I enjoy investigating the sensory experience of the surface with a multidisciplinary approach. Eco-dyeing fabric and printing on fabric for wearables has extended my design abilities. Using reactive dyes, pigments and embellishments, the surface develops. I enjoy expanding the boundaries of the traditional surface through deconstruction and reconstruction. My techniques include screen printing, stenciling, hand-painting, relief and digital that are combined with found objects to create a unique surface.

“A 20-foot-long grown in flowing fabric decorated with applied organza leaves, “Cold Mountain Bliss” moves from eye-level along the gallery floor. This piece, made by altering and attaching 13 separate dresses, is reminiscent of a garment, perhaps a wedding gown with an exaggerated train, evocative of landscape. The artist interweaves text by Han Shan and New Zealand’s author Katherine Mansfield. Han Shan (who was nicknamed “Cold Mountain”), was a Chinese poet and Buddhist monk living around 750 c.e., a mystic hermit who mediated upon mankind’s place within the great outdoors in verse:

This is my resting place;

Now that I know the best retreat.

The breeze blows through the pines,

Sounding better the nearer it is.

In this installation sculpture, Fecho’s joined segments create an undulating fabric-based metaphor for landscape. Achromatic dress shapes merge, transitioning from white to gray, summoning an echo of the narrow tonal range found in nature’s cooler latitudes, from snow to fog. The flowing shape suggests movement of waters and hills, undulating along the gallery floor. “Cold Mountain” also provides a structure for a digital “picture frame” featuring the artist’s imagery of wind blowing across the meadows. A 2008 collaboration with audio designer Phil Valera, Assistant Professor of Audio Recording Technology at Barton College, resulted in sound recordings generated from Fecho’s experimental handcrafted-and invented instruments in clay, wood, rocks, bamboo, and shells.” Professor Mark Gordon, Barton College, for Fluttering: Exploration of Nature.