Luanne Rimel is an artist whose work is layered with historical dialogue and tactile intrigue through both technique and concept. Rimel prints her original photography on silk using a wide-format inkjet printer, layers and collages details, and embellishes sections through hand-stitching. The delicate, repetitive treatment across the surface creates shadows and textures and alludes to the marking of time, and references earlier domestic practices of mending, repair, reuse and repurposing.

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    A pillar of the St. Louis arts community, Rimel served as Director of Education at Craft Alliance of St. Louis for over 16 years. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including several Quilt National exhibitions, Smithsonian Craft Shows in Washington, DC, and the book, Art Quilts of the Midwest, published by the University of Iowa Press. 
 

   "My work explores the passage of time and lingering memory of the present and I find beauty in ephemeral “found” cloth. I am drawn to the ability of cloth to reveal, hide, obscure and protect. In the Bed Series, images of the unmade bed – one third of our lives spent with that piece of furniture - from birth, sleep, love, illness and death – reveal a body just there. In the Cloth in the Landscape Series, photographs of protected cloth-draped buildings under construction become metaphors for existence and memory, alluding to bones and skin. Images of once cherished linens hint to history and memory of those passed, becoming small landscapes as they stack in layers in the Strata Series. And the accidental marks and folds on a painter’s drop cloth, laid to protect the ground, fall leaves scattered on the surface, create intimate and abstract still lifes in the Groundcover Series. All of these images take on new meaning and significance as I navigate the surfaces. 

Merging domestic textile practices and contemporary technology, the found cloth images are printed onto prepared silk with a wide format printer and archival inks and detailed sections are collaged and stitched onto the cloth, referencing earlier domestic practices of mending and repair. I carefully investigate the colors and patterns in the images and utilize embroidery and quilting stitches to slowly activate the surface, creating shadows and textures, alluding to the marking of time." - Artist Statement