll crumple and toss.
Brende’s creations tumble over one another in the gallery’s glass display case, gleaming with colors as rich as rare gems. She shows gift bags and clutches, trifold needle cases and checkbook holders. She has manipulated her heavy, silk papers into cases for eyeglasses and business card holders.
“We live in a silk factory,” she said. “I’ve taken over two-thirds of the house.”
Brende retired from nursing last February after working for 30 years at Bay Area Hospital. She laughs as she describes the way silks now dominate her life. With recently retired husband Jim Brende, a photographer, art-making equals energy. They’re busy. She says that she and her husband have both lost weight on the “retirement diet.”
Making silk papers begins with Tussah silk fibers, from wild silkworms (Antheraea mylitta). The filaments of Tussah silk are stronger and coarser than cultivated silk, and they eagerly take to the dark, rich, jewel-tone dyes that Brende favors. Taking the unspun silk fibers, she’ll begin to gently tug on them, pulling them apart to lay crosswise on pieces of netting. A soap and water wash follows, and then with a brush she’ll paint the sheet of silk with a textile medium.
The sheets are then placed on drying racks — and here’s where the rooms begin to fill with silk. The size of the drying rack, Brende notes, limits the size of her pieces. She’ll iron an interfacing to the dried silk paper, and then she’s off to the sewing machine.
Brende’s mother taught her to sew at age 8. “Ever since I was small I’ve done fabric. I’ve made my own clothes, played around with batiks and I emboss silk scarves.”
The scarves are on display at Easy Lane, along with silk paper panels so texturally attractive, it’s difficult not to reach out and touch. The artistic accessories came about serendipitously, when Brende folded a large, silk paper sheet into thirds. “I said, oh, a clutch,” she recalls, and proceeded to embellish it with metallic threads, lustrous rayon stitches, and “whatever I can lay my hand on.”
Lately her hand found its way into a cache of exquisite, Czech glass buttons. Sparkling and glistening, the buttons are rarely a solitary adornment. For example, a 3-by-4-inch gift bag or “theater purse,” constructed of deep green and teal silk and overlaid with swirls of shiny green threads, sports a fold-over flap closed with velcro and fastened with a polished circle of turquoise. Brende crossed this button with more green thread, found a tiny silver scallop for the center and topped the whole with an iridescent green bead.
The bags are over sprayed with a flexible varnish for protection, and more durability. Happily, the vibrant colors are in no way dimmed by this treatment. “I get to sew with rainbows,” said Brende, and just like the Greek goddess Iris, she does.
Teri Albert reviews art and artists for The World. She can be reached at malbert3@verizon.net.
Silk means elegance, luxury, wealth. Silk is lustrous and resilient; it shimmers and it caresses. In the hands of fiber artist Liz Brende, silk is accessories and silk is art.
Next month she will offer a class, Making Silk Paper, at Easy Lane Frames Select Art Gallery, North Bend. Don’t let the name mislead — you’ll make paper, yes, insofar as your project will have a moldable structure, but this won’t be something you’ll crumple and toss.
Brende’s creations tumble over one another in the gallery’s glass display case, gleaming with colors as rich as rare gems. She shows gift bags and clutches, trifold needle cases and checkbook holders. She has manipulated her heavy, silk papers into cases for eyeglasses and business card holders.
“We live in a silk factory,” she said. “I’ve taken over two-thirds of the house.”
Brende retired from nursing last February after working for 30 years at Bay Area Hospital. She laughs as she describes the way silks now dominate her life. With recently retired husband Jim Brende, a photographer, art-making equals energy. They’re busy. She says that she and her husband have both lost weight on the “retirement diet.”
Making silk papers begins with Tussah silk fibers, from wild silkworms (Antheraea mylitta). The filaments of Tussah silk are stronger and coarser than cultivated silk, and they eagerly take to the dark, rich, jewel-tone dyes that Brende favors. Taking the unspun silk fibers, she’ll begin to gently tug on them, pulling them apart to lay crosswise on pieces of netting. A soap and water wash follows, and then with a brush she’ll paint the sheet of silk with a textile medium.
The sheets are then placed on drying racks — and here’s where the rooms begin to fill with silk. The size of the drying rack, Brende notes, limits the size of her pieces. She’ll iron an interfacing to the dried silk paper, and then she’s off to the sewing machine.
Brende’s mother taught her to sew at age 8. “Ever since I was small I’ve done fabric. I’ve made my own clothes, played around with batiks and I emboss silk scarves.”
The scarves are on display at Easy Lane, along with silk paper panels so texturally attractive, it’s difficult not to reach out and touch. The artistic accessories came about serendipitously, when Brende folded a large, silk paper sheet into thirds. “I said, oh, a clutch,” she recalls, and proceeded to embellish it with metallic threads, lustrous rayon stitches, and “whatever I can lay my hand on.”
Lately her hand found its way into a cache of exquisite, Czech glass buttons. Sparkling and glistening, the buttons are rarely a solitary adornment. For example, a 3-by-4-inch gift bag or “theater purse,” constructed of deep green and teal silk and overlaid with swirls of shiny green threads, sports a fold-over flap closed with velcro and fastened with a polished circle of turquoise. Brende crossed this button with more green thread, found a tiny silver scallop for the center and topped the whole with an iridescent green bead.
The bags are over sprayed with a flexible varnish for protection, and more durability. Happily, the vibrant colors are in no way dimmed by this treatment. “I get to sew with rainbows,” said Brende, and just like the Greek goddess Iris, she does.
Teri Albert reviews art and artists for The World. She can be reached at malbert3@verizon.net.
Class info
“Making Silk Papers” is slated for 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, at Easy Lane Frames Select Art Gallery, 3440 Broadway, North Bend. Class cost is $40; limited to 8 students. Stop by or call 756-7638 to register and receive a materials list.
“Making Silk Papers” is slated for 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, at Easy Lane Frames Select Art Gallery, 3440 Broadway, North Bend. Class cost is $40; limited to 8 students. Stop by or call 756-7638 to register and receive a materials list.
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