Textiles just a fraction of artist’s medium

Lydia Quinones is a textile artist. But not really.

Artist Ben Shahn (1898-1969) noted that “if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none,” and Quinones would choose none. Still, she finds it necessary to answer when people ask her what her medium is. “If I reply I’m a textile artist I’m less likely to get looks and they leave me be, and it’s better that way,” she said.

There have been dozens of art movements in history, all in an attempt to give a name to change, from modernism and pop art to Stuckism/remodernism (1999). Quinones’ work might fall into the latter as her work is “characterized by deviations from the norms of society.”

Quinones’ “deviations” include the use of animal bones in her work. She incorporates them into sculptures after they’ve been cleaned, dried and put in boxes. “I open the boxes and study the shapes, colors and textures of the bones or parchments of dried fur. I like to arrange them with other oddities I’ve collected from abandoned houses, estate sales or random things people would throw away throughout their day,” she said.

Her ultra-natural artworks also include wool sheared from her own goats. She also works with ceramics and paints. Currently she is sculpting mattress padding into the shape of tentacles which will be mounted from above. A heat lamp will melt wax from within onto a canvas causing mounds to form until they reach the tentacles. “The piece will build itself.” The self-building sculpture will be part of an upcoming show that Quinones will be curating in February at the Object Space, 1818 1/2 E. Sprague Ave., in Spokane.

Quinones was a military brat, living in California until she was 10 and then moving to Italy for three years which she said influenced her greatly. She has gone back to Europe many times, noting that art is more valued there. “People respect it. They don’t put gum on the statues.”

Quinones, 27, moved to Spokane when she was 13. She graduated from Valley Contract, attended nursing school and then quit three quarters short of graduating. She married, and then her husband left her. Sitting across from an administrator at Eastern Washington University, she said, “My husband just left me and I need to do something with my life.” Determined to find happiness, Quinones went into art and recently graduated with a teaching degree.

She has shown in a dozen galleries and was the featured artist in Northwest Women’s Magazine in their 2007 December/January issue.

Quinones’ future is wide open. This summer she will be traveling to France to study art and then teach English in Vietnam, then on to more education in Portland. She recently left a farm in Greenacres to move into her parents’ home in Medical Lake.

For now, she will continue to push the envelope, sculpting, creating stop-motion films, playing the accordion, teaching figure drawing and bringing art to others in the public forum.

She spends her days working with the elderly who are often alone and forgotten as are the things she collects and turns into artwork, perhaps in an attempt to bring to the forefront what we are often alienated from like death, decay and the natural world.

“We all need to experience being pushed outside of our comfort level,” Quinones said, “If I want something, I strive for it. If it doesn’t exist, I make it happen. If there are no venues for my art, I’ll build one. If no one listens, I’ll put it in writing. If my efforts pave the road for others, that’s just an added bonus.”