05 Mar ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS: GEORGIA ROWSWELL

When Georgia Rowswell’s landscape Thunderhead Off Happy Jack Road won Best of Show during last spring’s Cowgirl Up! exhibition at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona, the judges described it as “mind-blowing.” That’s a term not often used in museum-speak. Yet, it sums up the visual pleasure offered by her unconventional medium and process. Upon up-close examination, what might have first appeared to be sinuous brushstrokes of color resolve into myriad individual strips of cloth, painstakingly glued layer after layer to foamcore backing — on which she pre-sketched her composition — inside a deep wooden frame.

Such an innovative approach to artmaking stems naturally from a woman who describes herself as always “being influenced by the environment and where I live.” Rowswell grew up in Buffalo, New York, where her mother taught her to sew, “and she knitted, crocheted, quilted, did bobbin lace, needlepoint, and embroidery. Through her, I had this deep connection to textiles,” Rowswell says. Her dad, who owned a lumberyard, “was always in the backyard, making something for somebody. The whole idea of handmade was valued by my family.”

The third of four children, Roswell earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Buffalo, where she met her husband, Dave, also an artist and jewelry maker. They moved to the South for his teaching job while she worked as a studio artist making multimedia wall sculptures featuring her own handmade and cast paper.

Thunderhead off Happy Jack Road | Fiber | 36 x 22 x 3 inches

About 16 years ago, their children grown, the couple moved west to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where she set up a studio on the ground floor of the historic Hynds Building. Driving through the rugged new landscape that surrounded her, Rowswell says, “I saw the stratification of the rocks and the interesting patterns and just said to myself, ‘I’d like to do something with that, but I don’t want to paint it.’ And my next thought was, ‘Why don’t I do it in fabric?’” A longtime thrift store shopper — “It’s like an archaeological dig!” — she felt that “old clothes and household textiles” could provide the perfect medium.

Lest it seem that such materials limit artistic expression, one look at a recent work like Where the Buffalo Roam Again dispels any such doubts. Inspired by a “bioblitz” ecological visit on the grounds of the Wind River Buffalo Tribal Initiative, the work powerfully depicts wind-whipped cloudy skies, a glowing sunrise, green fields, and a grazing herd, all conjured through strips of t-shirts, dishcloths, sweaters, bedsheets, and other textiles Rowswell bought and precut into strips about half an inch wide. “I use whatever works color-, texture-, and pattern-wise, which I precut and color-code in Ziploc plastic bags.”

Riding the Range — Encampment WY | Discarded Clothing & Household Textiles | 14.75 x 10.25 x 5 inches

That innovative technique and the mesmerizing results have been recognized not only by Cowgirl Up! but also with a coveted Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship and prestigious artist residencies. “I’ve had my informal and my formal educations,” she sums up. “What I’m doing now is taking those two streams and blending them.”

See Rowswell’s work in her gallery in downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming; and in Cowgirl Up!, through May 25, at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona; Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show & Sale, July 18 to 27, in Cheyenne, Wyoming; and as a featured artist August 6 to September 27 at Art 321 – Casper Artists’ Guild in Casper, Wyoming.

Based in Marin County, California, Norman Kolpas is the author of more than 40 books and hundreds of articles. He also teaches nonfiction writing in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.