Wendy Osterweil - About Wendy

Artist's Statement, 2006: Creating Patterns in Print As a printmaker, I am a participant in the dialogue between an internal vision and the external reality of the print. A print makes a commitment to a subject or an idea as the artist interacts with the progressive stages of the image. As in jazz, printmaking allows for repetition and variation. For 30 years I have worked in a range of printmaking processes including etching, relief, monoprint, and silkscreen. I am dually drawn to making both a simple, direct kind of statement and to creating intricate patterns through improvisational silkscreen printing. Simultaneously I am always searching for ways to be direct about color in my work. Although the worlds of fiber and paper are closely related, I have found that there are qualities of fabric and dyes that extend for me the ability to manipulate surfaces. I love the versatility of fabric, the possibilities for building the surface, the range of ways to work with color, and the improvisation of pattern. Printing with dyes on fabric continually opens up worlds of color to me as well. I become overwhelmed with the infinity of potential results. For me art making intersects with the dream world and I draw on stories, folktales, myths, and narratives of all kinds. My work has a narrative quality in that I often work in series and I have made some books, both artists’ books and a couple of commercially published books. Some of my artistic influences are folk art from various countries and periods, German Expressionists, Romare Bearden, jazz music, African textile design, and African American quilts. Seemingly divergent artistic impulses and aesthetic inclinations are perhaps part of the duality inherent in the creative process. There is the impulse to create pristine and subtle imagery, and the alternative tendency to let things be raw and bold. There is the need to strive for refined craft and the pull to stay “primitive.” At times I want to reveal and other times, conceal. Do I search for clear narrative content or remain ambiguous and only hint at it? Do I leave a surface unadorned or do I layer it with patterns? These questions and sensibilities, and obviously many others, are concerned with the nature of duality in art making.		“I am dually drawn to making both a simple, direct kind of statement and to creating intricate patterns through improvisational silkscreen printing. Simultaneously I am always searching for ways to be direct about color in my work."