In this exhibition, Cathy Fussell and I explore the word GROUND, both as a noun and as a verb. The word fits 2020, a year where the world’s population is grounded (sent to time-out) during COVID-19. On a personal level, I’ve felt ground to bits by my mother’s death and other challenges during the spring and summer of 2020. Those of us who are healthy feel fortunate to have the ground still beneath our feet and are grateful for feeling steady and well grounded. I’ve pondered metaphors about animals of the ground (cicadas, boll weevils, snakes, assassin bugs), as well as odd pandemic stories of lonely eels and drunk elephants. I’m inspired by Cathy’s work that often celebrates the ground’s quilted terrain through geographical renderings and river meanderings. Her work reminds me that the ground also is where we plant our seeds, and what grows from death and decay is often beautiful, is often a meadow.
Blair Hobbs
Quilts are about history and art and politics and stories and patience and beauty and community and economics and place and expression and freedom and transition and family and warmth – and love. And they’re feminized and devalued. All that is why I’m so into quilts and quiltmaking.
While many fiber artists today create works that are overtly political, I prefer to make art that is celebratory. I celebrate the landscape, literature, the vast and yet minute complexities of this world we inhabit.
Cathy Fussell
More about the artists:
Cathy Fussell
A fiber artist for more than 50 years, Cathy Fussell maintains a studio in Columbus, Georgia, where she specializes in making art quilts. In terms of theme and subject matter, Cathy’s work tends to fall into three general categories: Geography, Southern literature, and American modernism.
Public collections holding Cathy’s work include The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Koch Collection, New York, New York (twelve pieces), and the Fulton County (Atlanta) Public Art Collection (two pieces).
In 2016 Cathy was commissioned by The Congressional Club, Washington, DC, to make a quilt for First Lady Michelle Obama. The result is “Apollo Splashdown Revisited – Homage to Alma Woodsey Thomas,” which was presented to Mrs. Obama at The Congressional Club’s Annual First Lady’s Luncheon, Washington, DC, May 12, 2016. The work is in the (forthcoming) Barack Obama Presidential Library Collection, Chicago, Illinois.
Cathy’s work has been exhibited in numerous juried or curated exhibitions and is held in many private collections.
Blair Hobbs
Blair Hobbs creates visual narratives with plants, animals, and the human body. She renders these images in drawings, acrylic paints, colored pencils, ink, mulberry papers, oil pastels, fabric scraps, sequins, glitter, thread, gold dust, duct tape, candy wrappers, and broken Christmas tree balls. Hobbs has shown in galleries across the south, and her work is privately collected across the country. She is a Senior Lecturer and teaches undergraduate poetry at the University of Mississippi.
The artwork will be displayed October 13 – November 7th.
Artists’ Reception (by reservation) Friday, October 16, 5 – 7 PM
Please contact the gallery to make a reservation.
662.234.9090
