Karen and Marvin Smith
BlissArt and Blue Wolf Studios
Nogal, NM
By: Steppin Out Staff
One of the many interesting visits we made during our Art Loop Tour was to the creative studios of Karen Smith, creator of Blissart Art Quilts and Marvin Smith creator of Blue Wolf Sculptural Ceramics. This husband and wife artistic team each have their own separate artistic talents skills and interests – Karen’s interests and artistic focus involves the creation of amazingly beautiful art quilts; while Marvin creates fascinating and mystic looking ceramic sculptures – but they’ve also started working together to create collaborative artworks that involve both Karen’s artistic quilts and Marvin’s ceramics combined to create totally unique collaborative pieces.
Karen’s beautiful artistic creations work could perhaps be described as artistic stitch craft. Yet somehow, they are much more than that. Her works often seem designed to tell stories or communicate messages to the viewer at quite visceral levels. At other times, they involve remarkably complex geometric patterns that clearly require Karen to spend lots of time designing the quilts and putting them together. These are definitely NOT your grandmother’s patchwork quilts. Indeed it would almost be a shame to use Karen’s beautiful creations as quilts at all. Once one stands and looks at them for even a few minutes, it becomes obvious that these are pieces of museum-quality displayable fine art that just happen to be made from fabric rather than painted in oils or acrylics on a piece of canvas or linen. They seem best suited to being framed and hung on a wall somewhere and displayed proudly as true art over the mantle or on the wall of a family room.
It’s impossible to describe Karen’s art with words. Even photographs really don’t do her artistic creations justice. To fully appreciate the beautiful objects she creates with her hands, you really have to stand in front of one for a while – as one does with any artistic masterpiece and contemplate its richness, complexity and beauty. If you are a lover of fiber art, you’ll thoroughly enjoy and appreciate Karen’s stunning creations. If you’re not, then the subtle complexities of her art might escape you until you’ve studied it for a while. Soon enough, you’ll realize that her work is simply amazing.
Marvin on the other hand works in an entirely different medium. Furthermore, he seems to take a playful attitude toward his art. He creates ethereal looking ceramic sculptures that whisper to the viewer of the mythical creatures and magic kingdoms one first hears about in fairy tales and children’s books. Marvin’s art gives one the feeling that they were designed and created by some non-conformist wizard in a distant world where the normal rules of physics and geometry don’t apply. His surreal turrets and towers often tend to be leaning in odd directions and twisted in peculiar ways. His amusing monks and druids loom menacingly in cowls and robes clearly designed to cover humanoid creatures… yet the priestly hoods contain no heads or faces. It’s almost as though the wearer is invisible or the person inside the costume suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke and the costume just hasn’t gotten around to obeying the law of gravity and collapsing to the ground yet.
In short, his art manages to be eerily fascinating, scary, frivolous and thought provoking all at the same time. You quickly realize as you view his art that Marvin is a man with great sense of humor and a truly fun sense of the macabre. He enjoys playing with the viewer’s mind while simultaneously inviting us to consider the possibilities. His art defines beauty in a unique way. Yet he always seems to be having fun while inviting the audience to think about what he is doing. Frankly, we found his art both fun and a bit scary, humorous and contemplative, thought provoking and ridiculous, serious and lighthearted all at the same time. And for those reasons and many more, we liked it a great deal. The only thing that seemed to be missing was fire-breathing dragons.
Given these quite visible disparities between Karen’s artistic style and that of Marvin, it was interesting to view and contemplate their first two collaborative works and consider the possibilities for the future. One can almost envision large medieval castles adorned with dozens of elaborate small quilts and twisted towers defended by druids and attacked by dragons with beautifully quilted wings… It’s a collaboration we certainly look forward to watching grow and evolve over time.
Our thanks to Marvin and Karen for inviting the Art Loop tourists into their studios; and for allowing us to enjoy their unique artistic works in the settings where they were created. It was a truly fun visit and we look forward to having a chance to do it again one day.
To see the unique art of Karen and Marvin Smith, we invite you to view their Art Loop sub-gallery (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/pp-514/showgallery.php?mcats=all&si=smith+nogal&what=title&condition=and) here at Steppin Out. To arrange a private viewing of their works, contact them in Nogal, NM at 505-354-0602 (email: blissart@zianet.com (blissart@zianet.com) or bluewolf@zianet.com (bluewolf@zianet.com)). We promise you’ll be glad you did!
