Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/174531
Bette Levy, 69 Favorite medium: hand embroidery pyrogallery.com Levy creates remarkable landscapes and still lifes — with thread! Describe your style? "I am a hand-embroiderer who uses vividly colored silk thread on black silk backgrounds. This approach intensifes thread colors and creates strongly contrasting fgure-ground relationships, and the near-Pointillist approach often produces oscillating or fickering effects. I have developed a personal language of stitches that enables me to 'paint' or 'draw' with thread on fabric. My subject matter is based on my photographs from the natural world. It is the very detail of this work, however, that enables a meditational focus for me." Who are your biggest artistic infuences? "I have been mostly infuenced by the women in my mother's family. My greatgrandmother Pauline Magid started a beaded-handbag company in New York in the early 1900s, which exists to this day. My grandmother was the designer for the company. My mother was a sculptor, painter and interior designer. Because of these women, I (grew up) surrounded by creative people who made things with beads, fabrics, feathers, trims, clay, paints. The second most signifcant infuence was the commune where I lived in San Francisco during the 1960s." Bette Levy We've asked you to design a cover for Louisville Magazine that sums up the city. What would you do? "I'd probably examine some interesting urban surfaces — cracks in sidewalks, shadows on streets, boarded-up buildings, rusted posts — and use them as inspiration for an abstract work." From top, left to right: "Shores of Lindesfarne"; "Roots of Mosquito Creek"; "Glasgow Vines"; "Maastricht Tree" (all silk thread on silk background).