ART CLOTH MASTERY PROGRAM 2014: TEN VOICES FROM ONE: Pippa Drew

BIOGRAPHY

Pippa Drew is a surface designer and oil painter who creates complex surfaces with color and pattern in both media. She holds a BFA from the University of Massachusetts, and a MALS in oil painting from Dartmouth College. Her textiles are in private collections nationally and on view at Earth Star Gallery, Hartland, VT. She was Winner in the 2012 Juried Regional Exhibition, Newport NH, and exhibited at the Painting Center NYC, 2012. In 2015 Drew created a one-person shibori show for Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, NH. She has designed and co-taught interdisciplinary art classes for a National Science Foundation program, Math Across the Curriculum, and teaches surface design at AVA Gallery, NH. Drew is currently enrolled in Jane Dunnewold’s Art Cloth Mastery Program. Several surface design images and essays by Drew are included in Dunnewold’s forth coming book: Artist Strength Training, Building Creative Stamina.

At the 2016 Houston International Quilt Festival, Drew exhibited 3 works as part of the special exhibit TEN VOICES FROM ONE: Work by the Art Cloth Mastery Program 2014, curated by Jane Dunnewold (November 2016).

STATEMENT

As a visual person I have always been deeply attracted to the repeating patterns found in textile art. I gravitate to the accidental textures of printing and dyeing processes, and the call and response layering of these techniques on cloth. Perhaps because I’m also a painter, I often want to balance patterns and textures within the constraints of two-dimensional compositions.

The repeating geometries that embellish cloth and other surfaces especially stimulate my interest because of their relationship to the micro and macro aspects of nature. Cells naturally replicate into certain patterns which lend themselves to spirals, radiating lines, hexagons etc, while on the macro level, planets, solar systems and galaxies mirror the spheres and ellipses of atomic particles. Like the abstract structure that underpins a good painting, the designs found in our natural environment integrate all the mystery and detail we experience through our senses.

Over the past two years I’ve researched the cellular world and aspects of climate change to understand something of the biological processes that initiate evolution and extinction on our planet. My recent work does not attempt to graphically illustrate this science, but expresses my questions regarding the natural world and its transformations.

CONTACT INFORMATION

E-mail: pippa@pippadrew.com

Website: pippadrew.com