BlissArt and Blue Wolf Studios
Nogal, NM
By: Steppin Out Staff
One of the many interesting visits we made during our Art Loop Tour was to the creative studios of Karen Smith, creator of Blissart Art Quilts and Marvin Smith creator of Blue Wolf Sculptural Ceramics. This husband and wife artistic team each have their own separate artistic talents skills and interests – Karen’s interests and artistic focus involves the creation of amazingly beautiful art quilts; while Marvin creates fascinating and mystic looking ceramic sculptures – but they’ve also started working together to create collaborative artworks that involve both Karen’s artistic quilts and Marvin’s ceramics combined to create totally unique collaborative pieces.
Karen’s beautiful artistic creations work could perhaps be described as artistic stitch craft. Yet somehow, they are much more than that. Her works often seem designed to tell stories or communicate messages to the viewer at quite visceral levels. At other times, they involve remarkably complex geometric patterns that clearly require Karen to spend lots of time designing the quilts and putting them together. These are definitely NOT your grandmother’s patchwork quilts. Indeed it would almost be a shame to use Karen’s beautiful creations as quilts at all. Once one stands and looks at them for even a few minutes, it becomes obvious that these are pieces of museum-quality displayable fine art that just happen to be made from fabric rather than painted in oils or acrylics on a piece of canvas or linen. They seem best suited to being framed and hung on a wall somewhere and displayed proudly as true art over the mantle or on the wall of a family room.
It’s impossible to describe Karen’s art with words. Even photographs really don’t do her artistic creations justice. To fully appreciate the beautiful objects she creates with her hands, you really have to stand in front of one for a while – as one does with any artistic masterpiece and contemplate its richness, complexity and beauty. If you are a lover of fiber art, you’ll thoroughly enjoy and appreciate Karen’s stunning creations. If you’re not, then the subtle complexities of her art might escape you until you’ve studied it for a while. Soon enough, you’ll realize that her work is simply amazing.
Marvin on the other hand works in an entirely different medium. Furthermore, he seems to take a playful attitude toward his art. He creates ethereal looking ceramic sculptures that whisper to the viewer of the mythical creatures and magic kingdoms one first hears about in fairy tales and children’s books. Marvin’s art gives one the feeling that they were designed and created by some non-conformist wizard in a distant world where the normal rules of physics and geometry don’t apply. His surreal turrets and towers often tend to be leaning in odd directions and twisted in peculiar ways. His amusing monks and druids loom menacingly in cowls and robes clearly designed to cover humanoid creatures… yet the priestly hoods contain no heads or faces. It’s almost as though the wearer is invisible or the person inside the costume suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke and the costume just hasn’t gotten around to obeying the law of gravity and collapsing to the ground yet.
In short, his art manages to be eerily fascinating, scary, frivolous and thought provoking all at the same time. You quickly realize as you view his art that Marvin is a man with great sense of humor and a truly fun sense of the macabre. He enjoys playing with the viewer’s mind while simultaneously inviting us to consider the possibilities. His art defines beauty in a unique way. Yet he always seems to be having fun while inviting the audience to think about what he is doing. Frankly, we found his art both fun and a bit scary, humorous and contemplative, thought provoking and ridiculous, serious and lighthearted all at the same time. And for those reasons and many more, we liked it a great deal. The only thing that seemed to be missing was fire-breathing dragons.
Given these quite visible disparities between Karen’s artistic style and that of Marvin, it was interesting to view and contemplate their first two collaborative works and consider the possibilities for the future. One can almost envision large medieval castles adorned with dozens of elaborate small quilts and twisted towers defended by druids and attacked by dragons with beautifully quilted wings… It’s a collaboration we certainly look forward to watching grow and evolve over time.
Our thanks to Marvin and Karen for inviting the Art Loop tourists into their studios; and for allowing us to enjoy their unique artistic works in the settings where they were created. It was a truly fun visit and we look forward to having a chance to do it again one day.
To see the unique art of Karen and Marvin Smith, we invite you to view their Art Loop sub-gallery (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/pp-514/showgallery.php?mcats=all&si=smith+nogal&what=title&condition=and) here at Steppin Out. To arrange a private viewing of their works, contact them in Nogal, NM at 505-354-0602 (email: blissart@zianet.com (blissart@zianet.com) or bluewolf@zianet.com (bluewolf@zianet.com)). We promise you’ll be glad you did!