Saaraliisa Ylitalo will be presenting her fiber art in the Patio Gallery at the Jewish Community Center of Louisville, located at 3600 Dutchmans Lane. Her work features her handmade paper and various fiber techniques that tell her personal stories. The exhibit will be on display May 2, 2010 through June 15, 2010.

Ylitalo has been an innovator in the field of fiber for over 30 years, exhibiting, living and teaching in countries including Costa Rica, Japan, Peru and South Africa. Her education in art at Montclair State University, University of Wisconsin, Northern Illinois University and Lawrence University has led her to countless exhibitions, collections, grants, awards and publications.

During her seven years in Costa Rica, Ylitalo was chosen to head the Fiber Crafts Program at the University of Costa Rica, instructing in weaving, spinning, tapestry technique and dyeing. Her most interesting challenge was to create, with a number of indigenous artists, a series of quintessentially Costa Rican native textile images to be sold to tourists. Previously visitors to the country bought mostly imported Guatemalan textiles since Costa Rica’s cultural imagery had not been codified for marketing. These works continue to be successfully marketed to visitors, bringing wealth to the fiber artists of Costa Rica.

It was in Kyoto, Japan, the cultural heart of the country, that Ylitalo faced challenges to succeed as a Western artist and woman. Home to a number of American and European women artists in the same situation, Ylitalo founded the Women’s Art Association (WAA) in 1993. It was here that she fell in love with washi, known as handmade paper, and studied with a master papermaker.

Over the years, her work has had a strong social conscience, dealing with subjects such as abuse and victimization, secrets and body image. She visually communicates the struggle between hope and despair and the tension created from the interplay of those forces. Her newer works have echoes of these themes, but are more focused on life’s more ethereal and spiritual questions.

“I persist in asking: as humans, why do we struggle, why do we care, what makes us try? I have no answers to these spiritual enigmas, and I do not seek the answers through conventionally religious means, but I continue to dissect the struggle”, states Ylitalo.

The opening reception for Saaraliisa Ylitalo is open to the public and will be held on May 2, 2010 from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. Pricing information is available for existing works.