Bend Fiber Artist

Barbara Riegel Bend

Some people are readers, or runners, or travelers these activities can inspire a greater understanding of the world we live in, I am a maker. I like to make things out of the materials that come my way. In some ways, a group of friends and I, have become a leftover fabric digester. Over the years we have gathered boxes, bags, and bails of zippers from factory overstock, been gifted unused fabrics from all over the world, gathered a car full of silk tie fabric from a closing factory, and once a truck load of fabric from a widower who needed the space after his wife died. I look for the buried gems in these cultural remnants; the materials that inspire a transformation from the everyday object to an unearthed concept waiting to show its self. That is why I am a maker, I transform the inert object into a living idea or emotional connection.

 

I live with my husband in the St Croix Valley Watershed of Wisconsin, we garden, manage the woods and native prairies. I share a working studio space at Color Crossing in Roberts WI and show my work in an artist managed gallery, Tres Leches Art in the Northrup King Building in NE Minneapolis, MN and at Season on St Croix in Hudson, WI