Mary Edna Fraser presents her batiks on silk and didactic process photographs at The Citadel’s Daniel Library, opening May 30, 5:30-7:30pm. Admission is free. She brought together songwriter Dana Downs and author Akiko Busch for a musical performance, reading, and projection of art on May 31 and June 1, 7pm, at The Citadel’s Bond Hall. Tickets are $20; seniors $15. Buy your tickets here: http://www.piccolospoleto.com/?tribe_events=traditional-music-of-the-old-south-nine-ways-to-cross-a-river

Here is link to the full current issue of Eno: http://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/eno/current-issue/

Please click to enlarge the page below, featuring Mary Edna.

Eno Magazine, #2

Self Portrait, batik on silk, 102" x 36"

Fundraiser on Valentine’s Day
1723 Oak Point Road, Charleston, SC
Thursday evening, 5pm-9pm

An art exhibition by Mary Edna Fraser and Jeff Kopish

Non-profit Charleston Waterkeeper is alerting our fair city about threatened waterways in our community. You can view a map of impaired locations here.

Join us to celebrate this proactive organization and meet Cyrus Buffum and Andrew Wunderley. Charleston Waterkeeper is dedicated to protecting your right to swimmable, drinkable, fishable water by defending against pollution. Find out what you can do to help your favorite creek.

Live music by Sweetgrass Band. Beer donated by Holy City Brewing. Vietnamese sandwhiches by Auto-Banh and sweets by Dulce food trucks.

Libations and fun provided. Please park at the Harris Teeter and stroll over.

See our previous posts on Delete Apathy for more information about our relationship with Charleston Waterkeeper.

Visitors have been steady but comment that its an adventure coming to visit me. Here are a few visuals to guide you down the dirt road into the gallery. Only three days left before I leave for Christmas in North Carolina with my daughters.

Holiday Open Studio, 10 AM-5 PM, December 19, 20, & 21
1723 Oak Point Road, across from Harris Teeter off Folly Road, James Island

After the 25th, I will be open by appointment. Contact Mary Edna Fraser at (843) 762-2594 or info@maryedna.com.

After seeing the exhibition “El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa” (pictured below) at the Denver Art Museum and many works by the great colorist Van Gogh, my artistic cup is filled to the brim. A full day of art and it snowed here too but the leaves are on the trees in full autumn colors.

Just finished hanging an exhibit at the Albuquerque International Balloon Museum which opens on July 25th. These are 4 batiks that are 12.5″ wide and 14.5″ wide and 49″ long but they work as a set for this show. Thanks Timothy Pakron for loving the photographs and Tim Steele for getting the color right on my silks every time.

"Flying to Albuquerque" series

Check out updates of Deep Sea Diary at DeleteApathy.com.

Mud Volcanoes, 10″ x 6″, watercolor, Mary Edna Fraser

My adventurous spirit is in a state of excitement. On May 27th, my cameras and watercolors travel to Barbados to join Dr. Cindy Lee Van Dover’s scientific and artistic team on the Atlantis ship exploring the deep sea. Cindy and I first met in my studio in 2001. She is the first woman to pilot the deep submersible research vessel Alvin. Listening to her tales of the struggle toward this endeavor has encouraged me to continue piloting lessons while I am on aerial photographic excursions. Now Cindy heads Duke Marine Lab. She and artist Karen Jacobsen work in a similar collaborative fashion as Orrin Pilkey and me.

Now I am joining a team of artists and scientists to the Barbados Subduction Zone to map the aquatic bottom. In the deep sea where the Atlantic plate slips under the Caribbean plate, methane-rich fluids feed mud volcanoes on the sea floor, which in turn generates high levels of hydrogen sulfide as microbes process the methane and seawater sulfate. By the way, I am just now introducing my brain to the science reading Cindy’s Deep-Ocean Journeys and The Ecology of Deep Hydrothermal Vents and scientific papers she sends to prepare for the trip. It is fascinating to ponder creatures and depths in this edge of discovery. For my art, the marine realm is a new field of study. Other than the Faulty Towers of Juan de Fuca Ridge and the Great Barrier Reef, I have little knowledge. Science is so fascinating.

