STACI MCKNIGHT MANEY ARTISTIC STATEMENT While my artistic background is in painting and photography, I began working as a mixed media/fiber artist in 2005. I discovered that a combination of mixed media and art quilting enabled me to merge all of my artistic pursuits into a cohesive body of work. Found objects provide the inspiration for many of my pieces. The themes that resonate through my art are: the beauty of the familiar, the duality of language, the combination of the mundane and the extraordinary, and the meeting of the sacred with the irreverent. My art quilts are created using traditional whole cloth quilt construction. I begin with natural cotton fabric to which I apply many layers of acrylic paint and washes. Textural elements are interspersed within these layers. When this background is complete, I apply more textural elements, such as yarn, paper, netting and thread. I free-motion quilt the piece as needed. Then I paint a foreground to which I attach the beads, vintage pieces, or found objects which are the focus of the piece. I find these items everywhere, from the side of the road to estate sales. I frequently save something that another person would throw away, especially if it has an interesting texture. The appeal of working with fiber, paint and found objects is that doing so is such a superbly tactile experience. My mixed media pieces use the same surface design techniques employed in my art quilts with the addition of transfers of my original photographs and stamps. As with my art quilts, found objects and fiber are instrumental to my design and add a sense of depth. My photographs are high contrast images which add stark imagery frequently in discordance with the layers of background color. I love this juxtaposition of color and imagery and strive for it in most of my work. My current obsessions are birds and power lines, which you will see throughout my mixed media art on canvas. These obsessions have turned into two series “For the Birds” and “Wired”. Together these series explore the theme of nature versus industry, as well as some of my constant themes, such as the beauty of the familiar and the mundane with the extraordinary. For a PDF version of my artist statement, please click here. Or, if you are looking for short combined artist statment and bio, click here.