“Honeycomb Bee” by Jesi Evans, Mixed media embroidery, 8x8in, 2018, $500

Jesi Evans Murphy is a fiber artist who uses, “… what is traditionally viewed as craft media to create conceptual fine art.” Her work is a compelling match up of contemporary artistic sensibility with craft tradition.

“A very important part of my process is hand making each piece. I come from a background where I often participated in craft projects with my mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Creating art within the medium of craft allows me to fulfill my desire for creative expression while also bringing up my most cherished childhood memories. My art is an extension of my personal experience as well as concepts and opinions about the world outside my immediate scope. My fear, anxiety, joy, and hope are channeled into each piece.”

“Green Bee Revisited” by Jesi Evans, Mixed media embroidery, 8x8in, 2018, $500

“My conceptual work draws heavily from issues I find relevant to my life as well as the emotions I experience while dealing with those issues. Current projects include a body of work based on environmental concerns and a body of work based on chronic illness. Both bodies of work call forth my anxiety as well as my hope. The craft medium is warm, inviting, and accessible to the viewer. This accessibility draws the viewer in and invites them to experience the emotions the conceptual work brings forth.”

When Murphy speaks of working on creative projects with previous generations of women in her family, she touches upon the fact that American textile art has lived mostly as a matriarchal, generational, connection surreptitiously building a feminist thread into the culture.

Murphy will be showing her body of work APIS this December at Delinquent Gallery in Bloomington, Indiana.

Recent exhibits:

2018

Be Kind, Rewind a Cult Film Group Show, Delinquent Gallery, Bloomington, IN
1-Up: Extra Life a Video Game Group Show, Delinquent Gallery, Bloomington, IN
KaiJuly a Kaiju/Giant Monster Group Show, Delinquent Gallery, Bloomington, IN
2015

Open Studio Weekend – Hot Garbage Collective, LVA Building, Louisville, KY
Open Studio Weekend Exhibition, Cressman Center, Louisville, KY
Fantastic Fibers 2015, Yeiser Art Center, Paducah, KY
Art[Squared], PUBLIC, Louisville, KY

Hometown: Bardstown, Kentucky
Education: Certificate, Front End Web Design, CodeLouisville, Louisville, KY, 2015;
BA, Studio Art (Fiber Emphasis), Berea College, Berea, KY, 2007
Website: https://cargocollective.com/jesievansart
Instagram: @jesievans
Tumbler: jesievans

Scroll down for more images

“Heart with Three Bees” by Jesi Evans, Mixed media embroidery, 8x8in, 2016, $500

“Missing Bee” by Jesi Evans, Mixed media embroidery, 8x8in, 2018, $1000

“Skull with Nine Bees” by Jesi Evans, Mixed media embroidery, 8x8in, 2015, $500

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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Fiber

Vignette: Irene Mudd

Guest User · November 17, 2017

“[These women were] exquisite butterflies trapped in an evil honey, toiling away their lives in an era, a century, that did not acknowledge them…they dreamed dreams that no one knew-- not even themselves, in any coherent fashion-- and saw visions no one could understand.”

-Alice Walker

"Untitled" by Irene Mudd, hand knitting, embroidery. 20x17in, 2017, $375 — "Untitled" by Irene Mudd, hand knitting, embroidery. 20x17in, 2017, $375

Textile artists often tap into the past contextually; many of the techniques used by such artists originate in family legacy. It is perhaps more unusual to see literary inspiration merged into that lineage. Irene Mudd uses an essay by Alice Walker to provide a conceptual basis for her current body of work. “In Search of Our Mother's Gardens”, discusses and laments the vastly untapped potential and creativity of generations of black American women.

“While Walker addresses black women specifically in her essay, I found her words to be quite universal,” explains Mudd, “resonating with me despite my privileged status as a white woman. I strongly connected her message to my own grandmother’s story—a woman of great intelligence, creativity, and ambition, who studied to be a biologist, but set aside this pursuit to become a housewife, until she died at the young age of 53. My grandmother's story is not unique, generations upon generations of women have followed this same path, being held back from becoming their fullest selves by the oppressive systems established in their worlds.”

"Untitled (Edmonia Lewis)" by Irene Mudd, hand knitting, embroidery, 20x18in, 2017, $375 — "Untitled (Edmonia Lewis)" by Irene Mudd, hand knitting, embroidery, 20x18in, 2017, $375

Mudd joins a legion of contemporary artists who find inherent meaning in these traditional techniques; a feminist sensibility excavated from the archetypal position of ‘homemaker’. Women created things for function, but the task enabled a form of expression that is culturally significant. “Each portrait is hand knitted, paying homage not only to the personal history knitting and craft have had in the lives of the women of my family, but also to women throughout history who were artists and makers, whose primary means of creating were restricted to “feminine” crafts such as knitting.”

“This work is the result of a process of reconciliation with these truths, and therefore, I want this series to act as a kind of memorial for the innumerable, often anonymous lives of women like mine and Walker’s mothers and grandmothers, whose gifts were lost on a society that did not value them.”

Mudd was just in Revelry Gallery’s tarot art exhibit, The Future is Unwritten, and also is included in Kaviar Forge & Gallery's show Artists in Our Midst, which runs through December 30, 2017.

Age: 22
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BFA, Painting & Fiber, University of Louisville, 2017
Website: irenemuddart.com
Instagram: irenemudd