Mary Louise Learned

Mary Louise Learned is an Artist working in Mixed Medium Textiles. She constructs sculptural forms and canvases by stitching, layering and painting bits and pieces of cloth and fibers together. The abstract images and color choices come directly from the places she has lived, and the Asian artifacts from her father’s tours in Japan, Korea and Viet-Nam. Vast ocean landscapes with strong horizon lines and the vertical climb of the trees in the Rocky Mountains are all evident in the work.

Learned’s work has drawn the attention of juror’s and reporter’s in exhibitions throughout the United States, including Quilt National 2003 and 2009. Art Students league of Denver, Politics and Art in America 2008, Open Studio’s Boulder, CO 2006, Quilt Market and Festival in Houston, TX 2005 and Sacred Threads 2005 in Reynoldsburg, OH. She won the best of mixed-media award in Boulder Art Associations 10th national juried exhibit 2001. Most recently, in November of 2008 she completed a 3 foot by 9 foot commissioned landscape, now hanging in a private residence in Boulder, CO. Her first solo exhibition will be at the University of Colorado’s UMC Art Gallery in 2009.

Mary Louise started making one of a kind contemporary quilts in 1995 and was juried into her first show in 1997 at Metro State College, Denver. She received a Master’s (1982) and Bachelor (1980) of fine Arts, in dance from the California Institute of the Arts. As a scholarship recipient she received reviews for her choreography in Dance News, The Hollywood Reporter and Los Angeles Times. CalArts is well known for it’s multi-disciplinary approach and Learned worked closely with musicians, actor’s and visual artist’s.

Born in Tokyo Japan in 1957 to a Deaf mother, and Military father, Learned’s first language was American Sign Language. This visual orientation set the stage for a life of keen visual observation, and an appreciation of all the Arts. Raised primarily on the Monterey Peninsula, California she has been fortunate to live, and be influenced by, all of these places as well; Germany, Hawaii, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Vermont, and since 1991, Boulder Colorado, where she currently resides.

I build and construct an abstracted form or canvas by layering and fitting bits and piece’s of cloth, paper, and wool fiber’s together in strong vertical and horizontal lines. These two distinct directions often include a repetitious figurative element. I employ the techniques of sewing, drawing, painting and needle-felting. Until recently, needle felting was done primarily by hand with one barbed needle penetrating pieces of yarn into wool to create a design or felted surface. The machine I use has five barbed needles that run at 900 punches a minute. I also use this tool to de-construct cloth by changing it’s surface appearance.

I am inspired by music and the mysteries of nature and what lies beneath an obvious surface.. I seek to communicate a physical-ness in my sewn canvases by using music to facilitate a dance and making marks in rhythm to that music. I then take those marks and manipulate the cloth by adding more cloth and paint, or cutting away parts and deconstructing the surface. Depending on the day, that can either be a passionate flurry of rhythmic activity with lots of bold colors or the quiet contemplative mood often evoked by a single instrument and hence the predominately white canvases. I like moving between these extremes. In nature I look for unusual patterns, what the ocean brings up and leaves behind in its tides, the color and texture of tree bark, and in particular shadows cast by the sun at different times of the day. The play of light on these objects in our man-made or natural environments, have taken up residence in this body of work.

Currently I am challenging my self to use only what I have on hand in the way of materials and purchasing only those items that are absolutely necessary for the completion of the work. This forces the creative process to come up with different ways to use the fibers that I have on hand. By shredding or making confetti like pieces of cloth, I can use them as pure pigment like a painter would use paint. I am not a painter in the conventional sense, because I will always have the need to attach one piece of cloth, fiber and thread to another surface.

See Resume (PDF)