8-10-08

Three Join Walpole Artisans Cooperative

By Chuck Bingaman, Contributing Writer

            Racheal Scott, Katalin Thomas and Grace Therrien have joined the
Walpole Artisans Cooperative and have begun showing their work in the Cooperative’s Shop at 53 Main Street in the village.

            Racheal Alexander Scott of Westminster VT creates textile art garments, quilts, containers and fabric postcards, all of which are on display at the shop.

            “Fiber is my thing,” she says.  “Everything I do is always one of a kind.  I enjoy the creative process.  I work at it about five hours each day, and yes, I do think about it in bed at night!”

            Scott graduated form the Penland School of Crafts in NC and attended the Maryland Institute Collage of Art in Baltimore and the Institutio

Rachel Scott

Allende San Miguel in Mexico.  Her varied work in the current shop inventory includes knitted clothing, quilted blankets and wall coverings, and felted containers.  Scott’s pieces use a range of techniques including shashiko, a Japanese surface decoration style, appliqué, needle thread painting and the use of fabrics reproducing old fabrics collected in the American Textile History Museum in Lowell MA.

            Katalin (Katie) Thomas made clothes for her dolls and later for herself as a child, and she still works in colorful fabrics, mostly silk.  With a BFA in Crafts-Textiles from the University of Arts in Philadelphia and a diploma in graphic design from the Art Institute in Philadelphia. 

            In 2000 Thomas and her husband decided to seek the tranquility of Vermont and New Hampshire and moved to Putney VT.  There she began her

own business where she creates heirloom quality silk textiles incorporating custom text and children’s artwork submitted by her customers.  She also gradually found her way back to her own craft and started experimenting with pieced silk designs.

            In her Walpole Artisans incarnation, Thomas uses a wide variety of hand dyed silks—velvet, dupioni, broadcloth, habotai, satin and wild silk—to embroider her pieced designs.  On display at present are purses, table runners, and colorful pillows.

            Grace Therrien, the last of the trio of new Walpole Artisans, worked as an interior designer for 30 years with a specialty in commercial space design.  But, she says, “I was always a drawer from the time I was a toddler!”

            Her current art interest is the creation of prints from carved wood blocks, linoleum blocks and etchings on acrylic plates. 

            “While I’ve been doing these kinds of prints for a long time, this,” she says, “is the first time I’ve ventured out beyond creating them for friends and family!” Therrien’s currently work on display includes highly detailed fish, a dragon and a print of the Connecticut River Valley near Walpole.

            Therrien earned an Associates Degree in Fine Arts from the New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University after having grown up in Richmond NH.

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