Virginia Spiegel

Byron, Illinois

The natural world as experienced by Virginia Spiegel inspires her art. Each series invites a compelling conversation about a specific place during a specific season.

Even though her work is largely abstract, viewers feel the rush of river flow, ride along on the freedom flight of a bee, and mentally touch the peeling bark of a tree. Each piece invokes love of the subject matter, and leaves room for viewers to make their own interpretations. There is, Spiegel says, beauty in ambiguity. Her art quilts are evocative celebrations, filled with meaning and emotion, of a lived landscape.

Defining moments

I find fabric, paint, and paper to be “warm” media. I am mainly a maker of art quilts but also create collages, photographs, sculpture, and paintings. I made my first quilt after seeing a quilting show on PBS. The show came on before Victory Garden every Sunday afternoon, and I caught snippets every week. I started quilting because I needed stress release from working full-time while doing the coursework for my Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Iowa.

I learned quilting by having fun making things. My grandmother Alice and great-aunt Clara were quilters,

Boundary Waters 84

33 x 51 inches, 2016

and I come from a long line of creative needle workers. Being a self-taught quilter was an ideal foundation for my career as an art quilter. I didn’t know the rules, so I focused on what I wanted to say and worked out what needed to be done to say it.

I became a full-time artist after surviving a car accident. It was an impossible-to-ignore reminder that life is too short not to do what you love. Becoming a full-time artist wasn’t a total shock for me as I had, between higher education positions, worked for several years as a graphic designer while completing graduate coursework in typography, photography, and design.

Not working long hours away from home was quite the shock. No one believes that being an artist requires ironclad self-discipline. But it took time to develop a studio routine that works.

Inspiration

For me, it’s all about nature, but not a generic nature. My artwork is about landscapes I have experienced, studied, photographed, drawn, and lived in. Each one is based on my experience in a specific location in a specific season. I’m always thinking about what a particular detail tells me about the big picture.

My sister and I have made 23 wilderness canoe trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) for a total of almost 200 days in the last 14 years. We carry everything we need for 10 days in three packs in our Kevlar canoe. The BWCAW comprises more than a million acres set aside from human development along the Minnesota/Canadian border. The area was named one of National Geographic Traveler’s “50 Places of a Lifetime” with good reason.

In my artwork, I try to emulate how simple the materials in nature are, and yet how complex their forms and expressions. I experience firsthand the power of nature and realize how small and temporary humans are. In the wild, there are concrete examples —the downed giant pine fostering a tiny new tree; a loon’s nest destroyed so another animal might eat—of the endless recycling from life to death.

Rocktime (Boundary Waters 60)

60 x 24 inches, 2011

To see the bull moose, the spindly twin moose babies, the eagles, and so much more wildlife in their natural habitat, is not a gift I take lightly. Part of sharing my art is the hope others will respect and honor our irreplaceable environment.

I live in the Midwest by choice. The landscape and my one-acre landscape garden I created from bare ground are always before me and on my mind. It’s a landscape of huge shagbark trees, waving grasses, ever-changing fields stretching to the horizon, and small patches of preserved prairie. We change with the seasons, from frozen winter to the bounty of summer. All of it inspires me.

Full-time commitment

Being a successful artist has to begin with having something meaningful to say, wanting to say it more than anything else, and knowing in concrete terms what success means for you as an artist. The most important thing is not to be dissuaded from your personal definition of success by others. I’ve had a successful creative year if I’ve been able to create meaningful artwork that’s new to me in some way and if I’ve improved my resume with quality exhibits and publications.

Even though I try to limit my time on the computer, I share something online every week about what I’m looking at, thinking about, creating, experimenting with, and where my artwork is being exhibited or published.

My blog is a huge resource of my thoughts, inspirations, and artwork built up over almost 10 years. Currently I share more quickly and frequently on other social media such as Facebook. My life and my art are inextricably intertwined, so there’s always something to share.

Studio seasons

Since my artwork is inspired by nature, it is fitting that my studio practice should follow the seasons. Almost all of my artwork is created from November through April. In the spring and summer, I travel, work in my landscape garden, and paint or print all the fabrics I use in my artwork. During the winter, the studio is my refuge, and I’m thrilled to spend long, concentrated hours in its warmth and light. I find that toward the end of summer, I actually feel a frisson of excitement, a rising push of inspiration that compels my return

to the studio. All summer long I have been living in nature and traveling about seeing new things. There is an urgency when I return to my studio, knowing that time is limited, time is passing.

I work in series and within those series in groups of artwork. With art quilts, this is due, in part, to the fact that the only fabrics available to me are those that I have already created. I have yet to be able to go back and “make” additional fabrics to continue a grouping or series of artwork. Using what I have and moving on works best for me.

Inviting new artwork

I always know what I want to talk about before I start, and it needs to be something for which I feel passion. I begin by auditioning fabrics, putting lots of possibilities on my design wall. At this point, I might sew all these fabrics together, cut them apart, add more fabrics, and sew again. The artwork develops organically.

While I know the subject, I’m open to what form it might take. I find that the artworks I like the best are the ones done in the white heat of a moment. If I tinker with an artwork once it seems done, I know that the artwork’s intent wasn’t clear. I am not adverse, however, to adding another layer of paint to an almost-completed artwork. I definitely “ruin” a lot of artwork (no worries, they’ll be used in a future work), but I let the artwork drive the bus, even if eventually I have to stitch through layers and layers of fabric and paint.

I am always trying to push myself in new directions. I’m open to new materials and work in groups of artworks exploring new possibilities. For example, the Shagbark series is made almost exclusively from screen-printed upholstery samples. I completed a group of art quilts in the Boundary Waters series using thousands of miniature paper fasteners in lieu of stitching.

Next steps

I’m curious and easily bored, but l have the touchstone of how the Boundary Waters and my daily landscape make me feel and what they say about life: Keep a steady thread of purpose in my mind and in my artwork.

I have in mind a group of art quilts in the Boundary Waters series that will follow strict parameters. I’m not yet sure if the decisive factor will be color, size, motif, or some other interesting aspect. It’s always good to be learning something new, so I’m working on developing a more relaxed but realistic style for my paintings on canvas. I’m sure that this will feed into my textile artwork over time.

www.virginiaspiegel.com

left: Boundary Waters 82 40 x 40 inches, 2016 below: Rock 40 x 40 inches, 2015