Faculty Marjorie Durko Puryear

Marjorie Durko Puryear is a Professor of Textile Design and Fiber Arts in the Artisanry Department, College of Visual and Performing Arts. She received a BFA in weaving and textile design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966, and an MFA in textiles from Indiana University in 1969, studying with Else Regensteiner, Budd Stalnaker and other notable textile educators. She has been a member of the UMass Dartmouth faculty since 1977. Areas of concentration in her teaching consist of the construction, function and traditions of textile forms, the application of textiles to artistic concept, design and manufacture of textiles in industry, and history of textile processes.

Marge is a 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist's Grant Finalist. www.massculturalcouncil.org/gallery.asp. Her work is also featured on the International Textile Art Page, Louise Lemieux Berube website, Montreal, Canada.

Upcoming exhibitions include two one-person shows: Fuller Museum of Craft, Brockton MA, April - July 2008; and the ARC Gallery, Chicago IL, August 2008.

Other recent exhibitions: Small Wonders, Maryland Federation of Art, Circle Gallery, Annapolis MD; the Fuller Craft Museum Biennial Member's Exhibition, Brockton MA. 2007-08; New Frontiers-Exhibition of Contemporary Fiber Art, McAllen, TX; By The Hand: National Juried Exhibition of Traditional and Innovative Craft, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek CA, Juror's Prize; Inviting Response. New Bedford Art Museum. New Bedford, MA; Needle Culture: Contemporary Mixed-Media Textiles. Flagstaff Coconino Center for Arts, Flagstaff, AZ; Material World. Target Gallery at the Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA; Woven Surface: Image and Embellishment, one-person retrospective, Handweaving Museum, Clayton, NY; Uncommon Threads: New Twists On Textile Art. Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH.

In 2006 Marjorie traveled to Uzbekistan with the Silk Road Artisans Exchange grant sponsored by the U S State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, consulting with textile production workshops in Khiva, with additional travel to the cities of Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarkand. She has been selected to present a seminar on Uzbekistan travels and silk textiles at CONVERGENCE 2008, Handweavers Guild of America Syposium, Tampa, FL June, 2008. She received a Whiting Foundation travel grant, three UMD Healey Grants and four sabbatical leaves for research into historic European tapestry and computerized jacquard weaving, aiding in the continuing production of her artwork.

Marjorie has lectured at the Textile Society of America and Ars Textrina national symposia, the Boston and New Hampshire Weaver's Guilds, HGA Convergence, and conducted summer workshops at Peters Valley in Layton NJ.

Marjorie Puryear's woven work combines hand-embroidered surface embellishment with handwoven compositions of personal meaning. Recent use of digital design and jacquard weaving processes have allowed realistic imagery to merge with complex weave structures. Most recent work is inspired by old discarded handwritten documents, including diaries, letters, ledgers and address books, transforming objects and memories of the past. Maintaining a high regard for craft, formal presentation and relationship to historical textiles has always been an important part of her her art.

Artist's Statement

As a weaver of thirty years, I continue to find pleasure in hand process - from the simplest woven structures to jacquard complexities, always with hand-embroidered embellishment.

Most recently I have used digital design and the computerized hand-jacquard loom as tools to combine imagery with complex weave structure. The jacquard loom offers precise design translation, merging imagery and process, and intentionally bringing together industrial textile production and type of arduous, repetitious handwork I enjoy. The translation of an eight-inch handwritten page into a forty-inch jacquard woven piece blurs the handwritten text, as history has blurred its original intention.

The textiles that I construct are often emotionally linked to everyday humble craft forms and the tactile, sentimental memories they can embody. My intention is to transform the plain parts of ordinary life and memories of the past into compositions that evoke beauty and curiosity.