Geometic progression, expression
Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, October 26, 2004
A glimpse of children’s art solved an esthetic dilemma for Karen Moskowitz, setting the island artist on a course to produce her own unique paper quilts.
Moskowitz, who shows her work during the quarterly Arts Walk next weekend, came to the medium and the imagery in a roundabout way.
Not trained formally as a visual artist, Moskowitz nonetheless gravitated to photography but traded a camera for a loom as her work became more and more detailed.
“I’m sure many photographers would disagree with me,” she said, “but there is just something (compelling) about making things by hand.”
Making things by hand is something of a family tradition, as well.
“I guess it’s in my genes, because my mother was a tailor and my grandmother rolled cigars for the czar in Russia,” Moskowitz said.
As soon as she began to make art, Moskowitz realized she was attracted to detailed, geometric imagery, but finding the right vehicle took longer.
She experimented with embroidering, and she tried quilting.
While the geometric patterns of traditional quilt-making were a natural fit for her artistic temperament, the medium was not.
“I’m a small person,” she said. “Quilting was just too cumbersome.”
Walking by a grade school one day, Moskowitz noted colorful artworks, quilts made from paper, hung on a fence near the building.
“I thought, ‘could I do that?’” she said.
The answer was a resounding yes.
Moskowitz gathered as many different papers as she could find, from subtle Japanese rice papers to the supersaturated hues of Pantone.
After adhering grid paper to thick mat boards, Moskowitz laid out designs, cutting them out to make templates to trace the design to make “quilts” that range from 12-by-12 inches to 28-by-28.
Then she cut out the hundreds of pieces and glued them down.
“People say it must have taken forever,” she said. “I say that’s not the part that’s hard. It’s designing and working out the colors that’s difficult. A 3-year-old could do the gluing.”
But meanwhile, as she pieced together her esthetic life, her living situation was unraveling. The Brooklyn, N.Y., native spent three decades in northern California; her house, located at the foot of a steep slope in San Anselmo, was nearly engulfed by a mudslide.
“The mud stopped literally at my back door,” she said. “It was scary. The California dream became the California nightmare.”
The debris had hardly been cleaned away when a developer bought a piece of property directly above her to build a house.
Moskowitz knew the slope was going to give way again, and she determined not to remain below.
She sold her home and moved to Bainbridge Island in 2002, and now lives “on the flats.”
It took her another two years to balance her day job in Seattle and her creative life. But now she is able, once again, to be in the studio every day.
“It felt invigorating, it felt like I had found myself again,” Moskowitz said. “I just felt like I was sidetracked for a while, but now I’m back on track.”
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Art on the town
Hooves clop and wings flap for the fall Arts Walk theme, “Horse Feathers.” Equine art meets feathered friends in a variety of works from more than 30 local artists and artisans on view November 7, from noon to 5 p.m. at local stores in downtown Winslow.
• The Fourth Annual Bainbridge Island Student Art Contest will take place at the Pavilion. Local students grades K-12 can submit up to three pieces of original artwork in any medium, with a $3 entry fee per piece, at the Pavilion from 9-11:30 a.m. for exhibit and jurying in the afternoon. Elementary, intermediate and middle-school-age artists must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. The awards ceremony is at 5 p.m.
• The a cappella group SoundWave performs music from madrigals to pop and jazz favorites, 1 p.m. at Winslow Mall, followed at 2 p.m. by the Community Singers, members of the Bainbridge Chorale who sing a mix of popular, folk and Broadway show tunes, along with a smattering of holiday songs.
For more information, call 842-7901. Find brochures for the Arts Walk, a program of the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council, at the BIAHC office at 221 Winslow Way or at the BI Chamber of Commerce. Artworks are on view at www.artshum.org. Artists and entertainers interested in participating in future Arts Walk events should call BIAHC or e-mail: ArtsWalk@earthlink.net.
