InsightMagazine-MontgomeryCounty- September 2007 www.mcinsight.net
Artist among us: Up from the depths
Interview by Jacky M. Duda

Felisa Federman is a Potomac artist and native from Argentina whose parents both survived European concentration camps during the Holocaust. Federman’s “fiber mixed media” art combines bits of fabric lining, corrugated cardboard, yarn, rope, burlap and color to achieve a three-dimensional effect. The work is emotionally evocative and strangely disquieting. “The images,” Federman says, “arise from the depths of my mind, where history, legend and fantasy are mixed.”

InSight: How do you combine mixed-media materials with painting?
FEDERMAN: I start with a typical painter’s canvas and then add layers of different fabric and materials; some cardboard mixed with very strong cord, yard or ropes. I use a burlap kind of material, and linings from cloth, like suits or jackets. I cover them with glue and move them around until I get the shape I want. Once everything hardens, I use an airbrush or regular painter’s brush to add color. I use fiber for texture, to provoke deeper meaning from the piece. Color is very important too. “The Crack” is organic and mysterious. It’s my way to make the viewer see a kind of cave shape, and something that’s coming out from between the rocks. The pastel colors at the top are light, and the darken to deep violet at the bottom, like a cave.

InSight: Have you always work with this medium?
FEDERMAN: I stated as a teenager. I learn to knit and crocket from my mother. I took weaving classes when I did my post-graduate work in fine arts, and entered a national fiber contest in Argentina. At first, my paintings didn’t include fiber. But I used textiles in my work in graduate school. People responded well, so I kept going with it. Even some of my regular paintings contain fiber materials that I apply to the canvas- like the lining from cloth- but it’s applied more like a collage. It makes the color stronger. Some materials pop out of the canvas and others lie on top. You have to look closely at the details to see them. People really like it.

InSight: Is there a specific meaning in each of the works, something that you really want the viewer to see?
FEDERMAN: It’s more a discovery. Like a puzzle. In some of my works I’ll hide numbers, or letters that might spell a word like “hope”. But it’s not very obvious at first. The viewer has to look closely to discover what I have hidden on canvas. The idea of my entire “Surviving” series was the Holocaust and my parents’ period of incarceration during that time. I got the idea about the integration of body and soul. The series depicts people trapped in a place where they don’t want to be. The whole idea was very dark: People going some place. It’s more associated with bodies, or incarceration. “Surviving” is monochromatic, the colors appear gray, with bluish green mixed in ; it looks something like metal. It’s a dark color a dark piece. You can see the corrugated cardboard. There is a hand with skeletal fingers, reaching through the middle of the image. I used happier colors for “Landscape”, “Flying Home” and On Transit” rather than gray. There are more contrasting colors like teal and red, related to cosmos and the sky. It’s still abstract, but the images contain objects found in mature. So, no more dramatic meaning. No more skeletal hands. What I’m trying to do (here) is symbolic.. I use organic images found in mature, some that are easily recognizable, to create something abstract- something in which there can be multiple meaning depending on the background knowledge and experience of the viewer. It’s very subjective.

InSight: Do you plan a piece before you started?
FEDERMAN: I have a theme in mind, but most of my ideas evolve as I’m working. Some is related to nature, mixed with different themes, like pollution. Sometimes I see figures emerge as I’m doing my work. With other series, the image are more deliberate. I create them on purpose. I put in something realistic, a piece of fruit, for example, to catch the viewer’s attention easily. The rest of the image prompts them to plumb deeper into their minds to find the symbolic meaning. Everyone will see something different.

In Sight: What gives you the most joy about being an artist?
FEDERMAN: It’s the way of expressing myself and get people intrigued about images. I try to present a puzzle, to have `viewer see what might be there, or not. An image might have bananas in it, some thing easily recognizable, but it might also be something else.. I invite the viewer to imaging something that is not apparent in the theme. I give them clues by putting something realistic in my work, but the viewer has to discover the rest. The space is diffuse, so it’s not really clear what’s happening in the image. My work is open to interpretation, and I enjoy hearing what people think a piece of my art might be to tell them.

Old Town Crier / October 2004 / Gallery Beat / By F. Lennox Campello

One of my favorite art venues in the Washington area is the IDB Cultural Center in the Inter-America Development Bank, currently until October 17, The Center hosts “Our Voices, Our Images”, an exhibition of art and literature by nine artist and writers commemorating Hispanic Heritage Month. According to the Center, this is an exhibition of art and literature by winners of a juried competition that selected their work based on a goal to exhibit work that explores issues, themes and events relevant to Hispanic Americans and Hispanic experience in the United States. Organize in collaboration with the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities and the collaboration of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the artist were selected from field of 70 submissions. The jurors were Olivia Cadaval, Program Curator of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage of the Smithsonian Institution: Minister Ignacio Duran-Loera, Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute; and Felix Angel, General Coordinator and Curator of the IDB Cultural Center. They selected 9 finalists: four painters, one photographer and four poets. One of them Felisa Federman born in Buenos Aires, Argentina of Polish parents, her works have evolved radically in the last few years. Her recent exhibition at the Argentine Embassy I reviewed a few month ago, continues to amaze me with her artistic nervousness and enviable energy. It is how she transmits this energy through her assemblages and paintings that continuo to add success to her work. Her latest work seeks to engage the viewer in multiple levels, ranging from highly conceptual and serious work to entertaining, almost humorous pieces.

DC ONE Magazine / Lenny Campello May/2003

At the Embassy of Argentina (1600 New Hampshire Ave, NW) Argentinean artist Felisa Federman, now a Washington area artist, exhibits her trademark paintings comprised of mixed media which capture a diverse range of ideas and subjects and concepts from a mind rich in creativity and skill. Federman’s work has progressed steadily in the few years that I have been observing her work, and this exhibition crowns this gutsy lady as one not afraid to try new avenues and methods in her artwork.

Picasso once said that “God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.” Federman goes beyond that – not only is she trying other things, but she’s actually re-inventing things that she transforms into art.

Gaceta Iberoamericana

Actualidad Literaria y Cultural / Octubre 1996 / Mr. Miranda Ricoico

El arte de Felisa Federman, que no es pintura, ni escultura, a la manera ortodoxa, sino una modelación de la imagen de la imagen en relieve en base a materiales textiles y sintéticos, se puso de manifiesto en la exhibición en el Restaurante European Café, en Rockville, Maryland. Sus creaciones son del todo originales y llevan el sello del talento.