Stitched Together: Women in Thread
Featuring work by Sean Elizabeth Tyler
Opens First Friday, June 4, 6-9pm
Continues Through Saturday June 26 during Tulsa Pride. All work will be available online for purchase as well at in-gallery.
GALLERY HOURS AFTER OPENING:
Thursdays 5-8pm, Saturdays 1-5pm and during Tulsa Pride:
Friday, June 25, 5-8pm
Saturday, June 26, 1-10pm
Liggett Studio is a located at 314 S Kenosha, Tulsa, OK 74120 in heart of the "Off-Brady" East End Village District.
Bio
Sean Tyler is a painter and fiber artist from Tulsa Oklahoma. Tyler received her BFA from Rogers State University in Studio Arts and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Iowa. Tyler has shown work in Italy and across the United States with work in Alaska, Tennessee, Iowa, and Oklahoma as well as digital exhibitions. In Oklahoma, Tyler has shown at the Hardesty Arts Center, Guthrie Green, and the Tulsa Artists Coalition Gallery as well as other galleries across the state. Tyler uses a mixed media approach combining traditional painting materials while reclaiming fiber arts techniques to create a unique hybrid representing her experience as a young woman in the art world. Tyler is interested in issues of art vs. craft, the role of the body in art, and historical portrayals of women. Tyler is currently focused on creating art while developing her teaching practice.
Artist Statement
I approach the female form with a modern perspective that is intended to combat the misogynistic implications of many classical paintings of women and subjects dismissed as ‘feminine.’ Ideologically my goal is to reclaim the female form from the traditional conflict between woman as subject and woman as creator. I use fiber crafts such as embroidery to connect the history of women’s creative pursuits to portrayals of the female form. The inspiration to reclaim craft art comes from seminal feminist artists such as Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and Faith Ringgold
Historically embroidery was seen as “women’s work” while life drawing was the basis for all fine and figurative art, historically “men’s work.” By working with the nude figure in thread, I combine women’s historical productions in fiber art with classical images of women. Embroidering the female form is a rejection of gender roles in art, a negation of the sexualization of the female nude, and a reclamation of an art form that has been disregarded.
I seek to combine the vibrancy and immediacy of life drawing and abstract painting with the careful planning and intricacy of embroidery, a slow and methodical process of hundreds of tiny movements. I am inspired by contemporary fiber artists who use thread as a form of line, as well as traditional embroidery techniques that focus on texture and surface decoration, and my own fine arts training in form and color. I explore mixed media approaches, the delicacy of thread, and the depth and range of texture that thread can achieve.