ALICE ENGEL LEVINSON Gallery Artist Statement CV Photos Prior Work Contact

My work process is intuitive and encourages spontaneity and experimentation. The studio is a joyful place. By nature, I am an observer, collecting impressions of people and the natural world. Observations lead to musings, scribbled phrases, and gestural sketches. These suggest themes, visual motifs, a palette. My intention in place, I reach for the cloth and then the magic begins. Image, line, and pattern find their way though my hands into the work in a remarkable way. My task is to stay open and responsive to the 'voice' of the cloth. 'Listening' with my hands and my eyes. Putting aside the inner critic to allow a creative flow isn't easy, but is rewarding when I succeed. Led by the materials and my intuitive response to them, I aim to embrace the process. Starting generally with white cloth, silk, cotton, or canvas, I build a complex surface rich in color, image, and texture. The cloth is dyed, printed, or painted with fabric dyes and textile pigments and resists. These processes are applied and reapplied, layering one atop the other until a rich and complex surface is achieved. The fabric is cut or torn and their pieces mixed and melded as I assemble the work. Often edges are left raw and unbound. Layers of stitching from basting to embellishment are visible documenting the process of construction. In 2000, I left a career of twenty-five years in clinical practice to pursue work with textiles. Self-taught as an artist, my work has been exhibited throughout the United States, in Israel and Italy. It is in numerous private and institutional collections, including those of UNC Hospitals and the North Carolina Hillel Foundation. Visits to my Orange County studio can be arranged.