Mezzanine Gallery
Improvisational Exploration
Opening reception, Friday, April 12th from 7-9 p.m.
Our Mezzanine Gallery exhibition, Improvisational Exploration features the work of fiber artist Ange Riehl.
Ange Riehl grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana and was educated at USL and where she earned a degree in Art Education and has been a high school art teacher for 31 years. As a Mixed Media artist, she works with a multitude of materials, techniques and approaches. It is the inquiry and investigation stages that she finds so satisfying.
Her mother fostered a love of fabrics in her. It took her a while to recognize its value in her pursuit of art making, but her experimentation with fabrics and fibers has led her to create surfaces rich in textural complexity and offers her endless possibilities as a media.
She has been playing with layering plastic netting onto cotton fabrics, melting the plastic onto the fabric then “collaging” with wool roving, tinsel, netting and threads. She finds the inclusion of plastic creates a web or gridlike pattern that offers compositional order in an area otherwise rather chaotic and its transparency offers depth and dimension. She takes this “new fabric” and machine quilts it using free-motion drawing/sewing to further complicate the surface.
This improvisational exploration is her intuitive approach allowing her to break rules of traditional fabric use and is a path she intends to explore further.
"All in all, the freedom of a technique based experience that I can then explore and expand upon instead of following a pattern, is the same to me as mixing my own palette of paint colors," Riehl said. "Sure, there is more room for failure, but isn’t it in failure that we learn the most?"
Join us for an opening reception on Friday, April 12th from 7-9 p.m. concurrent with the opening reception of the Marjorie Morrison Sculpture Biennial. The exhibition will be on display at HRAC during regular business hours through May 30th.
Improvisational Exploration Sneak Peek
To participate in the HRAC Mezzanine Gallery, visit our Artists Call page.