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Bio
An American residing since 1990 in Everberg, Belgium, Linda Colsh has lived in America, Asia and Europe. A lifelong artist with two degrees in Art History, she exhibits in the US and internationally. Her work is published and in collections worldwide. After serving as the first European Representative, Linda currently serves on the Board of Directors of Studio Art Quilt Associates.
Statement
Making art is something I have always done for the challenge of design and the joy of working with dye, paint, and stitch. The peripatetic life I lead puts me in places of immense inspiration. I draw on all that I see and experience to interpret, reinterpret and present in fiber.
My medium is a pieced, layered and stitched art form in which surface design plays a most important role.
To create my artwork, I turn to my photographs, drawings and writings, as well as the thinking that is an important part of my process. I do a lot of thinking while on my daily 5-mile runs through the fields near my home or during those quiet times when I can let my mind wander in random, roaming ways, or when I need to focus on a concept in a more direct, linear way.
Work begins with blank white or black cloth that I alter with dye, discharge and paint. I work with design software to develop images for printing by digital or traditional methods. My process is weighted to designing and preparing content and cloth before the actual stitching together.
My work is often figurative, starting with photographs I take of real people who are, to me, anonymous. In my imagination and on paper, I create a character, who I place in a setting and surround with items—props—that define the character or the narrative I envision for the character. I work with images on my computer and then with surface design processes to put everything on cloth.
Then, I compose and stitch together squares and rectangles of my surface-designed fabric into designs that tell the stories, make the comments, and express the things I have to say.
I am currently working in several series with themes that focus on aspects of growing old: invisibility, isolation, privacy, identity, and our concepts of what is beautiful (or not). I like the push-pull of looking at something from all sides and then, carrying that observation further by imagining that same thing not there at all. What is important is what is seen, what is not seen and what is imagined.
I love how a walk in the fog sets the mind’s eye working to see more than plain eyesight reveals, to fill in the blanks and imagine what is obscured. I approach making my art with the goal of trying to achieve that combination of the visual with the challenge of mystery.
Resume HIghlights
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
Solo, 2- and 3-Artist Shows:
3 Artists, Galerie Holtrop, Tilburg, the Netherlands 2010
Solo: Straßen-Szenen, Freiburg Germany 2010
Solo: Quotidien de la rue, La Bastide des Jourdans, France 2009
Works by Linda Colsh, Textilmuzeum, Budapest, Hungary 2006
Artiste Invitée: Carrefour Européen du Patchwork, France 2001
Silk Works by Yuri Bast & Linda Colsh, Korea 1989
Solo Show: Seoul, Korea 1990
Juried:
12 Voices 2008
Art Quilt Elements 2008 & 2010
Fiberart International 2007
Quilt National 2005, 2007 & 2009
European Quilt Triennial 2000 & 2006
Exposed Noho Gallery NYC 2006
International Textile & Fibre Art Triennial Riga, Latvia 2007 & 2010
Visions 1996, 2006 & 2008
Baltic Minitextil Triennial Gdynia & Lodz, Poland 2007
3rd Mini Textile Art International Exhibition Ukraine 2007
Contemporary Art Quilts 2000, 2003 & 2006 UK
Patchwork au Grand-Duché Luxembourg 2000
Invitational:
Sightlines 2010
EXNA IV Patchwork contemporain européen Neuchâtel, Switzerland 2010
Mixed Media Fiber Art Danforth Museum of Art MA 2009
International Textile Art Invitational, Embroiderers Guild Australia
Cyber Fyber: Art Aprons
AWARDS:
First Prize: European Quilt Triennial 2006
First Prize: Fabric of Legacies, Lincoln Center Galleries CO 2007
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Linda Colsh’s Characters: The Unseen Made Visible Surface Design, Fall 2010
Masters: Art Quilts, Lark Books 2008
Surface Design Journal Gallery Issue 2006
Fiberarts Design Book 7
Cover: Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives
Quilting Arts magazine: Profile Artist Fall 04
Cover & featured artist: EuroQuilt #2
EDUCATION:
M.A. History of Art -- University of Maryland
B.A. History of Art -- University of Maryland
Reviews
Most often we see them from behind, usually solitary women. Their silhouettes, animated by repetition that implies determined movement, occupy the stark world of the anonymous, unnoticed elderly. It’s as if we’re following them into that world.
--Patricia Malarcher, “Linda Colsh’s Characters: The Unseen Made Visible” Surface Design Journal, Fall 2010
Her colors are restful, but her imagery is not. Linda Colsh's work mostly stays within a limited palette of browns, blacks, and whites...Her images repeat, fading in and out of the background as if seen through the mist. Figures are mysterious, seemingly glimpsed from a distance...The viewer has to work to decipher the messages implied in Colsh's imagery, but the resultant sense of a deeper understanding is worth the effort.
--Martha Sielman, Masters: Art Quilts, Lark Books, 2008
Linda Colsh's "Mole & Henge" is a richly somber composition, in which an optically dazzling interplay of circular and rectangular shapes enlivens a variegated field of mostly dark hues. The expansive scale of Colsh's work adds to its impressive depth.
--Ed McCormack, "Exposing the Significance of Contemporary Art Quilts in the Noho Gallery Exhibition" Gallery & Studio, Feb/March 2006
Like every artist, Linda Colsh draws inspiration from her surroundings. But this quilter and surface design artist has a richer and more varied portfolio of geographical images and experiences to draw from than most...She was particularly captivated by iconography, making it the focus of her Master's thesis and a strong theme in her work today.
--Cate Coulacos Prato, "Linda Colsh: Artist Profile" Quilting Arts Magazine, Fall 2004
Linda Colsh's winning quilt "Cold Shoulder" has a sobering message stitched into its layers. The aged female figures, cloaked in heavy winter coats, are overshadowed by the dark landscape that surrounds them. Their very inclusion in such a dominating background in itself excludes them from the bigger picture, creating a statement of how we, as a modern society, deal with an increasingly aging population.
--Janet Rae "New Directions: Impassioned Messages" Popular Patchwork, Winter 2007
Repeated images of figures that are built up into beautiful and evocative compositions are characteristic of Linda Colsh’s work. This time, a lonely person under an umbrella battles her way through the deluge in the haunting Sudden Storm.
--Dr. Susan Marks, Selvedge, December 2007