GAIL SKUDERA: W O V E N
Gail Skudera, Everychild 2, 2006, Woven mixed media on canvas, 33" x 24",$2,500.
The Maine Museum of Photographic Arts presents works by Lewiston artist, Gail Skudera. Skudera has an MFA in Fiber Arts and a BFA in Textile Printing and Design from Northern Illinois University. She is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including a Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grant. She has aggressively exhibited her pieces across the country and internationally. Skudera lives and works in Lewiston, Maine.
"Talk about expanding the photographic medium, the truly spectacular thing about Skudera's work is that her process is photographic in nature; and she realizes the imagery employing weaving and construction. There isn't another artist using this methodology in the State!"
– Denise Froehlich Director of MMPA
About her process Skudera states:
"There are several themes and images that are reoccurring in this body of work. Subjects, for one thing, some are personal and some have become personal after working with them for so long. For years I have worked with family photographs and photographs of known subjects (i.e., from the public domain.) When I began to introduce found photographs that I was in some way 'taken' by, it opened up new freedom for me in approaching what was once familiar...the family or known photograph. I can now look upon the familiar with the same critical eye that I would encounter a found photograph to attempt to read into the subject something about their interior life. It is the mystery of the interior life that captivates me the most. It is timeless and makes us all the same, and that fascinates me the most." GS
"There is something beautiful about the movement of tones between black and white in an old photograph that can evoke in the viewer an inexpressive sensation. My work often begins with an emotive response to a particular photograph from my collection. I have manipulated photographic images in my work for over 20 years as a point of departure for subject matter. And I have combined pattern weave structures with photo transfers using off-loom weaving methods. I have worked with paint, washes and glazes, thread and collected objects, such as buttons and beads, and developed non-traditional printing processes. In my drawings and print works, plant forms become animated in an interactive field with objects in an invented landscape. I like the juxtaposing of time past (dated from the photographs and use of actual objects) with present and juxtaposing of planes, colors and surfaces. The juxtaposing informs the work with a surreal, natural but unnatural effect and it build in lots of visual movement." GS
