Judith M. Daniels
Judith M. Daniels has been an artist for most of her life, always cycling between fine art and craft. For the past nine years Daniels has concentrated on fiber or textile art which happily for her is breaking the boundaries between fine art and craft. She finds working in textiles and paper a nourishing experience and finds much pleasure in the tactile qualities and surface textures of the materials that she uses. Primarily a felt maker, she is also an embroiderer, hand dyer and silk painter and has become captivated by the Korean paper technique called “Joomchi”.
Judith has spent most of her life in the Boston area but made her way up to midcoast Maine four years ago. She now resides in Rockland. She has a bachelor’s degree in Arts and Crafts and their History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and has studied at Massachusetts College of Art, The Boston Visual School in Viterbo, Italy, The New England School of Photography and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Judith is a recipient of grants from the Somerville Arts Council, administered through the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Council for the Arts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a member of the Surface Design Association and the Northeast Feltmakers Guild.
Artist Statement:
Line from Start to Finish
The wall pieces created for this exhibit all started with music and line. I researched songs that had the word “line” in the title and drew freely on either paper or silk to the rhythm of each song that I chose. At a certain point the lines transformed into shapes. The shapes were then layered and filled in with either cut paper, in the case of the Joomchi pieces, or textile paint and wool in the case of the felted pieces. Once the Joomchi and felt processes were done I went back into the work with line; with paint and thread on the Joomchi pieces and free motion embroidery with rayon thread on the felt pieces. I worked very intuitively on these pieces and think of each one as a kind of improvisational dance.
With my 3-D work I’m thinking of line in a different manner. First of all I’m thinking of the lines of the form. I strive to create shapes that have some organic life and spirit to them. The surface design lines are used to direct the eye and add interest to the piece. I love using color, pattern and decoration when making my vessels. These elements have been used by humans making vessels for thousands of years. There is something essential about the need to make something beautiful and to make something that has one’s own signature.
