DEBORAH 'COBRA' KRUGER

Textile Paintings by Deborah Kruger

Simultaneously contemporary and archetypal, Kruger's abstract work emanates an indigenous sensibility inspired by feathered Amazonian ceremonial art. Her Plumage and Raptor series reflect a sober awareness about the threats to bird populations worldwide. 

Kruger transforms the fluid and sensuous materials of wax and fiber into an original body of work that succeeds in blurring the dichotomy of art and craft. Her interpretation of feathers emerges through a complex technique using fiber, encaustic, oilstick, waxed linen, and wire.

Kruger now divides her time between the US and Mexico where she has created the recent Halcyon series which alludes both to a mythical bird and a time of creative generativity which clearly characterizes her new bi-cultural studio life.

Her reviewers have described her pieces as objects of "visual sensuality, primal and timeless" and one reviewer mused that her work was 'abstractly beautiful and richly imagined making statements about identity lost and overlooked."

FINE CRAFT SHOW in Washington DC: December 2 - 4th

Deborah Kruger
art@deborahkruger.com                                                       

Please tell your friends to visit my booth, #634 at the prestigious Washington DC Craft Show which runs December 2nd  - December 4th at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

Competition was steep: 175 artists were chosen from 2,000 entries. I am delighted to have this opportunity to exhibit at my first fine craft show.

I will be showing my newest pieces, which you can preview in the Halcyon Gallery and the Recycled Art Gallery on the website.

Hours for Booth #634:
Friday December 2: 10am – 8pm                   
Saturday December 3: 10am – 6pm
Sunday December 4: 11am – 5pm

If your friends want  reduced admission tickets, have them send their names and mailing addresses to my webmail: art@deborahkruger.com

For more information about the show:  http://craftsamericashows.com

If you can't make it to Washington DC, you will have another chance to see my work at the ACC Baltimore Retail Show February 22 - 24th, 2012. More information to follow.

Butterfly Effect: The Installation and its Inspiration

Deborah Kruger
art@deborahkruger.com

 The impetus behind creating Butterfly Effect was a call for installations on the theme of AIR  for the World Textile Association Biennial Fiber Conference, conveniently held this year in Mexico City. Given that my artwork is all related to birds and feathers, I readily took up the challenge.

The title refers not to butterflies, but to the theory developed by American mathamatician and meteorologist, Edward Lorenz (1917 - 2008), whose pioneering research in chaos theory explains how seemingly inconsequential action can have a profound ripple effect on large systems.  The most well known example, which he coined the Butterfly Effect, is how the fluttering of a butterfly wing could theoretically cause a typhoon on the other side of the world. I developed this piece to illustrate the Butterfly Effect Theory both in concept and construction.

The urge to prosper and grow is intrinsically human, but in fact, without thoughtful mediation, that impulse carries within it the seeds of our own destruction. The human drive to populate, settle, build and grow has concurrently meant a geometrically equivalent decrease in bird habitat. While non-birders might scoff at this seemingly insignificant side effect of development, the outcome has come back to haunt everyone, even the most ardent city dweller.

The decrease in habitat creates the following scenarios:

• Less nesting habitat leads to decrease in bird populations
• Decrease in bird populations results in the increase of insects (bird food)
• Loss of natural control of insects leads to significantly increased threats to agricultural production
• Threats to agriculture dramatically increase the production of petro-chemical based insecticides that concurrently increase our dependence on oil, pollute our fresh water, and enter our eco-system causing additional threats to bird populations (and humans and other living things)
• Frantic (and non-7 generation) development of insecticides has not kept up with agricultural threats and we are therefore seeing less successful and more expensive agricultural production and is considered part of the reason for bee colony collapse which has its own frightening impact on agriculture

And so the simple urge to expand has had a cataclysmic affect on our ecological health, our access to affordable food and our geopolitical safety.

The Butterfly Effect installation is composed from hundreds of feathers suspended in air, the element that connects all things and beings and the installation is designed to quiver and vibrate in response to slightest air current. Even as the viewer approaches the piece, it will move and respond to their presence. Hopefully, the art will also have a similar effect on the viewer.

The feather elements in this installation piece are fabricated from computer scans of the original feathers made from fiber, encaustic, oilstick and paint, materials that would not easily endure heat and airborne dust. The scans are inkjet printed on 300 lb watercolor paper along with paint and oilstick that are fixed and molded with acrylic coating.

We all exist in air and space and the concept behind this piece is to make us more aware of the subtle impact that we all have, both physically and energetically on the world around us.Perhaps a deeper awareness of this invisible but ever present interconnection can lead to a more harmonious and thoughtful level of interactivity between all entities that share the world’s airspace.

Butterfly Effect will be on view at the Diego Rivera Museum in Mexico City from May 26 - July 22, 2011. For more information: www.wta-online.org

Upcoming Exhibitions in Mexico

Fall 2010 finds me starting my second year in Mexico. I have moved from the sleepy pueblo of San Juan Cosala to larger quarters in the town of Chapala. My new home located just a block from the lake, has two studios: one upstairs for working on the wall, and one downstairs for doing installations and working three dimensionally.

I have started connecting with the artist community and as a result, I have several exhibition opportunities coming up.  I’ve joined Laguna Artes Plasticas (www.lagunaartesplasticas.com) which is the brainchild of Rainer Gocksch who is currently organizing the third annual Art Fair in Ajijic to showcase Jalisco artists (Dec 3 – 5; see Exhibitions for more details).

There are hundreds of artists living here, all drawn by the perfect weather, brilliant Mexican light and astounding beauty of the lake and mountains.  This month, I spoke to 70 of them at the October meeting of the Ajijic Society for the Arts (ASA). Their president, Deena Hafker encouraged me to share some of my encaustic techniques as well as insights about making art for the last 30 years. I will be showing two of my pieces in the fall ASA show “Mexico Mio” that will open at the Ajijic Cultural Center on October 29th (more in Exhibitions).

I have been offered a solo show in April 2011 at the Ajijic Cultural Center located on the plaza in the center of Ajijic, Mexico. There will be plenty of room for me to exhibit new work, prints and an installation. If you haven’t been to Mexico for awhile, consider coming down for the opening!

For more information: deborah@deborahkruger.com

New work from art sabbatical

 My art sabbatical here on Lake Chapala, Mexico has been a very rich experience personally and artistically. Originally I planned a 4 month sabbatical and then extended it to 8 months. I have never had such a long stretch of studio time in my life and it is no surprise that my work began to change with so much time and attention.

I began working in a more vertical format and the first two pieces, Plumaje and Plumaje 2 are long and pelt like. I had big breakthrough after a Photoshop tutorial with my friend and photography colleague, Vero Almeida. I realized I could build the pieces in sections and in that way create even more layering. The resulting work is more organic and wing-like.

Kruger show opens in Mexico

 My entire sabbatical here in Mexico has been marked by a series of serendipitous events. The latest was my introduction to well-known curator, Helmut Kohl, who has been a cultural rainmaker in Guadalajara for many years and has brought hundreds of artists and musicians to international prominence.

Helmut Kohl and his son Christian now have two galleries, one in Puerto Vallarta and the other in the charming beach town of San Pancho in Nayarit where my show will open April 3rd and run through June 3rd.  The show titled HALCYON will feature the new body of work that I have created during this sabbatical year in Mexico.

Halcyon refers both to a mythical bird and to a period of serenity around the time of the solstice when the Greek gods charmed the wind and waves into a calm allowing the Halcyon to breed. Halcyon Days has become a term which refers to a particularly peaceful time and that certainly characterizes the gift of an art sabbatical.