Arts Craft Arts

August 2020 Feature Artist Diane Kuehn

Silk natural dye botanical print kimono. Diane Kuehn, artistDiane Kuehn, artist

Diane Kuehn, once past a long and demanding career in banking, turned back to an early love: making things with her own hands. “I would do it all if I could,” she says, “but I narrowed it down to honing my expertise in the cloth dyeing and polymer clay jewelry areas.”

She brought a lifelong interest in horticulture to her fiber art. “When I learned you could dye cloth with leaves and plants,

I became very excited to join two loves: textiles and plants,” she says. Her eco-printed designs come from experimentation that often makes her feel like a “mad scientist.” And, she adds, “Two [pieces] never turn out alike, making each creation truly an original.”

She furthered her knowledge of shibori last year with a trip to Japan. Shibori is the ancient art of shaping cloth to create resists before dyeing. “My modern and traditional shibori patterns are created by hand stitching, folding or binding the fabric after it has been prepared to dye,” Kuehn says.

To learn more about Diane Kuehn’s Birdsong Designs, visit MyBirdsongDesigns.com or find on Facebook and Instagram @mybirdsongdesigns. Her work is available at The Lucy Clark Gallery and Studio at 51 West Main Street, in Brevard, and at The Gallery at Flat Rock, 2702A Greenville Highway, in Flat Rock.

Leave a Comment