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BIO:
Diane Melms works in her home studio in Anchorage, Alaska. Inspired by a love for fabric, color and pattern, her artwork embodies a passion for manipulating formal design elements to create engaging abstract compositions. Working from a palette of her own hand-dyed fabrics,  she designs and constructs compositions using an improvisational method of cutting and sewing fabric pieces together, then finishes each piece creating a quilt like structure with, batting, backing and  stitching.
 
Her work has been juried into many state, national and international exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Diane has work in the Anchorage Museum’s permanent collection and has garnered many awards including Juror’s Merit Awards in Earth Fire Fibre in 2009 and 2013 and a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship Award in 2010.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I have been passionate about making art since I was a child. Studying art, teaching art and making all forms of art has been a life long pursuit.  After a fulfilling career teaching art in public schools, I now enjoy being an artist full time and love going to my studio to create art with colorful fabric and stitches.
 
I am motivated by my love of bold color and the expressive power of abstract design. I start with the messy but exciting process of dying my own palette of fabric colors. Then with an idea in mind, I select colors and begin cutting shapes freehand.  Although I keep a sketchbook of ideas, much of my composing is done on the design wall during the sewing process. This intuitive designing is the most engaging part of the process for me. To keep things interesting, I vary my approaches to creating compositions and use several different fabric piecing techniques working directly with shapes,  strip piecing or building design units. The final layer of top stitching has also become an important expressive tool for me.
My passion for working with fabric has grown as I translate what I have learned into my own form of visual expression. Although I feel I have accomplished a level of proficiency with my work at this point, I will always aspire to try new ideas, learn more, and push myself to make my art more expressive, interesting and beautiful.