Arts IN Focus on PBS Fort Wayne is funded in part by the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne Coming up, we'll talk with fiber artist Natalie Drummond and automotive artist Kelly Bremer.

It's all next on Arts IN Focus.

Welcome to Arts IN Focus.

I'm Emilie Henry.

Natalie Drummond is an educator and fiber artist living in Fremont, Indiana.

Her earlier work focused on sewing and needle felting until she later learned to weave from a Fort Wayne Weavers Guild instructor.

Since then, Natalie has pursued weaving with a passion.

She has served as president of the Fort Wayne Weavers Guild and has a professional membership with the Hand Weavers Guild of America.

We recently visited with Natalie at her home in Fremont to learn all about the process and art of weaving.

Natalie, thank you so much for inviting me to your beautiful home and studio and for letting me where some of your art.

I'm thrilled to be here.

I want to know how you got into fiber artistry.

Well, it was something that I was interested in growing up.

My mother actually taught me to sew, and then from there I went to when I graduated from college, I was looking for a love work and I found my way back into sewing.

And it really started from there.

And over time, it gradually transformed into how could I make my own fabric, my own cloth, basically hand-woven cloth.

And it's grown from there.

It's not only just about making the hand-woven.

It's about how can I incorporate them into other art, into mixed media or into nuno felting.

So I guess the hand-woven is basically at the base of everything it is that I do.

It's interesting when I was reading about you, there were so many different types of fiber art that I had never even heard of.

So we're going to get into all of that.

But how does one learn how to make cloth?

I'm looking at this and it is so intricate and so beautiful and I think, Oh my gosh, where do you even begin?

Well, the beginning started for me in that I had a friend in Virginia that had known me for a very long time, and I started to work with her because she was a weaver and it really started out that I started hiring her to make textiles.

So I started getting into the design aspect and she started teaching me a little bit about how to read the drafts and about colors.

So it started from there.

And then it she kept saying, You can do this, you can do this.

You don't need to hire me to do this.

So she went out and actually found me a member from the Fort Wayne Weavers Guild who initially taught me how to weave.

And it grew from there.

Yeah, how interesting.

So when it comes to putting together a design, let's say, for one of your woven pieces, how do you begin there?

Again, it's so intricate.

What is the process that that you that you use to to execute something like this?

So for example, that is woven on a floor loom.

So you need your tools.

So I have a floor loom that I weave on, but it's also about the color for that.

So I want to back up for a minute.

So one of the things that I will start out with is I will do some dyeing of the yarns that are used to make that.

So I have to consider not only just the color or the hue, but I have to consider the value.

Just like a painter might paint on a canvas.

They think about their composition, they think about where the light is coming in and the value of the piece that they're putting together.

Those are also things that I think about when I go to make your scarf.

In addition, usually what I'll do is I will weave samples.

So and then I also have to put it through a finishing process, because once you have it on a loom, it's not really fabric until you put it through a washing and finishing process to see how it behaves.

It's really quite stiff when something like that comes off the loom.

But as you can see, after you've put it through the washing process, it becomes a beautiful drape of nature.

And the drape of nature for a scarf is different than, say, if I was going to be weaving a blanket or going to be weaving a hand towel.

So there's a lot involved.

I was just going to say, Natalie, all of the all of the details that you that have to come together to make a beautiful piece are kind of blowing my mind.

How long did it take you to get good at it?

How do you incorporate all of those things and come out with with a finished, beautiful piece?

It takes me quite a long time.

I might only weave 24 pieces of a year.

Mm hmm.

Because it takes me a while to.

First of all, if I'm dyeing, my own fiber.

Yeah, You know, that's at least a three day process.

Then I have to think about putting it together and setting up my loom so it might take me 10 hours to actually set up my loom.

The weaving time is actually quite easy.

Once the loom is set up.

It sounds.....

So says you It sounds difficult, but you know, you can weave a sample in a very short amount of period of time and then, you know, wash it up, you know, study it, take a look at it, you know, is it achieving what I want to achieve?

Does it look how I want it to look?

You know, are the ..... or the edge of the scarf, you know, as far as craftsmanship and design, is that going to be a suitable handwoven fabric?

Do I need to make adjustments of that?

