Barbara Tilly will exhibit her work at The Wine Cellar in Saluda this Thursday, August 5 from 7 to 9 p.m. Tillys work will be on display Thursday through Saturday.

Tilly is a fiber artist from Tryon who creates hand-painted silk scarves, wall hangings, handbags, and other textile art using silk painting, batik, gutta serti, and other techniques.

Primarily a self-taught artist, Tilly says she is interested in color and texture and loves following the process to let the designs develop.

I dont usually start a scarf or other piece with a destination in mind, Tilly says. I just start putting colors on fabric and keep doing that in various ways until the piece tells me its done. Tilly says she has always loved working with fabrics. My mother was an expert seamstress – a tailor, really – and she taught me to sew when I was young, she says.

Because of her sewing experience, quilting was Tillys first step in her search for a textile artform more than 20 years ago. She soon realized that she enjoyed only the design and initial piecing stages of quilting; the quilting itself took too long without enough creativity in the process, she says.

She then explored batik – both the traditional dyepot methods and more contemporary adaptations that use wax as a resist but dont use vat dyeing and sometimes do not result in the distinctive batik crackle effect. Batik is still one of her favorite techniques, she says, but she uses more of the contemporary adaptations because the traditional vat dyeing process limits color choices significantly.

Silk painting – painting with dyes directly on silk (or other fabrics) – was a revelation for Tilly. There are virtually no limits on color, an infinite variety of techniques can be used, and the process itself is freely adaptable.

Today, Tilly combines batik, silk painting, printmaking, embroidery and sewing into her creations. Her work has been featured in many galleries, fine art/craft shows, and wearable art stores, including Kathleens Gallery in Tryon, The Upstairs Artspace in Tryon, Bellagio in Asheville, N.C., Asheville Art Museum Gift Shop in Asheville, N.C., Graphic Traffic in St. Louis, Mo. and Carmel, Ca., and Mais Oui in Columbia, S.C.

The Wine Cellar is located at the Saluda Inn, 229 Greenville Street in Saluda. For further information call 828-749-9698.