Urban Voyeur

“My photos are what I saw. My stitching changes it to how, as an artist, I see it.”

– Jill Kerttua

As a photographer and a textile artist, Jill Kerttua focuses on life’s “small moments” where she finds “the beauty of our places, the textures of our environments, the humanity of the people around us.” With her camera as her sketchbook, she records her surroundings and uses photographs to shape the color, composition, and subject of her work. Through “the intimacy of holding, cutting, folding, and stitching the fabrics,” she brings photographs to life, letting “the details emerge and the highlights and shadows gain their importance.”

Those details, highlights, and shadows are evident in the layers of fabrics, some of which are slashed to reveal the photographic layer below. The layers enhance, change, or otherwise edit the photo’s colors with various opacities. These same layers, combined with both hand and machine stitching, further enhance the work’s textures.

The images depicted in these works are from Charlottesville, VA, or from Washington, D.C., While each work has a strong sense of place, the theme of each work is universal, not specific. As Kerttula explains,

“The people in these pieces are not there to be identified, but rather they portray all of us in those times when only we know where we are going, who we are expecting, or why we are there. The private and simple wonder of our everyday life“

The wonder of everyday life is also central to Kerttula’s Sidewalk Series that celebrates the artist’s immediate environs:

“I walk from my home to my studio each day. I love to see the textures in the sidewalks, the bricks, the pavement. Occasionally there are clues to the previous night’s activities or a found object, or the tenacious weed growing in the crack. These are landscapes.“

Through her attention to detail, she encourages viewers to consider their own landscapes more closely and to observe what all viewers share in common.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jill Kerttula’s fiber art is the culmination of years of professional experience as a creative director and an art educator and her interest in sewing. In 2014, she began working full-time as a fine artist. Her work has been exhibited widely, and she has received numerous awards. In 2015, Kerttula spent a month as the Artist-in-Residence at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Her studio is in residence at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, VA. In 2018, she was one of two international artists chosen to present a solo show as a ‘Rising Star’ at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas.

Jill Kerttula - Night Umbrella

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