And then I'll go back and weave, you know, a piece.

So the process might take me a couple of weeks.

I believe in taking professional workshops.

I will attend other conferences, anything that I can to kind of advance my learning, and then I'll spend some time studying it.

I'll spend time playing on my loom and designing just like somebody an artist might take out a sketchbook.

I have, you know, a a book of where I kind of take my notes.

It's a very long it's a it's a very detailed process for me.

Well, it's clear that you value education because you also teach, which adds an entirely new layer to try to impart all of this knowledge.

So what sort of joy comes from teaching others how to do what you do?

Well, my background, I have a long history in education.

And so really going into textiles and fiber arts, it's more of a a second career journey for me.

But the passion you can get from teaching and working with others and because they they want to know, how do I do this?

How do I do this?

How do you go from learning?

Maybe just in taking the basics of just how to weave, to putting it in and making an art form out of it, to put together a woven cloth that is more of one of a kind.

We've touched on your wearable art and and your your teaching bent, but you make these mixed media pieces as well.

You do felting.

Well, I actually got into the felting probably even before I learned how to weave Because again, it's about making fabric or a piece of art.

My 2D art, it started with class, but it started with a lot of self-discovery and exploration.

Developing my own techniques.

And so, like, for example, one of the things that, you know, I have is a plethora of these samples.

So over time it becomes, what can I do with these woven samples?

So it might develop into taking a piece of it, cutting it up and putting into some of my felted pieces, which is often what I do.

And again, it just makes it a one of a kind piece of art.

Same thing with my mixed media.

I might paint on fabric, I might make a collage and incorporate pieces of my hand woven fabric into that piece of art.

So it's really about being able to explore and not limiting myself.

I'm so glad to hear that you use the samples because I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, that's so much work.

Just to see if you like it.

What is your favorite part or process?

Do you prefer weaving or do you prefer felting?

Or again, there's so much to it.

I want to know what brings you the most joy.

What brings me the most joy, I think, is that first 10 minutes of sitting down on the loom and creating that woven pattern, there's just something that is so, you know, powerful.

I mean, certainly, like, I'll dye the yarns, I'll put them together on the loom.

And that is certainly a long process.

It takes me a while to set up the loom, but that joy or that real joy comes to seeing everything come together.

And so that first 10 minutes of seeing a sample, you know, come off the loom is just really what brings me a lot of joy.

How do you think your life would be different if that friend of yours in Virginia hadn't said, you can do this, you can do this?

I mean, it seems like this has sort of influenced your entire life.

Is that fair to say?

It is.

And you can almost see me.

I'm probably a little bit getting a little bit teared up.

Dont, I will too.

I'm just telling you.

Because my has totally changed my life.

The joy that it brings.

The work that you do with other artists, other weavers.

I mean, most of the weavers that are taking classes from me, they are other artisans and they are, you know, wanting to learn and further develop themselves.

So it's like taking these passions and taking all of my skills that I've had throughout my entire life and my love of teaching and then just putting them all together.

So and now you're the one saying, You can do this, you can do this, and imagine all of the beauty that you have put out into the world through your own works and through teaching others.

And you're right about that.

Those are the types of things that I try and provide to my students, you know?

You know, here, have you thought about this?

You can do this.

You can think about it differently than maybe what has been traditionally thought of, so.

What a gift.

And a what treasure.

Again, priceless.

I just I look around at your work and I think, Wow, wow, wow.

Thank you so much for sitting down with me and for having me in your beautiful space today.

Oh, Emilie, thank you so much for coming out.

I've been wanting to connect with you.

We've tried to connect so much with arts IN focus, and you guys are just so busy and you've got an incredibly talented team and just so admire the work that PBS is doing and getting the arts out there to the community.

Thank you so much.

For more information, visit Natalie Woven dot com I'm joined now by artist Kelly Bremer.

Kelly, thank you for being here.

I have to be completely honest, when I first read that I was interviewing you and that you are a car artist.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was thinking I don't have any interest in cars, but then I started looking at your stuff and I was like, Whoa, hold on.

This stuff is incredible.

So I want to talk all about that.

But which came first, your love of cars or your artistry?

First of all, thank you for having me on.

This is really great.

