Silkworm Magazine, Volume 17, Issue No. 4, December 2010
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Featuring the artist Holly Carr, she speaks about how she and her art evolved over time and how she gets her ideas. In an article written by friend and business partner, Jeanne Michelle Salander, a little insight is given into the world of artist Natasha Foucault. |
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In This Issue |
Natasha Foucault - From Russia With Love
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In a country where art and artists’ materials was closely monitored and regulated, Natasha Foucault begged for materials and used these to creatively fashion her first silk and fisherman’s net dress. From there her love and passion for art grew astronomically. She majored in etching at a prestigious Russian art school. Unfortunately, because of an illness, she had to stop working with etching and ceramics because of the toxin exposure. This, however, led her creative outlet towards silk – a passion with which she stuck for the following 27 years.
Painting still comes at a price though. Natasha suffers from back stress caused by leaning over frames most of the day to paint her large and beautiful ruanas, capes, and scarves. But after her first unexpectedly successful showing, Natasha felt she could make a career out of painting on silk and she would not trade it for the world. She runs to keep in shape and to strengthen her muscles.
Her technique on silk shows her diverse and art-thirsty past in a way that pays homage to her favorite artists and her past studies in the Soviet Union. The uniqueness of her wearable silk art is stunning and recognized globally even though the subject matter is always different and her style varies a little with the inspiration of her piece. She paints everything from landscapes, buildings, portraits, reflections, still lifes and abstracts. Jeanne-Michele Salander, Natasha’s good friend and partner in business, shares with us through an artfully written article some of Natasha’s techniques for her painting, a style pushed beyond the usual limitations of the gutta resist technique to create etching effects.
Natasha has lived in the United States for 20 years now and has made a very successful career out of her wearable silk art. She has won several SPIN awards, has multiple galleries showing her work and has received the SPIN signature level designation. She tells her story in more detail in her book, Silk Diary, An Artist’s’ Journey from Moscow to Mendocino available through amazon.com. Read more about her career success and in the article “From Russia With Love” in Silkworm Magazine Vol. 4, 2010.
Holly Carr - Evolution of a Silk Artist
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| Holly Carr, Wild Life No. 2 |
If you could do anything in the world and money didn't matter, what would you do? What could you imagine waking up every morning wanting to do? Now find a way to do it. That is exactly what Holly Carr did.
She knew she wanted to be an artist and, like most artists, she decided on a career that allowed for her to be an artist on the side. But her silk painting had other plans for her. Even though she began in other mediums, through a course taught by the fashion department at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design where she undertook dual degrees in Fine Arts and Education, she fell in love with silks. "I had no interest in taking fabric apart. I wanted to be a surface painter. Had I studied textile, I probably wouldn't have become a silk painter." But she became fascinated with the drape and flow of the silk fabric as well as the vibrant colors.
She shares with us the story of how she began in the field, going from "Carr's Wearable Art" to installments to performance and finally ending up in galleries. But she didn't stop at doing only one thing with her art; she just added them on as she went. "I'm never dependent on one source of income. If I get a little bit of each, then I know I can live and if I get a lot of each, then that's fantastic."
She tells us how she is working to break the idea of silk painting as a "craft" and not art to be hung in a gallery. Initially, even though she enjoyed her silks, there was no real market for it in galleries. So she saved her big ideas for oil paintings
She tells how she went from limiting her work with silk to making it her mainstay, making it her main source of income and having her art be pursued by galleries because of how many people were looking to buy her work.
She also tells us how she frames her silks so they don't fade and become lackluster on a wall taking away the argument: "Oh, it's a fabric. It's going to deteriorate." She explains how she has shunned paints for dyes and why. And she tells us with excitement about what's next for her and how it is a much larger undertaking than any project she has done so far. Read more in the Silkworm V17 issue 4.
