Beth Ciesar delights in calling herself a Door County hooker… In fact she even works hard to expand the ranks of active hookers by teaching the art of making hooked rugs to anyone who is interested in learning.
“I’ve always had my fingers in art,” she says, at least since the age of 5 when Beth and her two sisters visited the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time.
From that early beginning, Beth always had a paint brush in her hand, eventually graduating from Purdue University with a degree in Fine Arts. After a professional Chicago-based career in interior design at Marshall Fields, she migrated to Fish Creek in 1968 where she opened Fish Creek Clothier, a boutique clothing shop, popular for well over two decades. Everything she touches from her sumptuous gardening projects to her ongoing love of watercolor benefits from her keen eye for color.
In 2001 Beth’s sister Jane suggested that she and her three sisters travel to Colonial Williamsburg to learn to hook rugs. Beth proceeded to explore this traditional folk craft from the perspective of an artist seeking to expand the range of her expressive media. She continued to perfect the fundamental hooking skills working with yarns and dyes, studying with diverse teachers in workshops across the country.
In creating a multitude of original hooked rugs she has evolved a free and expressive manner of painting with fiber. The evolution is visibly apparent in her current exhibition on display throughout the month of December at the UU Gallery in Ephraim. Beth’s earliest apprentice work, bound by strict classical folk art symmetry bursts free in a series of personal artistic narratives – yarn paintings that speak her stories.
“I love depicting people, both in full figure and in portrait. Much like painting with oil or acrylic, communicating the complex color of flesh tones is a challenge,” she explains. “I end up using a mottled plaid of brown, blues, blacks and yellows.”
“I have a wealth of colorful wool yarns to select from and am constantly in search of more,” she says. “New or recycled, as long as it’s derived from 100% woolen garments or blankets. Sometimes I use it as is, and sometimes I enhance and alter the colors with a dye blending technique. I may use a marbling process, or I might boil the wool in onionskins or other natural dye plants.”
Her efforts at redefining hooked rugs as fine art have been noted with inclusion in several juried exhibitions including recent shows at the Hardy Gallery in Ephraim and the Guenzel Gallery in Fish Creek. While she currently declines to sell most of her current exhibit of personal evolutionary works, she does accept commissions.
She also provides occasional classes in her home on the bluff overlooking Fish Creek. During the cold months, students gather around the farmhouse table and enjoy the warmth of the stone fireplace against a view of the winds blowing across the bay.
Embellishing upon her painting and interior designing in 2001, she still connects with her sisters through art, together they have all become “hookers”. Beth likes a “whimsical” look and has designed many of her own rugs, wall hangings, purses, pillows and art frames. Her folksy scenes of Fish Creek and a humorous piece titled “Pioneer Woman” are amongst viewers’ favorites. From time to time, Beth will do commissioned pieces and give classes out of her home.
The public is invited to enjoy the exhibit at the UU Gallery on any Sunday following services from 11 AM-12:30 PM or during additional gallery hours on Mondays from 1 – 3 PM, located at 10341 Hwy. 42 in Ephraim. Learn more about the UU Fellowship at www.uufdc.org.
