Edna Hibel

Morning ladies!

 

Happy Wednesday to you! J  All is well in the wilds of New Jersey today, and this week Wednesday is a tiny bit less crazy than Thursday, so I thought I’d do our artist of the week now while I have the time.  And this week I’ve chosen one of your GramE’s favorites, Edna Hibel.  GramE has a few Hibel original pieces in her house – next time you visit, ask her to show them to you and tell you what she loves about them!

 

When I was younger, I didn’t really like Edna’s work – mostly because I’d only seen some of her softer, more pastel toned things… it’s grown on me as I’ve gotten older, and I do think she did some truly beautiful things. 

 

Edna lived in the United States and was a working artist right up until she passed away in December of last year at the age of 97.  She was very involved in charity work for women and children, and a lot of her pieces were of mothers and their babies.

 

Her most famous pieces were created using stone lithography, where giant pieces of stone are used like stamps, one for each color, and then layered on top of each other to create pieces of art.  For her more complex pieces, she would use up to 32 different stones, and then sometimes she would hand paint gold leaf on top of them – very pretty! And all the layering of colors creates a feeling of translucence – like you can see light passing through the colors – which I do just love, especially in her bolder colored pieces.   She was considered to be an innovator in her techniques, some of which are still closely guarded secrets.

To me, a  lot of her images make me think of Leonardo DaVinci’s sketchbooks (one of his sketches is below) – something about the lines, and the softness of the expressions.  I had an art teacher once that hated when the line wasn’t one bold, graphic, strong line – she would yell at us “No hairy lines!!  No hairy lines!!” and we would all giggle.  But I always thought things looked more alive, more like they could move when they’re “hairy”.

 

 

Anyway, that’s this weeks’ artist – I hope you enjoyed her, and you can enjoy seeing some of her real, original work at GramEs!

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome,

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXOXO