New work: Geography as fabrication

My newest work is a search for the big picture through natural processes of decay. How’s that for perfect artist statement verbiage? Maybe our world was created by the process of erosion. All the good stuff was washed away into the deep blue sea.

You can learn about life from these fabric books

These fabric books are the perfect antidote to streaming video.

In continuous motion
I’m cutting a woodblock.The next day I print it. Then I’m sitting at my sewing machine, stitching two images together. I grab one of the sketchbooks floating around my house to jot down something from a book I’m reading, along with a quick scribble to illustrate it. I mull over ideas and images. Some ideas light up to become images, and some images light up to become ideas.
Continuous motion keeps the work fresh. Sleeping, swimming, raking, laughing with my grandsons, complaining to my U.S. senator—the in breath. Filtering through my feelings, my hands, and into my materials—cloth, paper, pencils, ink--the out breath.
Brass players use circular breathing to sustain their sound: in through the nose while simultaneously blowing out through the embouchure. This is my process as well.

Macro weaving

The easiest way to engage a toddler is to ask him, “Is that bird red or blue?” You might not get an accurate answer but you will get an immediate one, proving that even young children understand the idea of duality. We are primed to see our world through the split of either/or.

Any extreme defines its opposite. There is no ripeness without immaturity, no sacred without the secular, no Riding Hood without her wolf.

My latest body of work is about the place where these opposing poles may meet. If boars and pet potbelly pigs define two extremes along a continuum, there is a spot in the middle where the tameness of our house pets meets the unpredictability of the wild animal. These woven prints create some possibility for this bastardization. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful are hybridized here to create something natural, and designed, and powerful, and pathetic, and indisputably human.

Fay Stanford

Exhibitions

*solo

2023 Surface Design Association
The Old Print Shop NYC, Society of American Graphic Artists
   The Plastic Club, Philadelphia
108 Contemporary, Tulsa, OK
2022 *McLean Textile Gallery, VA
Society of American Graphic Artists, NYC
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Salmagundi Club
Philadelphia Guild of Handweavers, PA
2021 Providence Art Club, RI
Lansdowne Art Board, PA
2020 Grinnell College Museum of Art
2019 Newark NJ Public Library Special Collections Department
2019 Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
2017 *Church of St. Asaph’s, Bala Cynwyd, PA
Artspace, Santa Fe, NM
2016 *Artspace, Loveland, CO
*ONE Arts Gallery, Burlington, VT
2015   Art in City Hall, Exhibition juried and staged by The Print Center, Philadelphia
2012 *Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hackensack, NJ
2011   *Annenberg Conference Center for Medical Education, Wynnewood, PA
Washington Printmakers Guild, Silver Spring, MD
*Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
2010 *Villanova University, Villanova, PA
2009 Arcadia University, Glenside, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art juried show in Perelman Library
*The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA
2007 *Warehouse Theater and Gallery Washington DC
2006 Falling Cow Gallery
2004, 2005 Spector Gallery Philadelphia
2004, 2006 State Museum of Pennsylvania Harrisburg. Art of the State competition
2003 *Manayunk Art Center Philadelphia
Washington and Jefferson College Washington PA
Philadelphia Sketch Club Philadelphia
2003, 2006 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Philadelphia
2002 Washington County Museum of Art Hagerstown MD
2001 Pendle Hill Conference Center Wallingford PA
2000 The College of New Jersey Trenton NJ
1999 *University City Arts League Philadelphia
1997 Third Street Gallery Philadelphia
1996 Wayne Art Center Wayne PA
1995 *The Schuylkill Center Philadelphia
1992 *Episcopal Academy Merion PA

Awards

2019 Accepted into the collection of The Newark, NJ Public Library
2003 Cheltenham Center for the Arts Cheltenham PA
1996 Delaware Center for Contemporary Art Wilmington
1995 Abington Art Center Abington, PA. Second Place
Artforms Gallery Philadelphia. Paula Simon Memorial Award for Painting
Delaware Center for Contemporary Art Wilmington. First Place
1994 Abington Art Center Abington, PA. Honorable Mention
Penn State Delaware County Campus Award of Distinction
1992 Main Line Art Center Haverford, PA. Eliot Raum Prize for Painting
1972-4 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study Cajun music