First of all, art came first.

Okay.

So from from as early as I can remember, I would sit on my mom's lap while she was painting.

So my mom was an artist also.

And even from a toddler age, you know, toddlers are usually running around getting into everything.

And I would sit for hours patiently on my mom's lap, not moving, not wanting to mess up what she was doing, just kind of soaking it all in.

Wow.

Were you painting as well or just watching?

Just watching at that point.

Wow.

But I feel like pretty early on, probably from the time I could hold a pencil, I had a pencil or crayon in my hand when I was in high school.

I wanted to be an architect.

And then I had a really good architectural teacher in high school who kind of led me into car design.

And then maybe there's more you can do outside of just architecture.

So I started researching it and I had always kind of got into cars of the Fast and Furious movement.

Sure.

Back in about 20 years ago or so.

And that really sucked me in.

Yeah.

So I thought, Hey, maybe I can combine this love of cars with my love of art and maybe do something with it.

Incredible.

So was your direction to design actual physical cars, or did you always know that you wanted it to be an artistic venture in terms of painting, drawing, sketching?

It started out as really wanting to do car design, and I had gotten hooked up with a local company that did custom aftermarket car stuff in college, did some freelance work for them, and once I got out of college, that job kind of fizzled out.

The company didn't work out so great, and at that point I was like, You know what?

I have this love of art and cars.

I can kind of create my own destiny with this and create create the beauty I want to see.

And hopefully others will see the beauty in it as well.

Yeah, I was reading that you said you love to capture cars that that we are all seeing on the street now, but also our fathers and our grandfathers.

How do you how similar are cars through the design of cars throughout the ages?

Oh, it completely changes almost by the decade.

Like you can trace cars car design from what they started out as basically a buggy that we in northeast Indiana see on the road all the time with just a small engine on it to back in the twenties with Henry Ford.

They finally put bodies on them and fenders the thirties, you get into art deco and streamlining.

So a lot of like what is shown in the painting behind us here.

Those are from the Art Deco era.

The forties cars were a little bit more, a little bit more bulbous, had a little bit more design to them.

The fifties were the the tail fin era.

If you see cars with big tail fins, that's what era that came from.

Sixties were muscle cars, seventies and eighties got a little bit more into the wedge shape, futuristic design.

That's when star Wars and some of these other futuristic movies came out the nineties got a little bit more rounded and now we're kind of more into the futuristic to us and someday it'll be classic cars now.

So what is your favorite era of car?

My favorite era would have to be the art Deco era.

I love the my favorite all time cars, an Auburn 851 speedster, the boat tail speedster, as a lot of us refer to them as the the design, the flowing lines of it is just to me, just just perfection.

And when you think of these cars, we're not stamped out on the production line.

They were hand formed by craftsmen and it took took a very, very long time to create these.

Okay.

So as an artist, you work with all types of different media.

What is your favorite medium to work in?

Is there do you even have a preference?

I would I would say acrylic painting is probably my my favorite just because of the color and the freeness that you can get with it.

I'd say drawing pencil drawing is probably my second favorite.

I, I work do a lot of graphic design and digital work as well for myself and for clients.

So, I mean, I would say acrylic though, is definitely tops for me.

How do you feel like your artistry has evolved from?

Well, from childhood even.

I mean, obviously you you grow and improve, but how do you feel like you have really grown as an artist?

I feel like my work has become more sophisticated as I've gotten along.

I'm my understanding of color theory and lighting is it's an ever improving, ever evolving knowledge.

As an artist, I don't feel like you're ever truly a master.

You're going to be learning your entire life.

And that's that's in everything from from your drawing ability to to your ability to mix and throw paint on a canvas.

Yeah.

You mentioned that you do a lot of work digitally.

How do you tell me what a day in the life is like?

Do you have to find time to paint, or are you able to fit that into a work day as well?

What does that look like?

So I do work a regular 9 to 5 job.

I have a very young, active family and a household, and so my time to create art now is quite limited.

So that kind of has to fit in when it's available.

Right now, it's maybe an hour to 2 hours a day.

Yeah.

So big, big works take a lot longer.

So I'm learning to focus on some smaller works now.

Yeah, I relate to the limited time and trying to carve out that time.

