Fecho, a prominent and award-winning Eastern North Carolina artist, views travel as an invaluable opportunity to bring inspiration to her work. During a recent semester-long sabbatical, she visited two artist residencies located in rural areas: the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Science in Rabun Gap, Ga., and Pouch Cove Foundation’s Residential Arts Program in Newfoundland. Fecho described these residencies as wonderful environments that supported creative interaction and where writers, musicians, and visual artists shared time together, discussing how they problem solved and how they approached studio work.
With regard to her method, she embraces the creative process that requires her to focus on the discovery of the unfamiliar. Before she constructs a piece, she is constructing its meaning for herself – a story – matrix of personal, cultural, and archetypal associations within which her assembled fragments will find their place. The work reveals multiple layers of material and meaning. Blended paint and paper create a mottled, tactile surface seasoned with fragments of subtly integrated text and musical notations.
From the rural areas of America’s Deep South to the most northeastern point of the North American continent, Fecho made rubbings from trees, roots and rocks with graphite sticks and rice paper to create the foundation of her work. From there, she allowed paint, pastels, pencil, and photography to converge on her canvas as she brought attention to that which is so easily overlooked. The richness of seasonal hues in her work move from the cold grays and bitter browns of winter to the vibrant greens and yellows, the cool blues and warm reds of early spring. Fecho’s works seduce the viewer beyond the boundaries of the surface to the remote places of nature, rural life, and even urban sprawl. These details spawn stories for the viewer’s imagination and capture life in its most abandoned corners.
