Layers of Meaning

Fanny Viollet, text and assemblages: embroidered messages

Parisian fiber artist, Fanny Viollet, creates Contemporary textile art based on text and assemblages of embroidery and diverse fabrics. She expands the materials and uses of fiber arts in multiple directions. She has won a Hermes design prize in the International Contest
of Hat Designers 2003 for her hat created from colorful candy and yogurt wrappers stitched together.

At the International Quilt Festival 2002 in Houston, Viollet exhibited 229 Couleurs à coudre, à écrire, à broder, en toute liberté, a 51 inch square quilt consisting of "free-motion embroidered words on a transparent vinyl backing. Using similar materials, the British Young Embroiderers site features images of lifesize dresses that Viollet created from "used waste plastic bags, food packages, fabric flowers and free machine embroidery with multi-coloured threads."

Seaton Hall library, in 2000, held a solo exhibition of Viollet's work. Their site offers insight into the thought behind the stitches: using the feminist tradition as a springboard, "Viollet tackles the male-dominated history of art in pieces such as Palette and Les Cartes Postales Brodees (Embroidered Postcards), which satirically question the objectification of women and the exploitation of art in museum shops. Other work such as Triptych, are more abstract with hundreds of names of colors from the famous DMC catalogue­a seamstress' Bible in Europe" Selected images from the exhibit illuminate the diversity of Violette's output.

A web site that is almost entirely in Japanese, with a small amount of French (and therefore completely inscrutable to me) offers a glimpse of a mail art exchange between Viollet and Yukiko Og______. The works encompass sewn, painted and drawn two and three dimensional images which are attached to a variety of backings. The series begins with Courrier du coeur by Viollet and continues for the next five pages (view by clicking the 'next' button.)