Eliza Fernand

Performance piece / erupting volcano

Fabric and quilt work

mediums that were dipped in slip and fired

I really enjoyed listening to Eliza Fernand speak about her work in class last Tuesday. Her artwork is very different from anything I have seen before but I loved it. I thought it was great how a majority of her work deals with performance pieces but the items used in those performances were made by her. Fabric is a medium that is used a lot in her work and recently Fernand has started making quilts. Quilts are something that I have always loved and found beauty in artistic wise, which makes me appreciate her work even more. Her quilts reminded me of a show that I went to at the Boise Art Museum and it was the work of The Gees Bend Quilters. These quilters were a group of older women from the south that took up quilting as a hobby and made tons of quilts that are now shown in art museums nation wide. Even the simplest of patterns, like the “log cabin” that Fernand talked mentioned, are so beautiful and unique to each quilter.

Gees Bend Quilts

Another aspect of Frenand’s were that I appreciated was her experimenting with different mediums and dipping them in slip and then firing them. I really enjoyed the yarn puffballs that she created by do this process; it transformed them into these awesome little figures that held such interesting shape. Something that is so great about her work is her experimentation with bringing two areas of art together into one. Eliza is definitely an artist that I’m going to follow and I’m interested to see what she will do in her future works.