Elizabeth Busch
Transition, Acrylic on canvas, hand quilted
Elizabeth Busch has been an artist all her life and an art quilter since 1983. The subject matter for her quilts is very personal: something that is happening in her life at that moment. “This something may not be visible to the viewer, but for me it is the source of the piece and I believe it is this source that connects my work to the viewer.”
A seamstress early on (making her daughter’s clothes), then studying painting, and also working in an architect’s office, she was able to combine her talents through quilting. This background, as well as her love of geometry, spatial ambiguities, layering of transparent and translucent planes, and contrasts in ‘temperature’ help to provide what some have called an “architectural sense” to her work.
Eschewing preliminary sketches and other possible ‘guideposts’ that she feels will skew its creation, she loves to problem-solve as she works -- as she says, “having a conversation with the piece” throughout its creation. And nearing completion, “I look forward to the last steps in the making of a quilt: the hand quilting and embroidery. This final and very meditative process allows me to become physically reacquainted with a work created at arm’s length on the wall. The simple, repetitive act of stitching adds another visual dimension to the work. The details often surprise me.” *
* Some of these words excerpted from Elizabeth Busch: Retrospective catalog, © 2009 Elizabeth Busch
As an artist, how do you feel your work relates to STEM teaching/learning?
Intuitively, science, technology, engineering and math have always been a part of my artwork, whether during the years I was working for two architectural firms, or while in my studio painting/quilting, or working on a Public Art sculpture commission. With a BFA in Painting from RISD, it really didn’t seem unusual that I spent 15 years as an architectural designer. I needed to work and it just seemed a normal part of the visual/spatial process for me that I was hired by an architect. Subsequently, whether I was working at a drafting table on designing/drawing plans and elevations for a Bangor bank, school, hospital, etc., or in my home studio painting a canvas to stretch and frame or sew, I was intuitively using STEM tools with my art medium.
Of course, technology has turned the world into a different place for the young artist today, has given him/her different tools with which to communicate ideas. Still, I have no doubt that painters will paint, fiber artists will sew, and sculptors will still make three-dimensional work, using the tools and media which they love and with which they are most comfortable. Clearly, while I do not use the computer as my art form, you would not be reading this without its use!
-- Elizabeth Busch
Education
BFA Rhode Island School of Design 1964
Majors: Painting, Art Education
Employment
1987- present Self employed artist
1989 Assistant Director Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine
1985-87 Percent for Art Associate Maine Arts Commission, Augusta, Maine
1978-84 Interior Designer, Architectural Renderer, Graphic Designer Webster/Baldwin/Rohman/Day, Architects-Engineers, Bangor, Maine
1978 Instructor, Interior Design University of Maine Evening Courses, Orono, Maine
1969-78 Architectural Designer, Graphic Designer
1966-68Eaton W. Tarbell & Associates, Inc. - Architects, Bangor, Maine
1969 Instructor: Color Theory, Advanced Painting, Figure Drawing McMurry College, Abilene, Texas.
1965 Art Instructor East Providence Senior High School, East Providence, Rhode Island
1964 Painting Instructor Adult Education, Fairfield, Connecticut
