Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell
USA b. 1995
‘Carpets don't just keep their secrets hidden in their many knots, they tend to swallow all the garbage and dirt that is scattered across them, graciously working them back into their patterns. I spent my childhood drawing, playing and doing my homework on the floor, spending hours distracted by the proliferation of ornaments growing and breathing underneath me. I would try finding little mistakes in symmetry, or understanding the shapes that were yet unknown to me, later in life discovering that the princess riding on a turtle turned out to be a military helicopter.’
Through the medium of fibre art Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell manifests her psyche and satirical view of her surroundings, simultaneously exploring the correlation between these two realms. She uses her work to express our Zeitgeist filled with spam and cybersex, substance abuse and excess, toxic relationships and feminine divinity. In a naive style, a childlike mix of pop and outsider art, Fern processes her life experiences and depicts personal anecdotes in the form of tapestry. Resembling a painting, but textured soft like a carpet, her work is a homogeneous mix of fine art and handicraft. Fern‘s most recent work focuses on the hardships of self-set boundaries towards the people loved most. Not really aware of the borders between good and evil, medication and addiction,.
Fern explores her personal and digital realities and engages with them through carpet tufting, punching and textile applique. She appreciates the fast and passionate work these techniques allow her to do, enabling her to apply lines, structures and forms intuitively, spontaneously and completely freely.
Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell is a German-American artist who was born in New York, grew up in Berlin and is now living and working in Halle, Germany. She completed her bachelor in communication design at the Burg Giebichenstein and is currently completing a Diploma in the textile arts class of Caroline Aichantre. Her work has been shown in Berlin, Halle, Erfurt, Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Prag, Moscow & London.
