The Silk Road Leads to Tuxedo Park and Manhattan New York

Artwork by Ida Ivanka Kubler created with Silk Cocoons left by the Caterpillars

News provided by

Feb 22, 2017, 04:00 ET

NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cocoons convey a delicacy, transformation and silence. Delicate as the silk moth worm spins the thin thread that makes up the cocoon, silent as the worms prefer to spin in complete silence and transformative as the cocoons leave their egg house once the chrysalis is transformed into a moth. The silk housing is beautiful and each cocoon is unique.

media: Silk Cocoons left by the caterpillar and Acrylics on Canvas. Photo: by the Artist and free to use. Some pieces of the The Birth of an Idea series, Ida produced in her studio in Tuxedo Park, New York (photo by the artist)

Cocoons have always fascinated ancient civilizations. They represent change and produce one of the most exquisitely beautiful fabrics: silk. Ida Ivanka Kubler has managed to incorporate this material raw into her works with a simplicity and beauty that is overwhelming.

Ida Ivanka Kubler grew up in the sericulture for silk cocoons and was surrounded by cocoons. As a child she developed patterns and primitive art from the cocoons using pulverised orange bricks mixed with water to paint them.

Ida, as a Chelsea College postgraduate student, refound her connection with cocoons via four hundred cocoons that had been stored by her grandparents. Developing her earlier relationship with cocoons she sculptured each cocoon individually with six "wings" looking like an open hand with five fingers. The cocoons are given another identity while still retaining their silence. They are transformed into an evocative landscape. Ida takes the delicate and transformative silence of cocoons and creates pieces of art that allow us to meditate, to pause and to energise. Her works reflect the tranquility enjoyed under the shadow of the Mulberry trees on a hot summer afternoon.

The artworks are rectangular painted canvases with sculptured, colored and arranged silk cocoons. The resulting half-object paintings are kaleidoscopic. Tension is created by the silk cocoon groupings and contrasting colors. The repetition in her artwork is at once geometric and ordered but is also subversive in its use of color. The overall effect is one that the viewer finds instantly known, visceral and transcendent or what the artist calls "imaginative touch." The artist says, "My art introduces the viewer to the passions of tactile experiences, which I feel when I am producing those artworks." "The Birth of an Idea" series has been recognized by the Behring Institute for Medical Research as having a positive influence on health. The artwork is deemed to promote relaxation and positive excitement at the same time in the viewer.

Ida Ivanka Kubler's new series "The Letter" uses the matted silk thread from cocoons that have been pulled apart by soaking and heating, the resulting matted silk threads are spit, sticky and raw and have their own exquisite natural shapes. Ida embodies these into visual and visceral intertwining expressions. The resulting works are abstract, featuring wispy orbs of shocking color that evoke allusions to macro and micro immersive worlds that set out to "awaken feelings."

Ida Ivanka Kubler's next project is to embrace the transformative nature of cocoons with sculptured, deconstructed silk fibers and nakedness. To touch the world free of materialism. To be transformed and wrapped naked in a chrysalis of silk fibres. To wear the silence of a dress made up of cocoons and feel that silence on naked skin. Kubler remarks that she also needs to feel completely exposed as this is the way that she transcends with her art to touch her audience.

Ida Ivanka Kubler is creating in Manhattan, NYC. She has an international reputation and has worked worldwide including France, Bulgaria, Germany, Norway, USA and UK. She has a number of international collectors. Ida has exhibited in Germany, the Netherlands, London and New York. Her upcoming solo show will be at Chinatown Soup, 16 Orchard Street, Chinatown, New York 10002, Show times: Tues, April 25^th – Tues, May 2^nd, 12pm – 7pm, (Closed on Monday, the 1^st of May),