For her, fiber & art make for perfect fit A self-taught artist, Anita McCormick of Bangor fashions complex new beauty from found fabric

Intuition guides her needle.

“It’s like a meditation,” said fiber artist Anita McCormick, 50, of Bangor. And that is one of the many reasons she is drawn to the process of creating the intricate pieces she fashions from found fabric. A painted butterfly hovers above a starlit pastoral background. Bugle beads form the gills of a fish outlined in beads. Bronze metallic thread forms the word “meow” in one of her heart-shaped pieces. Every stitch is done by hand with needle and thread. Each bead, each sequin, each tiny embellishment is placed with care to enhance the background cloth. “It’s a nice place to get quiet. It’s almost like spiritual practice,” McCormick said of her process of creating the pieces.

Most of her pieces are no larger than a postcard or the size of a small heart. Each one is packed with the precision of the artist’s eye and reflects the decisions made to organize the color and shape of the fabric – where to place that cluster of white beads, that line of silver metallic thread, that sprinkle of French knots.

“Each piece is an experiment,” she said.

Three years ago, McCormick took an embroidery class from fiber artist Tree Heckler, who operates Howling Threads embroidery studio in Bangor. That experience, she said, opened up a world of fiber artistry, new to her, above and beyond the simple embroidery stitches she had learned from her mother and grandmother when she was growing up in West Virginia.

“I’m so glad I took the class,” she said. “It took me in a whole different direction.”

Last year, McCormick contributed a square to the quilt assembled by Unitarian Universalist Society members in memory of Dorothy Hawkes, a lifelong member of the UU Society in Bangor. That experience and the embroidery class solidified McCormick’s interest in fiber art.

Her first piece, she said, started out to be a notebook cover, but as she worked, she decided that it was too beautiful and required too much work to serve such a utilitarian purpose. The piece now serves as a sampler to demonstrate the range her work encompasses, including applique, embroidery with metallic threads, fabric painting and beading. It even includes bits of hand-crocheted lavender lace and satin ribbon rosettes.

A few months ago, McCormick received her first commission. She was asked to make a portrait of the building that houses Massimo’s Italian restaurant on Hammond Street in Bangor.

“It was a major construction project,” McCormick said, likening the experience of stitching the piece to building an edifice. Suzanne Kelly, manager of the Hammond Street building, who commissioned the piece, planned to give it to a friend. She wanted a portrait of that friend in the piece. McCormick painted a tiny portrait of the woman sitting at a table in the window of the fabric building.

Some of McCormick’s work, especially her miniheart pillows, feature images of cats. “Cats are full of love,” she said. Two black-and-white cats serve as her companions. Alice was adopted from the Bangor Humane Society and Henry was purchased at a pet shop in the Airport Mall.

McCormick said that she has done some painting and drawing in the past, but it’s all self-taught. She has never studied art in the formal sense. However, she does study books she finds at the Bangor Public Library to learn techniques and to get ideas. She also reads Quilting Arts magazine and recommends “Elegant Stitches” by Judith Baker Montano to those interested in learning stitchery techniques.

McCormick described her creative process as intuitive. “When I sit down to work,” she said, “I’m drawn to the small pieces, the ones that are already cut up. I use as much as I can of things that were going to be tossed away – fabric from rummage sales and thrift shops. It’s interesting to see how the pieces fit together, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle, but I’m the one making the pieces as well as fitting them together.”

McCormick’s heart pieces are available for sale at Metropolitan Soul in Bangor.

“I keep looking [at what I’ve made] and I always see more that can be done,” she said.

McCormick also is a free-lance writer and editor, and Reiki practitioner.

ahamlin@bangordailynews.net

990-8153

A self-taught artist, Anita McCormick of Bangor fashions complex new beauty from found fabric