Faces in Fiber and Textile Art: quilted, woven, mixed media, sewn, embroidered…

The human face and form has been studied and interpreted by artists in all mediums since time immemorial…  Choices of materials, composition, colors and the story told all hold weight in creating a signature moment. I find these faces in fiber and textile art especially interesting and powerful as our artists choose fabric and thread to explore the theme as quilted, woven, mixed media, sewn, embroidered and hooked works.

There are many more wonderful examples on our site and I have been pulling posts from our Facebook page into this Faces Album.  If you are on Facebook, do explore it for more works.

The featured image at the top is Mary Pal‘s Leonard Cohen in cheese cloth, one of my favorites. I love his music, his gentleness and his struggle for truth and was so sad to see him pass on. You can listen to him while you scroll on down and check out the other work.

This video seems so appropriate for this post…  Cohen honors the dreams and promises of youth that matures into an aged love, captured beautifully by the photos of couples in their youth and how the years marked their faces and bodies…

Clicking on the images below will open a new tab with the member’s profile.

Aren’t these great? It takes true expertise, years of experience, to reach this level of ability. The face, in any form, tells a story. A slight change in the muscles, in shadowing, a lifted eyebrow, a droop in the lip…  and one story becomes another. On humans, I love the wrinkles that come with aging. My grandfather, like Leonard Cohen, had a face deeply etched with his life, each wrinkle telling his life. This one for laughter, that one for pain.

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
― Walt Whitman

We finish with a compilation of images, Cohen singing “Traveling Light”. May you travel light, towards the sunshine!