Ambiance Silk Art and Photography

Kathy Bennett Dove's latest pursuit is photography paired with writing. A View Askew along the Intracoastal Waterway includes 400 pictures. Two poetry  books, Air Dance and Wandering Around Thoughts amplify each poem with pictures.

Her photography is noted for attention to detail, with an eye for design, color, and texture, which shows in her unique images often resulting in an abstract appearance. Colors that were already present may be computer-enhanced and treated with techniques common in a dark room, but photos are not otherwise created by altering or layering, i.e. “Photoshopped”--yet .

Kathy’s fabric sculptures and photographs have been awarded numerous prizes and have been hung in galleries, museums, restaurants, and art league shows in Maryland and Florida.  She is nationally and internationally juried and featured extensively in on-line galleries and has gathered many awards. Her solo show at Paul's in Annapolis displayed forty eight photos. Her works have received attention in several newspapers. Some photographs have been published in major magazines to illustrate her husband’s stories. Tom (www.tomdove.com) is a boating journalist.

Kathy's Fabric Sculpture

When Kathy created her first fabric wall sculptures with Japanese Obi (kimono sashes) and assemblage elements, she did not think of it as starting an entirely new genre of art. 

Yet, it is a new art form. It is a bridge between painting and sculpture and is a form of assemblage art.  It is “painting" with fabric and employing the sculptural definition of giving shape in volume, much like low-relief or high-relief sculpture.  She discovers techniques to make the fabrics “fly” as if they were floating freely in space. The wall sculptures maintain the intrinsic quality of the fabric and are not hardened or altered. Still, they can be dusted.  There is an interactive quality created by the light moving into folds and textures of the fabrics, as well as by the observer’s movement while observing.  The works typically incorporate three-dimensional found objects, such as chopsticks, bamboo, reed, wood, copper, glass shapes, and dolls which add to the meaning of the entire piece.

Obi sculptures (silk) are large pieces, often two feet high, eight feet long, and nine inches deep, and fit beautifully into large or modest-size rooms, into any style of house decor from traditional to modern, and in corporate boardrooms and offices.  Other Obi sculptures are available on commission, choosing an obi from her collection.

Kathy then expanded the genre into painting and dyeing silk (her silk scarves are presently sold out) and creating other, smaller three-dimensional forms, displayed in 16"x20" shadow boxes, also sold out. Next, she moved into using satin or metallic fabrics for the background, typically sculpting foil fabric, felt, satin, ribbon, tulle, and organza and attaching them to canvas. She has developed new techniques and approaches to construct with the different weights, composition, and nature of the fabrics. Her emphasis, as always, is a combination of color, light, texture, and design. These fabric assemblage structures range in size from 16 x 20 inches up to 3 x 5 feet.   These are also dustable.  

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