Nature is fascinating in so many ways: evolution, adaptation, and change are intricate parts of an ever-changing world. I am interested in transformation in nature, moments of deep cataclysmic shifts, moments of superb energy release. I am interested in the very special instants when a balance is broken or shifted, an existing equilibrium is changed and transformation occurs. More and more, humans are influencing some shifts in nature.

My investigation is also about understanding and integrating two aspects of myself: art and science. I need to understand/explain intellectually, like a scientist, the world around me and I also need to express myself as an artist at a more emotional, gut level.

As an artist, I have a responsibility to make viewers think and question their environment. My larger goal is to show in different ways that balance is fragile, that there are links everywhere in our environment and that we are basically interdependent. I want to be an environmental activist through my art.

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lBabette Grunwald was born in Paris, France and grew up in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. As a girl, she loved sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, ceramics, drawing and all forms of arts and crafts, but she also loved math and science. She debated the choice between university studies in Art or Science. At the time, Science won out. After finishing her Masters in Agricultural/ Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, she and her husband moved to California. That is where she started quilting, eager to learn an American craft. She sewed many traditional quilts, while raising their three young daughters. When they moved to Mexico for four years she opened a quilting academy and taught traditional quilting extensively. Mexico taught her a great deal about color, because artisans there use it in such an uninhibited way! Her education as a contemporary quilt artist was a gradual and varied process including experimentation and reading, attendance at workshops, and the valuable support of fellow artists. In 2005, she decided to go back to graduate school and finished a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at the University of Oregon in 2007.

The process of making art is complex and entails many steps. The idea for a piece comes first and is mulled over for months, developing slowly into an elaborate and mature concept. That phase is followed by research on the topic, including drawings, sketches or photographs. Then she chooses fabrics or other materials, manipulates them, sometimes painting or dying them. The often intuitive phase of setting the fabrics onto a canvas and making the image is next. This phase is exciting and she loves how she can change scraps of fabric around, playfully finding the right composition and effect for each piece. During this phase she questions herself and the emerging artwork: what is she wanting to show, what part of this piece is most important, how is that realized? Once she is pleased with the design, the work of joining these layers together with her sewing machine follows. This gives the piece its defining design, its fine lines and texture. By free motion quilting the piece, a new dimension emerges: one that is more subtle and is observed from closer. She wants to lure the viewer in to discover details, embellishments and thread work.

Working in her studio stops time. She can be totally consumed by the process, with ideas flying in many directions. Babette often works using improvisation, intuitively finding the right design. She also works from observations, drawings and photographs of Nature and her environment. She feels a sense of accomplishment when she sees the finished work, but the process itself is what fascinates her.