Wendy Lemen Bredehoft / WLB Art

About Wendy’s Work

The original images seen here began as field research, resulting in acrylic Strappo mono-prints, pastel paintings, or digital photographs. These were then converted into Jacquard tapestries by a computerized, digital weaving mill in North Carolina working with the online company, Quality Tapestries. Some tapestries remain in this finished Jacquard form, while others are embellished with hand-stitching, creating new textures, and bringing visual emphasis to the imagery of the weavings. Jacquard fabric is a process in which the image and its colors are incorporated into the weaving of the fabric rather than dyed onto the fabric surface. The Jacquard loom is considered the predecessor of modern computers. Created by Joseph-Marie Jacquard in France in 1803, it used a binary punch card system to manipulate individual warp threads to create textile designs on the loom. Today’s computerized looms capture exciting detail in the weaving process, adding engaging dimensionality: the path of the threads; the juxtapositions of colors in the warp and weft; or the nuanced details of a 10 x 10-inch print that emerge as fascinating elements in a 48 x 48-inch tapestry. This is the DNA of a new creation story, complete as woven. Or the tapestry becomes the canvas upon which the story unfolds in new ways as the textures and colors of added materials play off woven surface patterns, visually shapeshifting into other directions and dimensions.

About The Artist

Images emerge from the free hand of the artist.
Captured in digital pixels,
speak the binary language of the first Jacquard loom.
Warp and weft, dictated by punch cards,
translate imagery into the language of textiles.

Technology continues weaving traditions,
materializing from the history of that first loom.
Colors and patterns woven on a grid of threads,
plucked to the surface Reveal the artist’s original image in new form.

A canvas for contemplating
old and new,
past, present, and future.
All bound in threads trailing from the artist’s hand
Stitch time together.

Pairing traditional handcrafted techniques with contemporary digital weaving creates space and time to revisit ideas and find new associations and meaning that were not originally evident. Living adds context. Slow art making provides the time to digest experiences and sort through them, leading to new ideas and ways of thinking and making.

Time stitches it all together, linking past with present through an intricate evolution of ideas and process.

Bredehoft was awarded a 2020 Governor’s Arts Award, 2019 Wyoming Visual Art Fellowship, and a 2016 Wyoming Visual Art Fellowship Honorable Mention. She has a national exhibition record, and artwork in public and private collections in the US and Canada. She attained an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College in 1996, and a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Wyoming in 1984. She is currently president of the Wyoming Arts Alliance (WyAA).

Bredehoft has been a cultural administrator, arts educator, arts advocate, community arts leader, grants writer and fundraiser, recreation director, floral designer, grocery clerk, substitute teacher and family wrangler. She has moved 30+ times in her life, making home in some stimulating and isolated places, including a ranch in the foothills of northern Colorado, a frontier town in northern Alberta, Canada, and of course, Jeffrey City, the disappeared uranium mining community in central Wyoming. She currently works from her studio and lives in Laramie, Wyoming.

Learn More

You can learn more or purchase Wendy’s artwork outside of Touchstone by contacting the artist at wendybredehoft@gmail.com. Visit her website at wlbart.com, follow her on Instagram @wlbartstudio, or on Facebook at facebook.com/wlbartstudio.