Meditation Brings Clarity to Her Images
As an accomplished graphic designer and cartoonist, the world of fiber arts is relatively new for Clearwater artist Lorraine Turner. Despite only working in the craft for less than five years, a large local, national, and international audience recognize her work. Turner credits her daily meditation routine as the source for images in her successful fiber art career. Some of her work can be found in the DFAC Gallery Shop. A print of ‘Not in Our Coup’ is one artwork that is for sale.
Turner will be teaching Beginner’s Fabric Collage workshops at DFAC this fall on October 22. Click Here for further details.
She will ALSO offer a two-day Intermediate/Advanced Fabric Collage with Customized Texture workshop on October 23 & 24 – Click HERE for further details.
Clearing Her Chattering Mind
The following is a transcript of Turner talking about what motivates her work.
“People always want to know, Lorraine how did you find? Where are you getting all these ideas from? And to be quite honest, I have to be quite honest with you. It comes from meditation. I meditate and these images come to me.
I had chattering going on. Lots of creative ideas and I had to learn how to stop all that talk. So, I went into meditation. Every day, I’d go out to my little space, zen 15 minutes silence. And, I started connecting to animals. It’s like they interrupted the meditations and started coming to me and speaking. That’s exactly how it started. And, after that, I went and searched for someone that could help me figure out what in the world was going on.
Images of Horses Interrupt Meditation
This is Calico horses. These are real wild horses in Nevada. And, so these are the horses that appeared to me in my meditations. I didn’t realize that they were being rounded up and they were endangered, and they were the actual horses called the calico horses in Nevada.
So, that’s when I did the first research in my animal communication. When I first learned that I could actually talk to these animals, I realized that they were calling out to me.
They wouldn’t leave me alone. For months, these visions of Calico horses, real horses galloping past me in calico fabric.
I’ve never played with textiles. I’ve never designed with textiles. It came to me and I knew it was my style, my art I was seeing in my meditations.
I know it sounds bizarre, but it is true and it did happen. And, I’ve helped a lot of people. Now that I know how to tune in and do this professionally, I’ve helped a lot of people.
I flew out to Nevada, interviewed people that were helping these horses, wrote a book about it, and my first piece of textile art was the cover of this book.
Playing With Symbolism
There’s one I did. I call it ‘Not in Our Coup’. It’s a fox being chased by chickens. It felt very symbolic, like ‘not in our house’, like ‘I’m not taking this anymore’.
And, I was able to take my ability as a… You know, I do cartooning. I’ve done comics. I’m a graphic designer. I was able to take that illustration that I saw in my head, sketch it out and then say “How am I gonna build it with fiber?”
That’s exactly how it works every time. It’s an experiment. I’m like a kid with a box of crayons.
Lorraine Turner