March 6, 2017

We asked returning fiber art instructor Hollis Chatelain for her take on our short five question interview series. Hollis’s April 23-29, 2017 workshop focuses on dye painting your images and then bringing them to life with quilting.

Q: Where do you draw your inspiration from?
HC: Either from my dreams or my life experiences.

Q: What are you most proud of in regards to your art?
HC: Emotion is super important in my art because I believe that art should touch us emotionally. I’m always very humbled and touched when someone reacts emotionally to my art, and it makes me feel like I have accomplished what I set out to do. This is also what I try to teach to my students because I feel it can be done through color and composition.

Q: What are your biggest challenges to creating art and how do you deal with them?
HC: My personal challenge is finding enough time to make my art, but I don’t think that is what you’re asking for. In creating, I always challenge myself to figure out how to put the emotion that I want to come across to the viewer in the piece. How can I get them to react to the art!

Q: What advice has influenced you?
HC: Scale matters! This is just one thing that I think about all the time, but I have my work critiqued by professionals in the fine art world 4x/year so I’m always learning new things during these critiques.

Q: Is there something you are currently working on, or excited about starting that you can tell us about?
HC: I have been making a series of smaller pieces where I paint part of a face and finish the rest of it in only thread. This gives a mysterious and beautiful effect that I really like.