By Bella Erakko
When thinking of a fiber artist, one usually assumes that thread, yarn, or fabric provides the basis for creativity. Rarely do we consider paper. Yet paper is a fiber-based medium and one that featured Alliance Art Gallery artist, Kathy Neff, loves.
Her love affair with fiber began, in fact, with a sewing machine. She remembers, “I was very young, maybe 12 years old. And oh, my mother sewed! I have four sisters. She made all our Easter and Christmas dresses.”
By Freshman year, Kathy sewed for others. She fondly recalls, “One elderly woman, wheelchair-bound and blind, had me make her bags to keep things beside her.”
With a college degree in art and a minor in theater, Kathy lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked in theater doing costumes. Eventually returning to the Midwest with a Master of Fine Arts in photography, she added teacher certification to the mix and worked as an art teacher for 20 years at Ft. Madison High School. That launched her paper passion. She enthuses, “Papermaking is always easy to do and has so many possibilities. You can work with it flat, thick or thin, color it with dyes or by adding different paper for color.”
Now retired, her paper visions just keep expanding. “I kind of start using it almost like fabric, layering different sheets of paper and then sewing it down. Some are more sculptural, like forming wet paper over a bowl.”
Living in rural northeast Missouri, she admits that her main influences come from nature. “I see the inter-connectedness of everything. My pieces can feel microscopic or cosmic to the viewer.” Aligning her photography skills with papermaking, she has begun to experiment with cyanotype on fabrics. Like darkroom processes, it gives a negative/positive image with a blue background. Aligning her photography skills with papermaking, she has begun to experiment with cyanotype on fabrics. Like darkroom processes, it gives a negative/positive image with a blue background. She’s also exploring fiber sheets that can be run through printers. She wonders, for example, how one of her photos on a silk fiber sheet could create a translucent image.
Now retired, Kathy admits, “I do a lot of just looking. At photos. At nature. Then I sit down and intuitively work from there.” Her paper-inspired creations—for those of us who already love the touch, color, and feel of fiber—invite us to explore its most abundant offspring—paper.
An opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 9th from 4 until 7:00. This reception is free and open to the public.
