"Every artist has to pick their medium," she said. "Fabric was the thing I got started on, years ago."
She's not alone. Long ago, fabric took its place alongside oil for painters and clay for sculptors in the pantheon of materials used for artistic expression.
 Marina Salume stands with her collection of art quilts in her home. |
Organized and curated by Salume, this show brings together 24 members of the California Fiber Artists group, each showing one piece of work. She's the sole Half Moon Bay resident among the group.
Most of the work is two-dimensional, such as quilts or fabric wall hangings. But some is three-dimensional, such as dolls or an embellished dress. The quilts are not all traditional, either.
Many are "art quilts," something that has gained prominence in recent years. In art quilts, the line between a time-honored craft and fine art expression blurs.
"Art quilts" are a relatively new phenomenon to those outside the art world, Salume said.
"To the greater public, 'Wow, I always think of quilts as something grandma put on the bed,'" Salume said.
Some of those art quilts follow the usual recipe of three layers with a top, batting and back. Some incorporate time-honored hand quilting, and many are machine-quilted. Being handmade gives them a special stamp, she said.
They're now considered rare and unique, prime to appreciate in value, she said. Therefore, they are often highly sought by collectors.
In this show, some of the art quilts incorporate drawings of human figures. One is a political statement, in which the artist created a map of the United States with the individual states tinted red or blue according to political persuasion. Its title, "Florida for Gore" indicates the artist's opinion of the 2000 presidential race.
Salume's own entry is a wall-hanging-style art quilt that incorporates paintings by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and other "Adam and Eve" imagery she put in with a very non-traditional quilting tool: a computer and Inkjet printer.
Transforming photos onto fabric for her art quilts is one of Salume's favored techniques.
"I'm not interested in it (like) a family album, but because the photos could be rearranged, like a collage thing," she said. "I'm trying to print the kind of photos you could see in a gallery."
That fits well in this show. "The Naked Truth" is about inspiration, not R ratings, Salume said.
"Yes, some of the work will undoubtedly show nudes," she said, but there's more, in the "Truth" part. She chose that title, she said, to get the artists' imaginations and creative energies flowing.
"I come up with interesting themes to inspire us," she said. "There's an interesting range of ways people could take it."
Inspiration had a lot to do with the formation of the Northern California-based California Fiber Artists. They had been part of the international Studio Art Quilt Associates, and splintered off more than two years ago to form another group with slightly different goals. Whereas SAQA sought primarily to educate the public about art quilts, California Fiber Artists wanted to blend the education with exhibiting members' own work.
In microcosm, that's like Salume's journey. Having studied art and graphic design, she began making quilts in 1976. That bicentennial year saw an upsurge of interest in American historical arts, with a torrent of quilting books and shops, and Salume jumped into making traditional quilts.
She made a career as a designer but then, about 12 years ago, took a fabric painting class and wound up with a piece of painted fabric that could not go into a traditional quilt. She was in a quandary until inspiration struck: "I started to get more innovative with design."
And a new world opened for her.
"Art quilts paved the way for working with color," she said excitedly. "I can work very spontaneously - take a piece of fabric, pin it together, see if I like it or not. It's like doing collage."
There will be an artists' reception for "The Naked Truth" from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, June 17, at the CAL gallery, located at 300 Main St. in Half Moon Bay. Throughout the exhibit, the work will be for sale. For more information, CAL can be reached at 726-6335.
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