I go on the first leg of the trip, June 1-8, where a tethered vehicle will allow those on board to see what is being discovered in otherwise relatively inaccessible environments. My job is to observe, document, share knowledge and make art. I hope to give both a close up and far away artistic rendition with emotion. Mineral pigments offer a new palette of watercolor. Sonar also opens color doors. Just like with my pal Orrin Pilkey, the scientists will advise on what to accentuate.

Yippee. Can’t wait to see the bottom of this sea and learn more. It will be two weeks before the world hears from me once I leave this Sunday.

GulfQuest, a new maritime museum in Mobile, Alabama set to open in 2013, has commissioned a batik on silk installation for their atrium. Architectural firm Lyons/Zaremba designed the art to be three bowed panels suspended above viewer in the shape of ship’s sails. Seven sections must be waxed and dyed separately then sewn together and seamed with bias cuts to complete the design. Mary Edna is excited to be on her second dye bath of the right panel today. The final art work will be about 21 feet tall and 30 feet wide.

Over 180 hours of woman-power were required to execute the central section. Frank Zaremba, pictured below, came for a visit to see the progress of the art last week.

Photograph by Celie Dailey.

On view until March 25, 2012 is Thread of Life at the Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University, Tallahassee.  Featuring the pioneers of textile art who reclaimed craft media as fine art beginning during second-wave feminism, as well as younger conceptual artists, the exhibition presents “works that address civil rights and imprisonment, the sweat shops, natural disasters and man-made ones, and the human narrative from birth to poetic elegy,” according to the exhibition catalog.

Mary Edna found her niche outside of the fine arts world early on. Although painterly with an abstraction of landscape that embodies a sense of place, her greatest accolades have come from her collaboration with scientists and large-scale installations at academic institutions. Seen below, her batik on silk Yukon Delta, Alaska is exhibited alongside Judith Poxson Fawkes’ Neighborhood Afloat, showing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The pieces together depict the fragile and powerful waterways that lives are built upon, fabric itself embodying this dichotomy.

(Mary Edna Fraser, Yukon Delta, Alaska, 2006, batik on silk, 44″ x 44″; Judith Poxson Fawkes, Neighborhood Afloat, 2007, linen, inlay tapestry, 53″ x 53″)

The historical context of textile art shows the path that Mary Edna has followed alongside her contemporaries: “Textile art, prior to the 1960s, was barely thinkable as a concept in the United States. Art critics and historians categorized textiles as craft. In the 1960s the concept of textiles as art received impetus from a few artists and curators. During the past fifty years the boundaries continued shifting and the category acquired every more practicing adherents, often women. In the 1970s, three feminists women whose work appears in Thread of Life, intensified and effected change in the art world attitude toward textiles. The work of Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, and Judy Chicago, as well as the textile work of many who followed, are now unambiguously recognized as art.”

(From left to right: Tim Harding, Autumn Orange Canopy, 2011, reverse applique, silk, 35″ x 42″ & Koi # 18, 2010, reverse applique, silk, 45.5″ x 38″; Judith Content, arashi-shibori dyed, discharged, pieced, quilted, and appliqued; Stephanie Liner, Detail of Her Orb, mixed media, 20″ diameter; Miriam Schapiro, Miriam’s Life with Dolls, 2006, acrylic, fabric, and collage on paper, 30.25″ x 60″; Mary Edna Fraser, Charleston Airborne Flooded, SC, 2010, batik on silk, 97″ x 35″ & Sinking Colombian Shores, South America, 1998, batik on silk, 34″ x 63″)

The exhibition includes: Harriet Bell, Lanny Bergner, Laura Breitman, Jenny Campbell, Judy Chicago, Judith Content, Hagar Cygler, Judith Poxson Fawkes, Linda Pigman Fifield, Susan Etcoff Fraerman, Mary Edna Fraser, Gee’s Bend/Mary Ann Pettway, Valerie S. Goodwin, Tim Harding, Cindy Hickok, Samara Kaufman, Stephanie Liner, Christine LoFaso, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Nancy Scheinman, Laura Splan, Laura Strand, and Karen Reese Tunnell.

Thread of Life is located in the Upper Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Spring Semester Hours:
Monday – Friday 9am – 4pm
Sat. & Sun 1 – 4pm
Closed March 3 – 11 except by arrangement.

Address:
Florida State University
530 W Call Street
250 Fine Arts Building
Tallahassee, Fl 32306-1140