Threaded Canopy

Hillary Waters Fayle sees a strong relationship between the land and our own inner landscapes. In her artwork, she articulates her vision of that relationship by bringing “together materials and processes that express the union of humanity and the physical world.” As she explains,

“Whether stitching, drawing, printing, sowing seeds, or harvesting plants, my hands echo the gestures made by thousands of hands over thousands of years… Stitching, like agriculture, can be functional — a technical solution to join materials/a means of survival — or, both can be done purely in service of the soul, lifting the spirit through beauty and wonder.“

For Fayle, the patterns, colors, and shapes of flora are irresistible both for their visual grace and for the metaphors they offer. Plant life speaks of “the excitement of new growth, the blooming and fullness of maturity, the withering of beauty and eventuality of death.” As an artist, Fayle is particularly struck by the geometry inherent in the botanical world, especially the ways in which geometric forms overlay one another. This is evident in her use of two fundamental shapes: circles and squares. As Fayle notes,

“These simple shapes are the basis for many of the complex patterns found in sacred geometry, architecture, nature and coincidentally, quilt designs. The circled square is philosophically and spiritually symbolic, representing, among many other things, the elements and limitations of the physical world contained within the expansive, infinite universe – the balance between Earth and sky, body and soul, the rational and the profound.“

In her embroidered leaves, she draws on both the power of fundamental shapes and various textile and printmaking traditions and processes to bring together “nature and the human touch” in the form of “botanical embroideries” that speak to the “overlapping of spiritual and religious symbology and sacred geometry, with patterns that exist in nature.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Hillary Waters Fayle earned an MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from Buffalo State College. She is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Fiber Area in the Department of Craft/ Materials Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has previously taught at Penland School of Craft (NC), the Mediterranean Art & Design Program (Italy), and Yasar University (Turkey). Her work has been widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY, the Kalmthout Arboretum & Botanical Gardens in Belgium, and several corporate collections. A public installation in collaboration with the Albright-Knox Museum can be seen year round in Buffalo, NY.

Hillary Waters Fayle - Geometric Perceptions

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