Friday Inspiration - Black and White

After this month's black and white earrings challenge (read more about it here) and how much I usually like to work in vivid color, I've started looking at more black and white in my designs.  I guess it's like that black and white photo challenge that was circulating around Facebook last fall.  When looking at everyone's entries, I was noticed how light worked in these black and white photos more than in color.  Same with the contrast between values, more texture, the shapes and patterns .... I wasn't being distracted by focusing on all the colors.  With that in mind, I decided to look at black and white based fiber art and see if the same held true!

Artist Sheena Liam embroiders women using black thread and creating three-dimensional almost life like hair.  I've looked at these pieces over and over and am always fascinated with the movement in them - one almosts expects an arm to go up or the hair to swish.  I think part of the success of this is that without color, the hair itself becomes the focal point of the piece, we focus totally on it.  Go to her Instagram page here to see more amazing works.

In Steps of hope ... steps of loss, Neera Huckvale states she uses black and white to represent the polarization she sees today.  Having the figures in black with no competing color definitely brings them to the foreground of importance, with the lighter figures behind the black veil (I didn't even see them for awhile) fading into background.  Read about how she created the piece and why she chose a black and white color scheme here in a Study28 interview.

And finally, working in black and white and then adding in color is a wonderful way to call attention or bring importance to something.  This works perfectly in Linda Colsh's Red.  Linda works in stitched work layered with photographs and one of her favorite subjects is the unnoticed.  I love the texture and light play in this piece!  See more of her work and read about her process and her artist statement on her website here.

In a side note - if you're a regular reader of Artthreads, you may know that I'm starting a quarterly fiber art challenge.  The first one began in January and was supposed to end this week - however, I'm currently being challenged to get the link working that will allow others to post their work directly to the blog page.  And I'm time challenged at the moment to sit and fiddle with it!  So I'm planning on the reveal being next Friday, April 6th - keep your fingers crossed!  This also means that if you didn't know about or forgot about the challenge, you have time to come up with something and join me - read this blog post here explaining all about it.

Happy Creating!  Deborah