[346] MTSU Staffer's Pasttime Appreciated As Art In Public Exhibit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 9, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

MTSU STAFFER’S PASTTIME APPRECIATED AS ART IN PUBLIC EXHIBIT
Stitch in Time Quite Sublime for Jaye Kiblinger, Sewer of Lovers, Critters and Visions

(MURFREESBORO) – Stand back from the framed work on the wall and you’re looking at a tiger, an elephant or a goddess. Move closer and you’re looking at thousands and thousands of intricately woven stitches, grouped distinctively, yet blending into each other through meticulous selection of colors. This is the magic of cross stitching.
Jaye Kiblinger’s exhibition, “Cross Stitch as an Art Form,” is on display through Monday, April 5, in the rotunda of Murfreesboro City Hall, 111 W. Vine St. A reception to celebrate her craft is slated for 4:30-6:00 p.m. Thursday, March 18, in the rotunda. The exhibition of nearly 50 items and the reception are free and open to the public.
Kiblinger, an executive aide in the Department of Business Communication and Entrepreneurship at MTSU, says she had always sewn and crocheted, but she learned cross stitch from a friend in Florida.
“I started out like most addicts with small steps—works with only 50 to 60 colors and less than 2,000 stitches,” Kiblinger writes. “Most of my creations now take well over a year to complete, which is just fine with me. I am unnerved and more and more anxious as a project nears completion. Cross stitch is now part of my DNA—who I am.”
In the evenings after the workday is over and the dinner dishes are washed, Kiblinger takes an embroidery hoop and picks up where she left off with her latest pattern. Some completed works come from existing patterns; others originate with Kiblinger’s interest in a photo, which she transforms into a cross stitch pattern with a computer program.
“Cross stitch does the impossible,” Kiblinger writes. “It allows one to take a collection of unrelated and, at times, confusing symbols, combined with an endless variety of colors of thread and add them to a blank ‘canvas’ of material with thousands of simple stitches to create a beautiful work of art.”
These works of art are also acts of endurance. Kiblinger says there are 1,779,994 total stitches in her collection. The number, impressive though it is, doesn’t begin to indicate the number of hours stitching, unstitching and restitching, correcting mistakes and taking pains to insert just the right color of thread in just the right position to make the overall image more intriguing.
Kiblinger says her favorite fabric is jobelan because it has an even weave, which means an even number of threads run both vertically and horizontally. She also likes Irish linen, which is used mostly by experienced stitchers.

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The subjects in Kiblinger’s works can be either whimsical or serious. A Matisse painting is the inspiration for “Decorative Figure,” a nude woman in casual repose, seated against an ornamentally decorated wall. Kiblinger says there are more than 125 colors and 48,600 stitches in the work.
“View from Oyster Bay,” a view of the sun setting on the water through a window framed by hanging grapes in dynamic purple hues, is given definition by backstitching, a technique that enables the artist to simulate a three-dimensional appearance.
A slender, rectangular Art Nouveau poster by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha promoting an appearance by actress Sarah Bernhardt is brought to life in thread. Nearby on the same wall, a less stylized advertisement for the Casablanca Fan Company is no less expertly sewn.
However, while Kiblinger is open to stitching the commercial as well as the artistic, she does not work under contract and refuses to part with some of her creations. She says she finds it difficult to put a price on a labor of love.
For more information, go to http://www.murfreesborotn.gov/ and click on “Art in the Rotunda” under “Events.”

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ATTENTION, MEDIA: For color jpegs of Jaye Kiblinger’s cross stitch works “Siberian Tiger,” “Rajah’s Feast,” “View from Oyster Bay,” and “Garden Venus,” please contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu. Please credit Jaye Kiblinger as the photographer. A color jpeg of Kiblinger herself is also available.







With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.