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Claire Vassort
Rising Fawn, GA |
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A self-taught silk painting artist, Claire Vassort initially learned how to paint on silk in her home country, France, as a young adult. After her schooling and some extensive traveling, she put her bags down in Northwest Georgia, near Chattanooga, TN in 2001. Silk painting quickly became central to her career. Claire’s teaching background (degree from École Normale in France) combines with her artist practice in the implementation of art workshops. Her company, Silk by Claire has been operating since 2006. Claire regularly contributes to the Chattanooga Public Art scene, including a former Art in Motion bus shuttle design (2011) and two ArtSpark utility boxes in Downtown Chattanooga (2019). Her practice also leads her to implement public art projects such as Silk & Shades, a collective art installation that involved the public in silk painting workshops at the Chattanooga Downtown Public Library (2019) and Arts4Libraries, a series of free workshops at the Cherokee Regional Library System for the residents of Northwest Georgia (2021). All these programs produced public art installations gathering the work of workshop participants. In the past few years Claire has also partnered with the Creative Discovery Museum, teaching the silk painting medium to kids and teenagers.
In 2022, Claire Vassort, collage artist Anna Carll and metal worker Michael Brandt created a 3-dimensional mobile for the Chattanooga Convention Center. Named Give Way To The Wind, this installation combines aluminum, paper and silk to demonstrate impermanence and the meaning of resilience. Claire helps organize and participates in the yearly Rising Fawn Studio Tour, where she features her work on silk. During this event, local art studios open their spaces and welcome the public, perpetuating a long-standing art tradition in the New Salem area of Lookout Mountain. Today, Claire lives with her husband Erik on top of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, in the traditionally art-rich Plum Nelly area. In this serene and inspiring setting, she focuses on her silk business, painting, teaching and involving communities in arts programs. She views art as a life lesson that is to be shared with others.
I’m a silk painting artist from Northwest Georgia. Bringing out the natural shine of raw silk, my brushes reveal visions of our environment and connection to the natural world. Recurrent themes such as sustained motion, resilience, wholeness and unity in nature find their way on hand-painted silk, which becomes a vehicle for strong, thought-provoking images and metaphors. The new Silkography series is a heartfelt tribute to land. In this series, hand-painted silk pieces manifest how deep human connection to land proves to be critical to well-being. Featuring and interpreting topography, Silkographies make meaningful use of silk painting gutta lines to honor the beauty and characteristics of specific areas of our planet. Silkographies take their source from three key principles of topography. First and foremost, topography shows and knows no borders. Secondly, it joins points of same altitude and revolves around connecting these points. Finally, topography outlines evenness within jaggedness. Through visual impact and metaphor, Silkographies seek to adopt a bird’s-eye view to reveal how land and environmental issues may bring communities together. My silk pieces deliberately show unison among elements of our natural environment through color, texture and lighting. Whether my images feature trees, land or landscape, I wish to share balanced images of change and for the result to induce feelings of equilibrium. I aim to bring the outdoors into homes, so that our origins and our roots are remembered
