Meet Val McGaughey

From time to time, I like to showcase some of my favorite artists. Today I'ld like to introduce you to Val McGaughey - a fiber artist from Asheville, NC. She is enormously talented and one of my favorites for so many reasons. She works in silks, cottons and anything that strikes her fancy. She also incorporates many surface design techniques giving great dimension to her work. I love her imagery - it's quite wonderful and she creates it herself as you can see in the silk scarf below.
I love this beautiful double sided silk charmeuse scarf and the use of 2 colors together - it's very dramatic. I also love the imagery on the purple area. Val likes faces and so do I, so I was drawn to this.

Val dyes her own fabrics and makes her own screens using her hand-drawn imagery. She'll often combine 2 or 3 screens on one piece to get the effect she wants - like in the piece below.

Val also discharges images by using a discharge paste through one of her screens like in the piece below.

The next two pieces uses my favorite screen. the image of a piece of cheesecloth or gauze burned onto the screen - so interesting. You can really see the patterning of cheesecloth.

This next piece is a book-cover made with hand-dyed fabric and discharged images on top.

And this fabulous piece - made wider to be used as a shawl or very dramatic scarf. All the silk was hand-dyed, screened, and discharged. Val achieves great depth to her work because of all the processes she incorporates in each piece.

Val is a fiber artist "extraordinaire". I am delighted to own some of her work and also to call her my friend.