VALYA, FEATURED ARTIST, & THE FUNCTION OF SILK IN NATURE: DR. JACQUALINE GRANT @ Southern Utah University (Cedar City, October 27)

WHAT:              A fiber artist whose work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, VALYA uses her unique personal journey from the Ukraine to the United States to create her art. This remarkable artist will present a workshop about her creative process. Dr. Jacqualine Grant, Director of SUU´s Frehner Museum of Natural History, examines the fascinating correlation between the fiber in the quilts and how silk functions in nature.

WHO:               Southern Utah University, Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery, Cedar City, UT

WHEN:             October 27, 2012

TIME:               Silken Roads and Wicked Webs: The Function of Silk in Nature 10-11am

                        VALYA, Art Quilter: 1-3pm

WHERE:           Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery, Braithwaite Building, Lower Level,

                        Southern Utah University, Cedar City, UT

TICKETS:         Free Admission

INFO:               For more information call (435) 586-5432 or visit the gallery website at www.suu.edu/pva/artgallery

SUU´S BRAITHWAITE FINE ARTS GALLERY

VALYA, ART QUILTER, PRESENTS WORKSHOP

AS PART OF "EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN" SERIES

OCTOBER 27, 2012

Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah: A fiber artist whose work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, VALYA uses her unique personal journey from the Ukraine to the United States to create her art. This remarkable artist will present a workshop about her creative process on Saturday October 27, 2012 from 1:00-3:00pm in SUU´s Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery. The workshop, which is free, is part of the Saturday program series for the Everything In Between: Art Quilts, Fabric Collage, and Embroidery exhibition at the Gallery. In addition, starting at 10am, there will a family friendly presentation on Silken Roads and Wicked Webs: The Function of Silk in Nature at the Gallery by Dr. Jacqualine Grant.

VALYA is a fiber artist whose artwork has been exhibited extensively at venues such as National Art Museum, Lithuania, Oceanside Museum of Art, USA, Center of Contemporary Art, Ukraine, Vision Art Museum, USA, Betriebsraum Gallery, Austria, Mingei International Museum, USA, and Manezh Exhibition Hall, Moscow, USSR. Her work has been presented in an anthology Ukrainian At of the Twentieth Century, Decorative Art of the Ukraine at the End of the Twentieth Century, 500 Art Quilts, Lark Books; 500 Felt Objects, Lark Books, among others. VALYA received several awards and diplomas, including Brakensiek Caught Eye Award at Oceanside Museum of Art and Honorable Mention at Kaunas Biennial TEXTILE´ 11, Lithuania. Born in Ukraine, VALYA now lives and works in the United States and in 2006 she opened her studio in Oceanside, California.

According to the artist, her remarkable life in the Ukraine deeply affects her art, "My life has been full of strong emotion, which has been imprinted on my soul and reflected in my art. I have experienced the universal feelings of love and pain, sorrow and exultation. I was thrown down into the depths of darkness and despair from which I almost did not recover. However, in time, this experience became a catalyst for my artistic work, forever altering my sense of color."

  

Dr. Jacqualine Grant, Director of SUU´s Garth and Jerri Frehner Museum of Natural History, examines how Quilters use silk to create fabulous pieces of art, but how does silk serve its creators? Silk moths and spiders are the most famous silk producers, but animals as diverse as mollusks and fleas also make silk. Is their silk different than moth silk? Moths produce silk to create a protective cocoon, but other silk-makers such as mayflies, dance flies, and silverfish do not create cocoons. For what purpose do they spin silk? In this seminar we will examine the biology and diversity of silk production in the animal world. The seminar will be followed by a question and answer session focused on the biology of silk-makers and users.

These workshops are part of the Saturday program series of SUU´s Everything in Between exhibition at the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery, which is made possible through the generous support of the Friends of the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery and a sponsorship provided by the Cedar Chest Quilters. For more information about these events, please visit the gallery website at www.edu/pva/artgallery beginning in mid-September.

The Friends of the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery is a non-profit group established in 1977, just one year after the Gallery was opened on the Southern Utah University campus. For nearly 35 years the Friends have helped enrich lives through their sponsorship of world-class exhibitions and outstanding arts education programs. Each year Friends'-supported exhibitions attract legions of art lovers from the intermountain west. In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits exhibition saw a record number of attendees from the region.  Other Friends' supported exhibitions seen in recent years at the Braithwaite include Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos, Chihuly Baskets, Soviet Era Art: 1917-1991 and Jim Jones: Recent Paintings. All of these exhibitions were free to the general public.

Experience the colorful art of VALYA and learn more about the connection between quilting fibers and silk in nature. For more information about these events, please visit the gallery website at www.edu/pva/artgallery.