South Coast Surface Design Featured Artist Program
New Featured Artist Polly Spenner
We are very excited to announce our new Featured Artist Polly Spenner, a Textile Artist and Painter, concentrating in Jacquard weaving and handloom fabric, sculpture and silkscreen collages.
Polly's methods of translation between illustration, painting, and jacquard weaving are beautifully presented in our Winter 2024 / 2025 Featured Artist gallery exhibit
“Weaving My Own Ocean by Polly Spenner”
Polly Spenner was born in Sydney, Australia and now calls Rhode Island home. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island school of Design Textiles Department and Interlochen Arts Academy.
Polly's focus is the connection between human-made objects and their counterparts in nature, intrigued by the shapes and forms observed in daily life experiences.
"In my Jacquard and handloom wovens, paintings and silkscreen collages, bright colors and arching gestures of freeform lines define the spaces in between.
My eye gravitates to bold colors and backlite outlines.
The push and pull of the foreground and background overlap with these lines creating an undulating motion, causing time to stand still.
The context of the imagery may be soft with raw edges or strong and loud. The resistance of polar magnets is in play. I am drawn to shadows and metallic sparks of light that bounce off buildings, windows and waterways, during the golden hour of each day.
The sound of ocean currents and smell of salt air with the feeling of a biting wind while walking through wooded trails, vast meadows, midnight beaches - nature is a source of endless inspiration for my artwork." Polly Spenner
Polly's work is created first using acrylic and watercolor paints, India ink, graphic markers and colored pencils, developing her original illustrations and paintings. Also including collage and photography, these artful creations are transferred into a digital format using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software: Adobe Photoshop and Pointecarre. Weave structures are identified for the artwork and then translated into binary code to run the weaving process on the industrial loom. As the fabric is woven, Polly continuously operates the loom, adjusting components like the tension, pics per inch, yarn choices, to suit the resulting woven art. This is a high-functioning manual, mechanical and computer-aided creative process.
Polly's woven art is a combination of cotton, rayon, wool, synthetic and sparkling metallic yarns, creating a variety of textured surfaces and reflections. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Poets House Library of New York City, the Imago Foundation for the Arts, and private collections. In addition to creating her fine art pieces, Polly is a Textile Technician for the jacquard, dobby and handlooms for the Textile Department at the Rhode Island School of Design.
We look forward to sharing this wonderful collect of Polly Spenner's current and past work in our Winter 2024 /2025 Featured Artist gallery exhibit.
