Christine French

Vessels with Attitude represent my present art work series. These baskets had their birth in the crafts classroom of a High School where I was teaching a basket-making lesson. The students in the class were not very successful at creating baskets. If fact, they looked pretty bad when they were finished. Something had to be done. That is when I decided to add legs with paper pulp. The students then spray painted the vessel sculptures and embellished them with feathers and puffy paint. The basket making experience finally became a success. (Continued below)

Click here to go to her Web site that will open in a new window.

Contact Christine French at 216-741-4584 or by email at christinefrench@earthlink.net

Incantation
32 H x 13 W x 17 D inches
Gourd with stained gut, driftwood, paper pulp, yarn, fabric, fethers and texture paint
Price: $300.00

Spring Salsa
36 H x 18 W x 13 D inches
Gourd with stained gut, driftwood, paper pulp, yarn, fabric, feathers and texture paint
Price: $300.00

Sunhorse
30 H x 20 W x 15 D inches
Gourd with stained gut, driftwood, paper pulp, yarn, fabric, feathers and texture paint
Price: $400.00

I have continued this same concept with my own work. Some of my baskets are made from reed, whereas others are made from half a gourd. Driftwood is collected from the beach on Lake Erie in Barcelona, New York. Three pieces of driftwood are added to each basket with paper pulp and allowed to dry. The surface is coated with gut and then stained. Each vessel is embellished with feathers, fabric, and yarn. The legs are doted with fabric paint. They are animated, whimsical, humorous and fun. I call them “Vessels with Attitude” because they are like all my former students and many of my women friends, “All Different and with an Attitude”.

Biography

Christine French is a retired art teacher from Garfield Heights High School in northern Ohio. She also has taught art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cuyahoga Community College, Art House, and Notre Dame College.

Some of her teaching awards are TICA, at the Art Institute of Chicago, Power of Art: A Day with Robert Rausenberg in Washington DC, five Martha Holden Jennings Foundation Grants, Ashland Oil Teacher Achievement Award, three Ohio Arts Summer Media Fellowships, and the Northeast Regional Ohio Arts Education Association Outstanding Teacher.

A graduate of Kent State University with a BFA in Fine Arts and Art Education, Chris also holds M.A. in Crafts, and a M.F.A. in Sculpture from Kent State Graduate School.

Besides teaching, Chris has been a producing artist for 16 years. In 2004 she has been in 35 art shows in the United States. In December 2004 she was honored with an award for sculpture by the Women’s Pen and Brush in New York City. In 2005, HGTV’s Crafters Coast to Coast will feature her sculptural baskets called “Vessels with Attitude” on their television program. She has been an artist resident in Poland, Hungary, Greece, the Big Island of Hawaii, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Oxbow.

Chris considers herself a multimedia artist. The variety of art processes that she utilizes in her work are watercolors, oils, acrylics, encaustics, handmade paper, basket making, collage, metal jewelry, beading, ceramics, sculpture, photography, new media, and illustration.