Julia Weber
Staff Writer
Fiber and textile artist Jessica Pinsky will deliver the final artist talk in the Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series at 6:30 p.m. tonight in Hultquist Center.
“What I love the most about fiber art is that it has so much conceptual power,” Pinsky said. “We have fiber on our bodies; it’s growing on our heads and on our bodies. We are using textiles as part of our daily life in the form of clothes, blankets, carpets. These things tend to be quite ancestral and sentimental in terms of their process or their material or how they’ve been passed down from generation to generation.”
For her, fiber and textiles are steeped in a history and tradition of artists and techniques that came before her — “even before you make anything out of textiles today, you get to tap into this really incredible history, which is very exciting for me,” Pinsky said.
Pinsky is a returning member of the CVA faculty and brings her practice to the School of Art to share with the two-week resident artists now here through the end of the season. She said she enjoys working with artists who are just beginning their fiber practices as well as those who are further on in their artistic practice with fibers because she gets to teach both formal, technical skills and work through conceptual ideas, depending on where students are in the learning process.
“I love being here. I think this is a very inspiring place to be an artist and an educator,” Pinsky said.
Because Pinsky delivered an artist lecture last year, she said her upcoming talk will focus on the last year of her practice and her most recent body of work. Much of her work since last year has been created on the digital loom, so she said she plans to discuss the technological component of the tool and how it informs her artistry. For Pinsky, it’s important to note that people don’t need to love fibers or textiles to attend her lecture. Because they are so ingrained in our everyday lives, she said she thinks that everyone can find a connection to the medium and leave with an interesting takeaway.
“This is an art, a material and a process that connects everyone regardless of age, race, background, anything,” she said. “If you are interested in art, this would be a great opportunity to have textile exposure for the first time.”
