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Jim Cusmano, Island Beach 4
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Landscapes from a Lifetime.
by James Cusmano
I first discovered the amazing medium of silk paint-
ing quite by accident in 1994. My wife Christine and I
had devoted more than ten years of our lives to intense
creative output as artists and gallery owners during the 1980s.
We sold mostly paper art to both private and corporate clients
and had a lucrative picture framing operation to complement
the art sales. Christine was the curator and primary manager
of the gallery and I was one of her resident artists. We sold
the gallery around 1986 in order to prepare for the arrival of
our youngest son.
Like many artists, I have chosen to be a dual career busi-
nessperson. I paint for passion and design consumer products
to maintain my lifestyle. After the sale of our gallery, I took
a hiatus from fine art and focused more time on my design career.
It took about eight years for the creative urge to kick back
in. At first, I was not creating much in the way of serious art
and was just dabbling in some very basic wearable items. I
painted dinosaurs with DECA SILK dyes on white cotton
T-shirts for my 7-year-old son. I still have the first three
shirts that I painted. They are well-worn and well washed but
they’re really neat and have priceless nostalgic value. They
remain a great reminder of where I started.
(To read more, go to Vol. 23, Issue No. 3.)
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By the Waters 1, Dorothy Bunny Bowen
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Outer Doors and Inner Worlds
Dorothy Bunny Bowen with
Tunizia Abdur-Raheem
Dorothy Bunny Bowen – she prefers Bunny – makes art that touches the internal and the eternal. Her paintings present the natural world and its elements, from the mundane to the sublime. She paints nature from views not normally shared on canvas – a view of a river framed by trees, a view of mountains seen from the cracks of ruins. According to Bunny’s website and her descriptions of her art, she has observed and painted the nuances of passages, transformations and doorways, both outer doors and inner one’s – reflections of the interior journey we all take as we pass through the dimensions of this world.
She is a formally trained artist, having studied oil painting at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia – a women’s college at the time. She is a native of Virginia. Her Master of Arts from the University of New Mexico is in Art History. Not finding much interest in so-called classical art forms, she specialized in non-European art, including Asian, African Native American and the arts of Oceania. Her Master’s thesis was on Navajo pictorial weaving.
(To read more, go to Vol. 23, Issue No. 3.)
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Koi Fish by Linda Bolhuis, MSP/DSA
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How to Become a Distinguished Silk Artist (DSA)
updated by Kathy Goodson
As many of you know, in 2009 SPIN introduced a new Signature Membership level to its members in recognition of artistic achievement in silk painting. Anyone working in 2- or 3-D media or in wearable art can apply for this membership, and, if the review of one’s portfolio by the panel of professional artists is successful, this applicant will be designated as a Master Silk Painter (the designation was changed to Distinguished Silk Artist in 2014). The artist will be entitled to use the initials “MSP” (now “DSA”) after their name, and will also have their work on silk exhibited on SPIN’s website as that of a Signature Member. I was very honoured and excited when asked to submit my portfolio for the very first round of evaluations. Together with five other artists I was awarded this title and introduced into the SPIN Signature Membership Selection Committee (or MSP Committee for short), which from that time on started to review applications sent by the artists interested in obtaining the MSP title. And so my joys and sufferings, as a Master Silk Painter, began...”
Thus begins an article written by Liena Dieck for the 2011 Silkworm. There have been a few changes since then; first and foremost the title has changed from “Master Silk Painter” and “Master Silk Artist” to “Distinguished Silk Artist” in order to combine the two titles into one. For the remainder of the article, “Distinguished Silk Artist” or DSA will designate the same Signature status that MSP and MSA did.
(To read more, go to Vol. 23, Issue No. 3.)
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