Collaborations by Jackie Abrams and Deidre Scherer

Artist list

Jackie Abrams, Deidre Scherer

Age, wisdom, the accumulation of experience, and its imprint on the vessel that we call the human body have attracted artists Deidre Scherer and Jackie Abrams for many decades. Working collaboratively, to create forms that reflect the human image, first Scherer manipulates images of her original fabric-on-thread works into printed templates. Abrams responds to these images by cutting, weaving, and reconnecting them. The results are subtle yet strongly textured structures, representative of the character the human body gains with experience and time.

/Jackie Abrams and Deidre Scherer: Connections at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT


Jackie Abrams, born in 1949, was a basket maker and fiber artist since 1975. For 13 years she made functional baskets using natural materials. Wishing for enlivened color she began to explore other techniques, other materials, and the possibilities of contemporary, non-functional vessels. Such possibilities continue to be boundless and infinite.
 
During all these years, she has taken and presented workshops worked with indigenous women in both Africa and Central America, and felt inspired by the artistry of so many others. She has relished the time to experiment in her studio, with both success and failures along the way. Each new series of vessels has become an adventurous pathway to explore and has cultivated a sincere connection between art and social justice.
In 2002, she began a series entitled Women Forms. These figurative vessels speak of both the cultures and the women she had encountered who have impacted her life. These forms contain and are shaped by each woman’s layers of experience. This series continues to be a study into the possibilities of shaping, color, and surface texture. 

The opportunity to work with Deidre Scherer’s prints has added another visual dimension to my work. After much experimentation, we have developed pieces that combine Deidre’s strong images with my construction techniques to create vessels that reflect women, aging, and connections. 
Together, one plus one equals three.


Deidre Scherer, born in 1944, after drawing directly with scissors, draws with thread onto multiple layers of fabric. With layering, she modulated opaque cloth to create volume. Through extensive machine stitching, she defined form by both blending and emphasizing contours.

We are wrapped in cloth from birth through death. With its tactile associations and reference to our sense of touch, fabric medium can translate human elements that are layered, complex, non-verbal, and often invisible. In studying the inevitable progressions of life, my work opens a dialogue that embraces those transitions as a natural part of life, worthy of reflection.

Her paper constructions are based on digital prints of her fabric work that she reconfigures in Photoshop. After printing, she rips or cuts two prints on paper to create warp and weft, and then reintegrates them by finger-weaving. The visual shifts made by the interlocking surfaces embody a life force and movement throughout the woven image. Her collaborations with Jackie Abrams were instigated by one of her woven works, Connecting To.

Jackie responded with her exquisite eye, her skillful techniques, and her creative spirit. Together we envisioned how to meld our two art forms. Each three-dimensional vessel mirrors our working conversations and holds our attention.


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