Artist bio
Roberta Wagner is a mixed media artist and author of Come Walk with Me: Exploring Why Art Matters. This book tells the story of her creative practice and how it has influenced her life. In this 168-page book with 98 images, Wagner shines a light on how a creative practice serves in times of personal challenge.
Roberta moved to Gig Harbor, WA twenty-two years ago but was born in Minnesota and has lived in Washington, D. C., New York, and California. She says, “Just as I have lived a lot of places, I have worked with many art mediums.” In high school, it was photography. She set up a dark room in the eaves of their house and printed her own black and white photos.
In 1981, while living in Washington D. C., she began to study pottery with master potter Vally Possony which led to a life-long love of clay.
She says, “Vally Possony was a master potter in the Hamada tradition. She became an aesthetic mentor to me, teaching me how to look at food, plants, pots, and art. In 1986, I began painting to have more freedom with color than is possible with glaze.”
In the mid 1980s, while living in New York, she was able to spend long hours at galleries and museums studying the work of artists that inspired her. In 1990 she left her full-time career as a bank regulator to pursue her art. Eventually she combined a bank consulting practice with her artistic practice.
She continued to study art and, for example, completed the two-year art education program at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia in 1994.
In 1994, she had her first gallery show of paintings at the Alex Gallery in Washington D. C.
Eleanor Kennelly, who wrote for Art and Auction magazine said Wagner creates "images of landscape, places imagined and remembered . . . Soft washes of color traced with luminescence (which) become the shifting tones of an evening sky, a marsh at dawn, or a prairie."
In 1995, she began an extensive study of glaze chemistry to be able to paint with glaze. She moved into architectural ceramics and completed several major commissions including an 8' diameter fountain for the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond, VA.
In 2014, she made a dramatic switch from clay to textiles and mixed media. She writes,
“I fought it at first. I knew clay. I had worked with clay for more than 30 years. I studied glazes and firing processes and different clay bodies and knew what I needed to do to achieve the effects I wanted. I loved the feeling of holding clay. It’s both alive and calming. I loved the way I could manipulate it to get texture in a piece. I loved the excitement of opening the kiln and seeing how the magic of heat had changed the work inside.
“But I was tired of the dust and the glaze chemicals.
“Just as clay grabbed me by the throat and filled my dreams and reveries so long ago, the work of textile artists, soft yarns, hand-dyed fabric, silk threads, and gorgeous color began to do the same. It’s like falling in love again - exciting, demanding, and unrelenting.”
Mixed media has consumed her ever since. She has studied techniques with Nancy Hillis, Gail Harker, India Flint, Jane Dunnewold, Lorna Crane, Cordula Kagemann and many others. She has also studied color and design with Marc Eanes.
Now, she uses a variety of papers, most often Washi paper, a strong paper made from natural fibers. She also uses cotton, silk, and linen. She dyes and paints these materials using inks, acrylic paint, and botanical dye processes. As the pieces are assembled, she uses both machine and hand stitch. Most often, the threads are botanically dyed and made from cotton, silk or wool. She sometimes makes porcelain “trinkets” and attaches them to the piece.
“Do materials or ideas inspire you?” asked Angela Truscott, the wonderful owner of the Australian Fibre Arts Take Two, during a recent interview.
“I blurted out “materials” because when my hand-painted, inked, and botanically dyed papers and fabrics are jumbled together on a table, my heart skips a beat, and my hands start pulling together pieces I love.
“Often, the idea behind my work is not apparent when I am making it. Rather, it’s an idea playing in my unconscious. Maybe it’s about time passage, or memories, what’s hidden from view, or grief. I’ll find I want to see frayed or burned edges, to bury stitch in wax, or layer and layer materials to capture some of these ideas. But usually, it’s only later, when the work is finished that I understand it.
The things I love inspire the materials I make.
I love big vistas. The long view. Big skies. My Dad lived in North Dakota and loved looking at that long view and the big sky. He delighted in knowing that a stand of trees was 60 miles away. I do too. I love the long view and big sky.
I love close-ups. Think of the bark of a birch tree or the Pacific Northwest beautiful native cedars. Get close. Zoom-in. They are like an abstract painting. Or think about a weathered sea wall – with its rusted and corroded drainage holes.
Even closer-up – remember biology class and the views under a microscope.
Further out, I love to look at the views from Hubble or the NASA’s images from space.
I love the night sky. I love it when my work has an otherworldly feel - something that helps us remember that the universe is huge and mystical.
I love the far-off or the close-up and not a lot in between. I never do people or chairs or homes or barns or doors or flowers. Occasionally, a leaf shape may sneak in perhaps because I love gardens.
I love the pattern that fields form and aerial views of them.
I love movement - grasses swaying in the wind, clouds moving across a sky, and the movement of the tides.
I love the abstract - nothing too literal – I want to be able to fill in the blanks.
I love color.
I love the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi and like things to be imperfect – not many straight lines – torn and frayed edges.
I love texture and the feel of fabric. For years I worked with clay, and I love the texture that is possible with it.
I love to remember that there is always more to a life, a landscape, or even an idea than we can see on the surface.
She is active on Instagram with 18,000 followers and her work is actively shared on Pinterest.