Olena discovered American quilt as art in 1993 when she came to USA from her native Ukraine, although she worked with various forms of textile art since early age. She has a BFA from Institute of Art and Design in Kiev, Ukraine, and after moving to USA for many years has been full time studio artist. Her work has won numerous awards at international fiber art shows and included in many private and some corporate collections, published in specialty magazines. Working with fabric for a long time, Olena is drawn to the color depth as well as texture and tactile quality that textile art offers.

Extensive traveler, she studies the rich history of traditional textiles in different cultures around the world, and collects remarkable examples of them to incorporate in her future creations. She spends a lot of time outdoors, in National parks, studying everchanging subtle and rich colors of the earth and sky, fascinating structures of the plants.

Olena uses a traditional quilt construction combined with various surface design techniques such as fabric painting, dyeing, stamping, lace weaving, embroidery, applique, thread drawing and thread painting. Thread drawing involves using the needle as a pencil drawing with thread over the fabric to create what looks like a sketched image. Thread painting technique is a dense stitching using thread colors to create a painterly effect and lifelike images. The resulting art pieces are rich in color and texture and meticulously detailed.
She works predominantly with time-tested natural fibers (silk and cotton), traditional fabric dyes, quality paints in consideration of artwork preservation.

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Website
http://www.olenaarts.com/