MEDIUM AS MESSAGE

Featuring: PATI BEACHLEY, PATTY KENNEDY- ZAFRED & MELINDA STEES

Is the Medium the Message or is the Message in the Medium? How do these artists approach their materials and what do the materials bring to their messaging? Pati Beachley’s aluminum pieces cast fiber into “hard” materials. Patty Kennedy-Zafred and Melinda Stees work in the “soft” traditional mediums of quilting and knitting respectively. How do non-traditional materials and our preconceptions of them expand our notions of fiber?  How do artists using traditional fiber media push the envelope, reinvent and extend the textile medium? Why do all these pieces meet the definition of fiber art?