In The Studio : Deborah Baronas
Deborah
Baronas has documented the cultural histories and lives of Rhode
Island’s textile mill workers and mill sites through paintings,
textiles, archival materials and installations. Her work is held in
numerous collections including Fidelity Investments and she has shown at
the Slater Mill Gallery, The Museum of Work & Culture, American Textile History Museum, Fuller Craft Museum, Museum of Art at RISD and the Providence Art Club.
Raised
on a dairy farm in Western MA, Deborah attended RISD and graduated with
a degree in Textile Design. Upon graduation, Deborah embarked upon a
career as a textile designer for over 20 years, which took her from NYC
to Europe and Los Angeles before she settled in RI. Wanting to slow down
the fast pace and focus on raising her family, she opened her own
studio becoming a design consultant and a freelance artist, designing fabrics, dinnerware, wallpaper, and stationary.
"The
evolution of my work and being out of the textile design industry for
ten years now, I think of myself as an emerging artist. I had another
life as a designer. I extract pattern from the imagery using stencils and dyes and layering the canvas with sheer panels of fabrics. As I continue to develop and show my work, it will keep changing. I already have visions of it becoming something else."
-Deborah
 |
| A stenciled olicloth on the floor combines color, pattern and footprints. |
"There is a struggle between fine art and the commercial world.
I
can look at things and say, 'Am I doing this for myself or because I
think someone will buy it?' It's not the easiest thing. I found that as
long as I make work from themes which mean something to me then I'm
being honest.
I
approach paintings as textile design in terms of motif, color and how
the the quality of the canvas flows. It became a lot about motif and
layering an image on top of another image to make the viewer work at
seeing what lies underneath."
-Deborah
 |
| Eric and Deborah prepare for our interview. |
"When I went into the textile industry, there was a woman I met who was one of the most influencial people I encountered because she was so out there. She
was the only person who would want something like a Georgia
O'Keefe-like skull turned into a motif and put leopard skin in the
antlers, which I did for her. My abilities benefited by taking something
non-traditional and making it fit into the trend of the day and still be commercial. "
-Deborah
 |
| Her aunt's vintage hat collection. |
"I've
lived in so many different places and worn so many different hats, that
I really wanted to show these transitions. Transpanrency became a
vehicle to show my own transition within the work and the many lives I
feel I have lived." -Deborah
 |
| Charcoal drawings transformed into a skirt. |
Deborah
has lived a rich artistic life, which was encouraged by her parents who
bought her art supplies as a child. Like the threads which wind us in
and out of the many journeys in one artistic career, this painting
Deborah painted when she was 8 years old hangs in her studio. Pretty
impressive for an 8 year old...
 |
| Layered textile from Deborah's studies at RISD |
"The
best thing about RISD was being able to focus on my art. I switched
from the painting department into Textiles and I really blossomed there.
It was the first time I felt confident as an artist, even though art
was a part of my life. A painting teacher once told me that I had a gift
and an obligation to use it and I never forgot that. Whenever I doubt myself, it's something I remember. RISD
prepared me for the design world, it taught me how to think and how to
take an idea which is intuitive and develop the idea into a tangible
work."
-Deborah
Aside
from the Mill Projects, Deborah was invited to create in a
site-specific installation at the Coolidge mansion in Portsmouth, NH. It
was a summer retreat for John Templeman Coolidge, who was a member of one of America’s oldest families, a long-time trustee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a highly trained artist.
"I
chose the parlor where they served afternoon tea daily. I drew pictures
of Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge, in addition to the other servants, the
nanny, secretary, maid,
cook, gardner, and transferred on to sheer voile. They were part of
the backdrop both literally and figuratively, behind the scenes making
things happen, as most workers do.
Opening
night the great-granddaughter Mrs. Coolidge attended and told me how
her grandmother referred to the women who worked in the house as 'her
girls'. It felt a bit more endearing and changed the hierarchial
structure one observes when thinking of the people working in these
mansions."
-Deborah
"The
Mill Project was a project close to my heart. I watched the Mills
disappear from the 1980s and '90s and felt it was time to pay homage to
those workers I knew and the lives they lived over the past century in
this home of the Industrial Revolution."
-Deborah
Her
installations are transformative and evocative taking us back in time.
Don't call them 'ghost-like', they are memories. Here are some selected
views of her various installations throughout New England.
"Landscapes
can be very static, they don't change as rapidly as people do. They are
transformed only when people affect them. What's interesting to me, is
how people, especially laborers, transform a place by their work. I
create what I know and where I've been. Transparency in my work enabled
me to reduce representational themes into shapes and color to tell a
story. Suddenly you have to look beyond the layers to see what is really happening, much like history itself."
-Deborah
"At
the beginning of my career, we had a choice as designers in the studio
to go into the textile mill and be a 'strike-off artist', the person who
makes sure what we are printing is what we are selling to the
customers. I
loved that and I was really in my element there. I was around
blue-collar workers, my roots, reminding me of the people I grew up
with. I
got to learn about chemicals, different fabrics and screen processes. I
went from painting in my studio to going to the mill, which was a great
learning experience."
-Deborah
 |
| The history of the mills in objects such as these bobbins on a cart once used in a textile mill, which serves as a coffee table today. |
When you visit Deborah's studio, the one thing that you see is process.
Process hangs in every corner. The layers of projects past and present
form an understanding as to how Deborah works and how her projects are
constructed.
 |
| Deborah screenprinting bobbin motifs on to fabric |
"You
can't wait for it to happen and somehow magically end up where you
want. My advice to any aspiring artist would be to embrace change and
just keep going."
-Deborah
Deborah's latest series of work will explore the tobacco industry of MA, using the abstract geometry of the barns and tobacco rows. It's something
Deborah has close ties to. When she was not helping her father on the
dairy farm, she was working in the shade tobacco fields.
"These
things have come out in the last couple of years. The worker has become
an iconographic image in my work, partially due to the duality of
design with manufacturing and production. That dichotomy has always been
there all my life."
-Deborah
Nama : Airin Karina
Nim : 1405110003
Fashion Forcesting
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar