In honor of Women’s History Month, Urban Arts Space will highlight artwork created by our talented interns. In these personal interviews, you can learn about where their creativity all started and what inspires them to create art. 

Madeline Vogelmeier is an Exhibitions Intern at Urban Arts Space who is working toward earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in Studio Art and emphasis in Drawing and Painting.

Which art area of study interests you most?

Definitely drawing and painting. These areas inspired me most to be an art major. In high school, I really loved my painting classes. I found that they were experimental, and there was a lot I could do with them.

Are there any art movements that interest you?

I love the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Recently, I have been into more abstract expressionism. I really love abstract work in painting. I’m drawn to the fluidity and freedom of the work. I also think it’s interesting to hear an artist’s feelings and inspiration behind each painting.

When did you start creating art?

When I was very little, probably in kindergarten. It started in art class, and then maybe around middle school I started to realize that I really enjoyed creating art. This is also when I started to take classes outside of school. These experiences helped me understand that I wanted to pursue art when coming to college.

What inspires you to create art?

I would say my love for being creative. I was also very interested in fashion design in high school, and that was something I considered pursuing before I got to college. I have always been drawn to creative fields and the art world in general. When choosing which area to go into, I decided I was better suited for art than fashion design, but I’m inspired by both.

Can you provide a piece of artwork you created and walk me through the story behind it?

I created this painting in my Painting II class. The original prompt was to incorporate collage in our painting in some way, but it was extremely open-ended. I had never used fabric before in my work, and I wanted to explore that, so I went to Goodwill and thrifted a bunch of clothes that I cut up. I was interested in the combination of paint and fabric, specifically how they came together and interacted—sort of like the fusion of both materials.

The central idea is the painting encroaching the fabric and then the fabric bleeding off the main panel of support and onto the walls, dissolving the border between the canvas and what it’s sitting on. I really loved making this; I have continued to use fabric in my work since then, exploring the drapery and folding that you can get by using fabric.

Artist Statement:

Changes

acrylic paint and fabric on wood panel

2022

These last few months have been ones of experimentation and expanding beyond the ways of making art that I had previously been used to. Changes is a great representation of this process. In the framework of incorporating a collage element into a painting, I decided I wanted to create a work that took up substantial space and felt like more than just a painting. Using textured, more tactile material seemed like the best way to achieve this.

Through the layering, folding, and draping of fabric both around and on top of the support, the edges become somewhat dissolved, and the painting begins to spread itself across the wall. The application of paint echoes this movement and three-dimensional quality, further complicating the transition from paint to fabric. The resulting piece is one that feels like it is a part of the space that it occupies, as if the fabric and paint are working together to form their own being.