ART/PLACE

Through the Eyes of My Father : Tea Vendor / Fiber-Photo Construction. Digital image transfer on various cottons. Stitched.

ABOUT: THROUGH THE EYES OF MY FATHER SERIES

In 1940, Maestro Arturo Toscanini sailed to South America with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. My father, Philip Sklar, was on that trip as Principal Bassist. As they traveled from one port to the next, photographs were taken, as most travelers will, to document these new sights and experiences. A few years ago, I came upon the photo album in which my mother had carefully mounted and labeled these small black and white photographs. I was struck by the quality of "seeing" evidenced in these pictures and then moved by the poignancy of the subject matter.

ARLE SKLAR-WEINSTEIN
arlesklar@yahoo.com

arlesklar.com

fiberfoto.com

bluedoorgallery.org

I never know what��s going to choose me. Conceptually moving between the past and present, mixing the universes of traditional quilt-making with twenty-first century digital technology, my fiber photomontages have computer-assisted, heat transferred imagery on multi-layered fabrics. The added dimension of time is often implied in the overlaying image on organza, giving a sense of motion to the figures captured in fleeting moments.

A self-proposed theme often directs my vision and I become a collector of images, like Paris street signs, Lions of the Veneto, shrines on Mount Koya-San. I resonate with objects that carry emotional weight. They are harder to define because memory and unconscious energy infuse them. I gravitate to close-ups of playing light on textural objects, natural or human-made. Thinking of possible backgrounds, chosen is anything that holds a visual interest on its own without being intrusive. Shadows always interest me as signs of someone or something that does not appear in the composition, but is present as witness.

I see my use of photography as the art-making bridge between my paintings, prints, collages, and fabric constructions, using the vocabulary of whatever materials and processes choose me at the moment.

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