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Ren’s passion for textile and paper arts began when she was two years old and first given a thread and needle. The daughter of “displaced persons” of Russian origin, Ren grew up in a Russian community in New York state where her family taught her the traditions of old-world fiber arts; traditions that embrace the necessities of function and the beauty of Eastern European form. When she reached school age, Ren was surprised to learn that her classmates could neither speak Russian nor make their own clothes. Though her mother is her main influence, the fiber crafts Ren was raised to explore were handed down by her entire family. Her mother was a seamstress and needleworker while her great-grandmother, living in the same house, was a needleworker and designer. Her father worked in a sewing machine factory and maintained the family’s machines in his spare time when he wasn’t building folk art sculptures. Ren’s mother remembers the first time Ren pricked herself, “She was nine years old and terribly offended by that misbehaving piece of equipment.” During Ren’s learning years, creating fiber arts was considered a cultural and economic necessity. As she continued to experiment, designing and creating fiber, and then paper, arts became an adventure of aesthetics for her. Ren grew up with that needle and thread; sometimes it was a knitting needle, other times, embroidery, but always working at something and working towards creating her own unique style, a style embracing traditions while exploring new possibilities of use and form. From her many years of fundamentals, Ren has been using those tools of her early training to develop a fine art aesthetic. In her art, she ties together traditional old-world craft with the concerns of modern art, much in the way ceramicists did in the 1970s. With her new creations, an embroidered towel is not for drying hands, but is a work of hanging art; a pieced quilt cannot cover a bed, but is to be installed as sculpture. And handbound book is not to be read as text, but as image. And each of Ren’s creations speaks in a discrete narrative. Ren’s involvement in experimental textile works has been to expand the conventional tessellations of textiles into the medium of art collage, both in fiber and paper, and sometimes both together. Her current work involves creating fiber art (some call them “art quilts”) on themes drawn from nature (The Solar Series) and from emotions (LoveTorn: X); creating stuffed creatures from socks and felted wool (Silly Sock Creatures); and experimenting with various surface design techniques involving paints, inks, dyes, and bleaches. Ren belongs to the Surface Design Association, the Studio Art Quilters Association, the Rochester Area Fiber Artists, and the American Craft Council. She participates regularly on Illustration Friday and Fast Friday blogs, both of which are dedicated to promoting creativity by regularly providing themes from which to create art objects. Ren blogs about her artwork at <http://www.thecrazyatomorbit.blogspot.com>. In Ren’s day job she is a professor of Geography at a State University of New York College. She draws much inspiration from her teaching about maps and the physical and emotional landscape of the United States. Ren Vasiliev |
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