The art of Linda Colsh explores humanist themes, primarily within her three areas of interest: people growing old, the environment, and movement of people between cultures. Returned to Maryland after 26 years in Europe and Asia, she explores both natural spaces and urban places. She builds layered and stitched artworks from her photographs, drawings, writings and memories.
Preferring the unnoticed, the displaced and the invisible, she chooses her subject matter from populated city streets or rural woods and creeks. She strips away context and reworks imagery with new narratives and imagined scenarios. Often worked in a minimal palette, each work begins with blank white or black cloth that Linda alters with dye, discharge, ink, paper collage and paint. In addition to direct drawing and painting, she uses design software to develop her images for silkscreen or digital printing on cloth. Her process is weighted to design and preparation of content and cloth before sewing her art quilts together. Expanding on her use of paper collage in quilts, she recycles and repurposes used coffee filters and other papers in textiles and installations that comment on migration.
A lifelong artist with two degrees in Art History, she exhibits, lectures and teaches internationally. Career highlights include selection to show in Philadelphia’s Inside/Outside the Box, Riga’s International Textile & Fibre Art Triennial; and solo exhibitions in Germany, France, Korea, and Belgium; Black Rock Gallery, Germantown MD; International Quilt Study Center & Museum, Lincoln NE; and Visions Art Museum, San Diego.
She has juried and judged major international exhibitions including Quilt Nihon, Visions and Quilt National and curated shows for the National Quilt Museum and venues in Europe and America.
Her work is published and in public, private and corporate collections worldwide, including the Collection of John M. Walsh III, Lore Degenstein Gallery Permanent Collection at Susquehanna University PA and Germany’s Nordwolle Textile Museum. Among her awards are the European Quilt Triennial first prize and Nihon Vogue’s Quilts Japan Prize.
Linda Colsh serves on the Acquisition Committee of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, having previously served on the IQSCM Advisory Board. She previously served as Board member and Secretary of Studio Art Quilt Associates; and, in addition to her work on several SAQA committees; she was the organization’s first Representative for the Europe & Middle East region.
