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Spotlight on Rebecca Bluestone

Compilation from Joyce Hayes and Janet Austin

by Linda Rees

Rebecca Bluestone was a busy woman at Convergence. She conducted a one day studio class titled “Career Management: A Workshop for the Professional Artist,” presented an abbreviated version of the class as a seminar, participated in two panel discussions, and then presented the closing keynote address: “Intuition and the Process of Making Art.”

In order to make the newsletter deadline, and because of pressing personal obligations, Joyce Hayes conveyed her thoughts about Bluestone by phone including observations Janet Austin e-mailed to her.

Joyce described Rebecca as pragmatic and focused, quiet but generous, emanating a great joy in working with threads. She dresses casually in jeans and a knit top for small and large audiences, often talks without the aid of a microphone, projecting her concise insights confidently. For the keynote address, she “talked for a full hour, flat out,” without notes. Hayes had asked Janet Austin about her response to the talk, who concurred that Rebecca’ s courage, love of her work, and positive attitude were evident in how she presented herself on stage, standing in front of the podium, so clearly willing to “put herself out there in the world.”

Rebecca’s goal from the beginning of her career was to become a fine artist exhibiting in “high end” galleries. She considers that she weaves her canvas and that dyes and weft are her paints.  She is striving for a kind of gradation and color flow that is like paint.  Her primary sources of inspiration are music, light and the New Mexico landscape.  She is not the kind of artist who shifts directions quickly and has essentially taken a singular track, since the day she started weaving tapestry on her own. Small changes occur with each piece, and in general a series evolves for about two years before it is fully explored.  She used to produce 30 pieces a year but has cut her production in half after being diagnosed with cancer.  Although she considers the cancer behind her, she now chooses to not work as hard.   Rebecca acknowledges that things happen to all of us; how we deal with them is what is important.

There are several observations that Rebecca consistently reiterates when discussing her philosophy and artwork. “What comes easiest and naturally to you is what you should be doing.”  Do not make the mistake of assuming that, because it is easy and you are not struggling, then it is not important.  “The work becomes the teacher.” Rebecca has never had creative blocks because she expects the present piece to generate the next.  Discipline for an artist means knowing yourself well enough to recognize when you are thinking about what others will think.

Related to marketing, Bluestone takes the approach that “commerce is just an exchange of energy.” With her goal to eventually sell her work in the best fine arts galleries, she had the novel idea early in her career to send postcard announcements of her work to the galleries she hoped to be part of in the future.  During the Critical Forum, Kate Anderson, who manages R. Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis, agreed that the direct visibility of a postcard is effective.  Rebecca feels a responsibility to her work, stating “I love my work so much, I want to give it a life out in the world.” Her comfortable attitude about expecting to be a successful artist is an excellent example to emulate.

Bluestone had four tapestries at the University of Colorado’s Gallery of Contemporary Art in Colorado Springs.  The tapestries were hung in the reception area around the desk, not actually in the gallery.  Hayes stated that it was hard to get a long view of the work but fortunately, you could get close up to see the “gorgeous surface” of the hangings.  They are all woven with three distinct types of silk yarn, dyed in the same bath and used in tandem.  As transitions occur, one of the silks will be shifted at a time, but the combination of the thread type will remain the same.  Three of the pieces explore Fibonacci sequences in her characteristic linear squares of color as the format for color transitions.  The fourth piece, Silk Journey #23, does not contain squares.  It forms an ascending transition spanning across the entire surface, moving from dark navy blue up to a neutral peachy beige.

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