Sylvia Gray

An inability to draw served as the impetus for Sylvia Gray to learn about rubber stamping, and ultimately led to her development as a surface design artist.

“I always loved art and wanted to find a medium to work in where I could express myself,” she says of registering for a stamping class offered through IUPUI Continuing Education.

“I always had a good color and design sense, but was intimidated in art classes by my inability to draw well,” she adds. “I thought the stamp class would enable me to create art without having to draw.”

Serendipity had something to do with it, too. Fabric artist Stephanie Lewis Robertson, who had just moved to the area, taught the class. Sylvia also took Stephanie’s silk painting class at the Indianapolis Art Center, and drawing classes at the Center and at Herron School of Art and Design.

She was hooked. “The medium lends itself to exploration,” says Sylvia, who was soon designing her signature scarves. “I could make silk screens and use stamps to print on silk.”

Her works begin with an idea of color and shape. She lays out the design in paint or dye, and then steps back from it, looking for patterns and images to appear. “I let the fiber piece tell me what it wants to be and I work to create that,” she says.

“The vibrancy of color that I can create with this medium is inspiring to me,” she says. “I love the fact that the dye bonds with the fiber and becomes a part of it.”

Indiana colors and styles influence her work, which has a distinctly American flair, although she sometimes creates patterns using Japanese Shibori tied resist, a process of folding and tying, sometimes sewing, that is similar to origami.