August Issue 1999
The Folk Art Center's Focus Gallery Features Precision Layering in Ink and Wood
In the past, the Folk Art Center's Focus Gallery featured craft work which is pounded out of metal, thrown on a wheel, woven on a loom, and other methods of artistic manipulation, but for woodworker Buzz Coren, and silk-screen artist Debbie Littledeer, the skills of their artistry are applied layer after layer to create each piece. Exhibiting their work through Sept. 7 these two Micaville, NC, craftspeople are members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, which operates the Folk Art Center located on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville, NC.
Buzz Coren began his woodworking career in the early '80s after an article on making jewelry from wood veneers sparked his interest. Already a hobbyist with wood, Coren tried the technique, building layers of colored veneers and shaping the wood with curved angles to expose the colored layers. It was a successful venture, as he recounts, "Everything I made, someone wanted to buy." The infinite color pasterns found in the subtle variations of layering provided endless fascination for Coren, and curiosity led him to create a line of desk accessories. For almost fifteen years, his accessories won many awards and were sold nationally in galleries. In the mid-eighties, after experiencing the breathtaking beauty of a Blue Ridge autumn, Coren moved from South Florida to the North Carolina mountains. The year 1994 was pivotal for Coren. It was the year he joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild, and the year he discovered a way to use his multi-layered woods in a radically new method of fashioning fine, wooden bowls. Unlike usual bowl-making, where wood is hollowed out, Coren begins with his own colorful, dimensioned lumber, made by gluing a combination of hardwoods and Italian veneers, in stages, to form a solid block. From this block he cuts slabs, and from each slab, a bowl rises. A bowl made with almost no wasted material is just as thrilling for Coren as the infinite variety of patterns he can conjure.
Debbie Littledeer was born and raised in Western North Carolina, and attended Mars Hill College, in the heart of the Blue Ridge. With a long family history in the mountains, Littledeer supplemented her art major with Appalachian studies, taking an interest in the crafts of her region. It was in the late '70s that Littledeer first visited the Guild Fairs. Her own artistic impulses were spurred, and continued to grow when she worked in sales for two summers at the Guild's Parkway Craft Center in Blowing Rock, NC. She was particularly fond of silk-screen printing, inspired by the works of the late Fanny Mennan. In 1982, Littledeer began her own hand-silk-screen business with a $200 dollar life insurance policy. She made serigraphed notecards one at a time, and framed prints of the natural beauty around her. Each picture starts with a drawing. Colors are chosen, and a separate stencil is hand-cut for each color in the picture. Each stencil is adhered to a screen of tightly stretched silk fabric, on a wood frame. Colored ink is pressed through the silk, forming an image on paper. Each stencil in laid down in turn, adding another layer of color onto the paper. The prints are made in limited editions of 200 or fewer, and when the hand-printed run is complete, the stencils, worn from use, are destroyed.
Littledeer's special talents in drawing, an activity she's enjoyed since childhood, and color blending, a difficult-to-master silk-screen technique, contribute to the enchantment in her images, often portraying both realism and fantasy at the same time. In 1986 Littledeer became a member of the Guild, and has not missed a Guild Fair since. At the 1994 fall Fair, she chanced to meet new member, Buzz Coren, who was just starting to experiment with bowl making. They were married in 1998, and have settled together in rural Yancy County. As Coren arranges layers of wood and Littledeer presses out layers of ink, they continue their creative exploration, surrounded by soft blue layers of hills in all directions.
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