Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/28/2025 - 06/23/2025
All Day
Location
Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts
Categories
Rebecca Yeomans “Spellbinding Vines” Grapevine, various silk fabrics & thread, 30.75” x 24” x 2″
Art in Bloom Gallery is collaborating with Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts to present the fiber art of Rebecca Yeomans! Discover Rebecca’s botanically dyed creations across the 2nd Floor Lobby and Ruth & Bucky Stein Theatre.
The exhibit will be open daily from 12-5pm, March 28th – June 23rd, as well as most evenings and via tours at 310 Chestnut St.
About the Artist
Rebecca Yeomans has lived her entire life centered around making. She learned to knit at eight years old and was considered the “class artist” in school. She studied studio art at UNC-Chapel Hill, receiving a BFA in 1974. After earning an MFA from Auburn University in 1979 she taught there for several years. Rebecca and her husband Tom moved to Wilmington, NC in 1984 and she worked as a scenic artist in the film industry. She was a founding board member for DREAMS of Wilmington and later taught classes. After she and Tom raised two artsy daughters, Rebecca quickly moved into full time artist mode. Her current work combines botanical printing, knitting, and stitching with a painterly feel.
About Her Process
The botanical printmaking process is almost always the inspiration and starting point for Rebecca’s work. Eco or botanical printing is the art of transferring color from natural plant material on to fabric or paper using pressure, moisture, and heat. Beautiful contact plant portraits are captured by bundling vegetation and fabric, either by rolling around a pipe or stacking in layers and binding tightly. The bundle is then steamed or immersed in simmering natural dye coaxing the pigment out of the leaves and on to the cloth. Results depend on many variables: type of fabric, water source, plant species, season, climate, and type of vessel used to name a few. Thus each piece is unique and always a surprise. The process involves many steps: scouring, mordanting, pre dyeing, printing with plant material, post dyeing, rinsing, and perhaps printing again. Rebecca enjoys the relationship with the natural world inherent in the process: foraging walks, growing my own dye plants, the aroma of cooking eucalyptus, and the opening of a bundle to reveal what gift Mother Nature has given. When a piece of printed paper or cloth excites me, Rebecca begin the slow process of embellishing. This involves tearing fabric, arranging and rearranging, pinning, basting, and deciding on a place to start. She approaches this process intuitively, reacting playfully, exploring this or that, asking what if? The piece evolves and its story unfolds. Hopefully a lovely whole is created by the intricate details. In a nutshell, the beauty of the materials and the process of making are what my artwork is about. Rebecca is co-creating with Mother Nature and collaborating with the fabric, yarn, and thread.