Last week was our 100th episode of FEEDBACK FRIDAY and we welcomed Rome-based, Czech-American artist Marta Abbott. Marta uses “organic, botanical materials to extract and convey that which she finds essential to the human experience of nature and beauty. Marta does this through combing concept with intuition, elements of control with those of contained chaos, and with eyes scanning both earth and sky, seeking ways to interpret that which links the two.”
Watch the recording here:
ARTIST STATEMENT
Marta Alexandra Abbott is a Czech-American artist in Rome. Her fascination with the natural world and our relationship with it today as well as throughout history, has always informed her work. Marta’s mediums and methods are interdisciplinary, but focus on water and oil based mediums as well as organic matter on paper and canvas. She often uses inks and pigments she makes herself from natural substances found and foraged from both wild and unexpected domestic spaces.
Process and experimentation are fundamental to her practice, which wanders in realms that exist between microcosms and macrocosms. Marta examines the connections between them through their decontextualization and the positioning of different worlds next to each other. For example, the discovery of a cosmos in a field of flowers. She gives form to that which moves between earth and sky, which is to say also through us, and which is recognizable but not always identifiable. Primitive links to the natural world around us are excavated and communicated in a new language. The concept of materiality in Marta’s work extends beyond that which can be examined with the eye and turned over in one’s hand. Marta is interested in discovering and communicating the substance of the immaterial, of experience, time, light, spirit and transformation. Marta’s work tends to dwell in realms outside of established categories, combining the conceptual with the intuitive, research and information with spontaneity and uncontrolled experimentation, the search for beauty alongside an appreciation for change and decay. In what she creates, Marta hopes to provide a chance to experience our surroundings and ourselves differently, and celebrates the ways we use the natural world, of which we are a part, as an instrument for connection, communication and interpretation.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY
If you are not familiar with FEEDBACK FRIDAY, every week, we speak with dyers, artists, scientists and scholars about our favorite topic, natural dyeing and color. Curated by Amy DuFault, Botanical Colors’ Sustainability Director and presented by Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori.
We even have our own theme song thanks to musician Jimmie Snider (click here to hear more of his music including a new song called Looking Out The Window)!