Regina Benson

Regina Benson is a studio artist, curator and lecturer specializing in contemporary textile, fiber and art quilt design. Regina is an artist working in the textile medium creating wall hangings, art quilts and dimensional textile sculptures using her own surface designed fabrics. In the last couple of years, Regina has concentrated on developing wall and ceiling-hung dimensional textile constructions that retain the painterly effects of her flat pieces, but that also incorporate physical allusions to her subjects’ aspects by mounting and imbedding these works with forms and undulations. Regina Benson’s work emanates from the manipulation of and intentional mark-making on fabric, from silk and cotton to horse-hair and industrial polyesters. Her work frequently starts with a solid piece of black fabric, which she “discharges” (removes the base black dye) with paste or soy wax resists and Shibori techniques; then she overdyes or rusts the fabric surface many more times with natural, disperse and acid dyes to elicit additional images and textures. These initial markings are then oversewn with other textile fragments; she further free-motion stitches the work to its finish with hand-dyed threads and incorporates encaustic processes and burning to complete her vision.