Ivyside Juried Exhibition
October 31–December 14, 2024
Threads, Folds, & Rabbit Holes
By Kristy Deetz
McLanahan Gallery
Artist Bio
Kristy Deetz is professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Her extensive exhibition record includes national and international venues. With Reni Gower, she co-curated FABRICation that traveled to art museums, university art galleries, and art centers. She frequently serves as a visiting artist and has led numerous painting/drawing workshops at venues including Haystack, Oxbow, Penland, Anderson Ranch, and Arrowmont. UWGB awarded her the 2011 Founders Award for Excellence in Scholarship. She received SECAC’s 2016 Award for Excellence in Teaching and a 2015 Silver Award from Graphis Design Annual, New York. Her paintings have been featured in Encaustic Art in the Twenty-First Century, Encaustic Art—The Complete Guide to Creating Fine Art with Wax, and Full-Range Color Painting for the Beginner. Recently she served as Erasmus Visiting Lecturer at the University of Kassel, Germany, and Artist-in-Residence at The Burren College of Art in Ireland. Website: www.kristydeetz.com. Threads, Folds & Rabbit Holes is a well-received interdisciplinary traveling exhibition featuring the paintings/textiles of Kristy Deetz plus illustrated books with artwork accompanied by the ekphrastic stories of Edward S. Louis (pen name of E. L. Risden).
Artist Statement
Deetz’s series Through the Veil and Holidays Unfolding combine realistic, surrealistic, abstract, and appropriated elements. Rabbit and Kitty Boy, intrepid protagonists of the stories, take the viewer on many adventures through the artwork and books. Each painting of the Through the Veil series begins with a rendering from a closely observed fabric with wrinkles and folds that often recapitulates the compositional structure of a painting/drawing by artists from the past and present. The fabric in these paintings acts as a threshold that places the shape-shifting Rabbit into multiple, often conflicting, layers of space and meaning. The paintings good-humoredly deconstruct imagery from pop, outsider, and high culture to create new “spaces” of narrative and meaning. The paintings use dark humor, visual puns, symbols and metaphors, moments of silence, art historical allusions, cultural collisions, and spiritual conundrums to play with style and pictorial/formal construction. Deetz ‘s Holidays Unfolding series investigates the historic use of decorative drapery and the artistic category of still life. The paintings examine the contradictory feelings that accompany loss or nostalgia and, as a result, become meditations on both beauty and transience. The series’ surreal imagery also comments on pressing issues in contemporary politics, culture and mores associated with American holidays. The work explores new possibilities between a complex interface of painting, textiles, and digital technology while producing a product that maintains the richness of slow work by hand.
Checklist
Memorial Day Missing, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Flag Day Transforming, 2021
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Independence Day Cracking, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Friends Day Hiding, 2021
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Labor Day Circling, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Halloween Floating, 2019
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Thanksgiving Sliding, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Christmas Rising, 2019
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Both Sides Now, 2015
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Ecce Homo, 2015
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Assisted Living, 2015
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Where’s Kitty Boy, 2015
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Rabbit and Kitty Boy Mend the Fabric of Meaning, 2014
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Hank’s Rebirth Dilemma, 2019
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Somnambulists, 2014
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Through Dr. Kaligari’s Cabinet, 2014
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Do You Hear What I Hear?, 2014
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Glad you’re Here!, 2014
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
See Brown, 2013
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Rabbit and Kitty Boy Escape the Postmodern Radar, 2013
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Mettre Monet en Abime, 2013
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Cable or Dish?, 2013
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
In Front of Piero’s Resurrection, 2012
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Through Darger’s Eyes, 2012
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Playing Chess with Duchamp, 2012
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Targeting Tuyman’s Rabbit, 2012
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Devouring and Reconstructing Kali, 2012
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
Four Rabbits of the A-Pear-Calypse, 2014
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 20” x 20”
New Year’s Eve Pa(w) sing, 2021
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Valentine’s Day Exploding, 2019
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
St. Patrick’s Day Keening, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
April Fooling, 2021
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Easter Falling, 2019
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Memorial Day Missing, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Flag Day Transforming, 2021
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Independence Day Cracking, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Friends Day Hiding, 2021
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Labor Day Circling, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Halloween Floating, 2019
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Thanksgiving Sliding, 2020
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”
Christmas Rising, 2019
Acrylic on printed digital pattern on silk with image transfers and embroidery over stretched canvas, 36” x 36”