Pieced Together

Selected works by Christine Meuris, Scott Idleman, and Deborah Benioff Friedman

January 13 – July 2020
When pieced together, two elements become something completely new. The creation may be a sequence of lines formed into a sewing pattern, hand-drawn paper cut into designs inspired by quilts, or materials sewn together in intricate constructions. In every case, it’s the combination of elements that turns something familiar into something extraordinary. Christine Meuris, Scott Idleman, and Deborah Benioff Friedman are masters of piecing together in pattern and form.

Join us in welcoming these three talented Bay Area artists to our office gallery.

More About the Artists

Christine Meuris

The subject of Christine Meuris’ work is translating traditional home-based arts executed in fabric and fiber into works made on and of paper. In this way she distills and reinterprets the foundational aspects of pattern, color, geometry and symmetry.

This work is her way of connecting ideas of art and craft, of pointing out the false barrier erected between – a barrier often based on class and gender.

As quilters and needle artists have done before her, she assembles her work from simple units such as dots and lines or actual paper shapes stitched together. Christine considers her works to be constructions and the repetitious work and precision required to make them to be the joy.

Christine lives and works in the East Bay.

For more information and to see additional work from Christine Meuris, visit christinemeuris.com »

Scott Idleman

The works Scott Idelman has included in this show are inspired by a tradition of quilt and coverlet making by his ancestors in rural Indiana and Illinois from the 19th to mid 20th centuries. Quilts kept his family warm, engendered dreams and helped folks heal when they were ill. They also bore witness to the cycle of life, birth until death, utilizing generations of hand-me-down fabric from family and friends transformed into dazzling artful yet utilitarian objects. Scott’s interpretation of that tradition attempts to distill the energy of repeat and color blocking from traditional quilting with a pastiche of his own microscopic, aerial and cosmic-inspired drawings. The process of making these pieces are healing and connect him to his familial roots and universal energy.

Scott Idleman lives and works in San Francisco.

For more information and to see additional work from Scott Idleman, visit scottidlemanart.com »

Deborah Benioff Friedman

Deborah Benioff Friedman is attached to objects that are broken, torn, dismantled and discarded. Intrigued by the concept of wear, she has a deep respect for the forces that work on fabric or paper (or our own skin): gravity, wind, heat, moisture, microorganisms, rust, and the passage of time. Deborah’s contribution is to rearrange the materials, transform them, and reattach them in different ways, using glue, thread, string, or wire, to dye, iron, paint, stain, or sand them.

She often works with books (altered, distressed or curiously bound), and loves the way a hand-made, or an old and much thumbed book feels in her hands. The effect of long handling, this patina, is most important to her: the distressed page, the torn cover, creases, footnotes, doodles and wrinkles. On such surfaces a running stitch sometimes works as text, creates a vocabulary and geography to find its way into many of the objects she makes.

Deborah lives and works in the San Francisco East Bay Area.

For more information and to see additional work from Deborah Benioff Friedman, visit deborahbeniofffriedman.com »