Angela Maroun

ANGELA MAROUN


Angela Maroun has been a mixed media textile artist since 2006.  She utilizes shibori dyeing techniques and screen printing with dye and textile paints to create layered patterning on cloth.  Texture is added to the cloth with stitching and needle felting.  This creates complex, one-of-a-kind backgrounds for her intensive hand-embroidered and needle-felted imagery.  Maroun is a graduate of the Art Cloth Mastery Program in San Antonio, Texas.


ARTIST STATEMENT


I am a tactile person.  I love to pet my dogs, hug my kids and hold a needle, thread and fabric in my hands.  In my previous work as a physical therapist, I used my hands as an extension of myself to help heal others.  The tactile nature of surface design speaks to me.  Using my hands to create something meaningful or beautiful gives me great satisfaction.


I am inspired in many ways by the time I spent living in Hawaii while in college.  In 1973 I went to the Big Island to see the volcano and the petroglyph fields.  I was fascinated by the ancient marks made to tell the story of human life.  I imagined ancestral Hawaiians sitting on the rock, painstakingly etching the stone one mark at a time.  They needed to tell their story and leave their mark.  I honor them with my Petroglyph series.


I use layers of dye to create a patterned surface.  Needle felting adds texture and sculptural nature to the cloth; conveying the sense of the rock.  I add extensive hand embroidery, using one stitch at a time to create the imagery.  Some pieces have hours of needle felting, making marks one punch at a time.  The palette is subtle by design, a tribute to the subtle beauty of the petroglyphs.