Silkworm Magazine, Volume 18, Issue No. 1, March 2011
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Visit with Karen Sistek with Flowers from the Heart and investigate the nature of performance art with silk performance artist Lee Zimmerman on the flying silk painting trapeze. Also, how to frame silk paintings with Diane Lawrence and using business stats to improve your business with Bonnie Samuels. Suzanne Punch dispenses advice for potential MSP®s. |
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In This Issue |
Karen Sistek – Flowers From The Heart
Have you ever wanted to walk in Alice’s Wonderland? To see the flowers up close like you would if you just ate the “shrink me” candy? Karen Sistek makes this possible through her silk paintings. She specializes in big beautiful close-ups of flowers. Painter, Georgia O’Keefe, once stated about her intense close-ups of flora, “I decided that if I could paint that flower on a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.” And with Karen’s flower paintings, you can’t.
Karen shares with us how she developed her style. How children and their love and learning through art and crafts sparked her own creativity. She has since transitioned since her husband’s retirement from the US Coast Guard from supermom and faithful military wife to a full-fledged silk painter. One of Karen’s most fond honors was being chosen along with only eight others to paint a 3 foot 9 foot silk banner to hang at the SPIN-sponsored Orchid Show which hung at U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington D.C., in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution.
Karen’s husband, now retired from the Coast Guard, supports her just as she supported him for 26 years. He is her business manager, promoter and he also does all of the cooking, errands, coupon clipping, and even the dishes! Her mother, Jane, was an avid photographer and has kept her well supplied with magnificent close-up photos of flowers that Karen uses for inspiration. Rick's mother, Anne, has run errands and worked gallery hours. In this way, Karen is allowed to focus fulltime on producing her art. Family and friends are a great support to Karen and she attributes much of her success to them.
How does she honor them? She names her painting after them. “I started the very first one in honor of their support of me and it grew from there.” A self-taught silk artist who has found her perfect way to eliminate gutta to create a smooth soft petal-worthy edge, she tells us her tricks of the trade – not that she is stingy with them. “I’m thrilled to share. It’s good for the soul.” Read more about Karen in the Silkworm Volume 18, Issue 1.
Lee Zimmeran - The Secret Garden in Silk
The Secret becomes exposed in “The Secret Garden in Silk.” Lee Zimmerman, a talented silk painter and performance artist, paints the setting of The Secret Garden during its performance at a local Minneapolis playhouse. Following the story of a young orphaned girl who goes to live with her grieving uncle and discovers a sickly cousin and a secret garden, this play is based on an English and American classic book written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. After Lee’s talented daughter landed the lead of Mary Lennox, Lee stole the stage —or at least the set. “I was the garden.”
Lee did 15 shows over 3 sold-out weekends painting a series of 5 large panels for each performance — that is about 180 square feet of garden for each set. Painted in stages to depict the three seasons of winter, spring and for the finale summer, Lee painted behind the silk so all the audience saw was the dye slipping through the silk. This live art “was the most exquisite process with which I have ever been involved. The story, the music, the acting, the singing and the painting seemed to meld into a single beautiful voice that really touched something very personal and universal.”
Lee shares with us his process and how he created the key sets without taking the focus of the audience off his daughter and the rest of the cast. How he created the seasonal effects using the same panels of silk, as the curtain never closed in this particular production of The Secret Garden. He even shares with us the products he used to accomplish such a masterful and work-intensive task. “My role was unique in this production, was unique to this show and probably unique to live theater.” From the beginning portrait of the late Lilly, to the culmination of rebirth and summer healing at the end, Lee tells all the secrets of behind the live stage of Playhouse’s The Secret Garden in Volume 18 1st Issue of Silkworm magazine.