Is it hard to find the motivation at the right time since you have to carve out time?

Is it is it like, Oh God, I have to make this happen now because this is all the time I have?

Or is it?

Are you excited to dive in?

Sometimes it does happen that way where it is like, okay, I have an hour, I have 2 hours and you want to do it and you're just not feeling it?

Yes.

So it's kind of it's strange because you think some people think an artist can just turn it on, turn it off, and you somewhat have to be in the mood to make it, make it work and make something that you're proud of.

Yeah.

When you are creating, is it a cathartic experience or is it frustrating?

Like, what is it like to to start a painting and see it through?

To me, it's a euphoric experience.

A lot of people are intimidated by white space or a white canvas, but from start to finish, I'm really loving the entire process.

I have a vision in my head of exactly what I want it to look like, and nine times out of ten when I'm done, it exceeds those expectations that I even have for myself.

And are you sketching first or are you going right in with paint?

What?

What does that look like?

I'll sketch unless I'm doing some sort of abstract.

I'm always sketching it out first.

In some cases, if it's a very complex work, I'll put together kind of a composition in Photoshop first to make sure that I like the layout of everything, that the colors look right to me and then I'll go into completely freehand sketching.

On the canvas before I start painting.

And are you using a reference photo when you're sketching, or are you?

Is that living in your brain?

No, I use reference photos, There's so many details, especially with vehicles that I'm I'm sketching that that you you can notice when something's fudged on a vehicle.

Yeah.

Do you know when a painting or a sketch or whatever is finished?

Is there a definitive end or are you constantly futzing with it?

I'll usually get to a point after I say I'm done with a painting or a drawing.

Maybe two days later with it, I'll say, okay, I'm finally done with it.

But as an artist, I'm always like, I know every single little imperfection in a painting that people see is as flawless.

And I think I feel like all artists are that way.

So I even look at other artist's work and I'm like, Man, that's that's perfect.

And you talk to that artist like, Well, this didn't work out.

This didn't work out.

And I'm no different.

Yeah, I'm always interested when I talk to an artist about how much of themselves they want to come through in a painting.

And I think, especially with your subject matter that intrigues me, is there when, when someone looks at your work, do you want them to say, Oh, that's a Kelly Bremer piece, or does that part not matter to you?

And you just want them to to appreciate the work?

When I was a younger artist, I really just wanted to replicate the cars.

I really wanted to be as realistic as possible.

Now, the older I've gotten defining my own style, I, I'm throwing in more of an abstract background in a lot of my work.

So the cars will be mostly realistic.

I do like throwing a little bit of of surrealism in there, but the backgrounds I do like to kind of throw in as abstract.

So your focus is more on the vehicle, but then the colors and the motions of the background tie everything together.

Yeah, that's when I was looking at when I was doing my research and looking at your work, that's what stood out to me, that, yes, it's these beautiful cars and, and they are.

But it's the whole piece.

It's the piece as a whole that is really incredible.

So I asked you about the hardest part.

What's the best part of of creating your work?

It's probably the euphoric state that I get in to when I'm creating.

I shut everything else out, nothing else I'm not thinking about about work or projects or bills or anything like that.

It's just me, my music and my art.

Just just vibing together.

I might not talk for hours on end, and it's just it helps me really relax.

It.

It's a great feeling for me.

What has art taught you about yourself?

That you can make anything work, that you put your mind to that you can kind of shape your own destiny?

I had no idea when I graduated college years ago that that I would be doing this in my in my spare time.

I thought I would be a watch designer or a car interior designer somewhere.

But I found a lot of happiness and a lot of joy in creating fine art that people can hang on their wall and enjoy, hopefully forever.

Yeah, long after the car has been sold or whatever.

Kelly your work is so cool.

I love seeing your love and appreciation of cars, but also how you make you make something that people want to hang on their walls anyway, thank you so much for being here and for creating your works.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you very much.

For more information, visit Octane Artworx dot com Our thanks to Natalie Drummond and Kelly Bremer.

Be sure to join us next week for Arts IN Focus.

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Thank you for watching.

And in the meantime, enjoy something beautiful Arts IN Focus on PBS Fort Wayne is funded in part by the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne