Jenny Welden’s Everyday Saints offers a monumental exploration of the sacred and the passage of time through a collection of twelve interconnected artworks in twenty-two components, including a 39-foot modular altarpiece entitled FEAR NOT.
Animating her fourteen-foot longarm sewing machine with flowing motions of her body, Welden combines intuitive drawing, abstract painting, improvisational quiltmaking, and somatic meditation to form monumental multimedia networks.
Welden’s free-motion stitchwork arrives at this show bolder than ever, with her signature strong use of color and expressive linework now emblazoned in iridescent silk dupioni, torn into narrow strips. She describes this new material as “an offering.”
This body of work, created especially for The Art Base over the past two years, processes the forces of creation-destruction, loss-renewal, and personal sacrifice toward higher good.
“The season of creation was full of trials and tectonic shifts in my life: unexpected pregnancy, nearly dying while giving birth, our household move, life with a precious new baby, and the passing of a beloved mother figure and friend.
“Layer by layer, I stitched offerings into this work: fabrics from mills that no longer exist, rare silks, my childhood blanket, my wedding dress…
Welden_Pricelist_web“Each tiny stitch is a life cycle of connection. To stitch is to pierce, to draw together, to heal, to illuminate, and to always begin again.” –Jenny Welden
