EcoZeal

New York artist Denise Carbonell assembles her quilts and other pieces from leftover and recycled materials.

“I basically just try not to buy anything.”

-Denise Carbonell

When designer Denise Carbonell closed her men’s and women’s sportswear company in the mid 1980’s, she was left with plenty of souvenirs – bolts and bolts of leftover fabric.

“I had a lot of stuff left, like a warehouse full of it. I gave a lot of it away, to shelters, places where I could just give it to and it wouldn’t be sold again. And I figured out other ways to use it.”

From Scrap to Gallery Walls

For much of her leftover fabric, the “other ways” has been quilts – but not just any quilts. Carbonell’s vibrant hand-stitched pieces range in size from baby quilts to room-size 6 x 8 foot wall hangings. At the same time geometric and organic, they bring to mind both old-fashioned crazy quilts and the works of modern masters such as Mark Rothko and the Austrian painter Hundertwasser.

Ask her what inspires her, and she says without hesitation, “Color!” Many of her pieces are monochromatic, and may utilize up to forty shades of a particular color. Red is a favorite, but some of her quilts done in greens and browns remind one of – and are inspired by – the patchwork view of fields out an airplane window.

Recycled Vision

Although sewing is a lifetime passion for Carbonell, she doesn’t restrict herself to fabric in her artmaking. The studio in back of her lower east side New York gallery is filled with donated and found materials of all kinds, which she transforms into objects ranging from paintings to mobiles to little fetish-like animal figures. “I go back and forth between media,” she says. “I just finished a big group of hands” referring to a series of icon-like paintings featuring symbolic hands and incorporating positive words of encouragement. She started painting them with old house paint on pieces of scrap left over from a remodeling project, as a way to encourage herself during a challenging time in her life. People seemed to like them, so she kept making more. “You get on a roll,” she says.

With true artistic vision, Carbonell sees possibility everywhere. Her current plans include finding a use for old sheet metal objects, such as olive oil cans. “I’m thinking of cutting them up and making them into toys or boxes.” Almost everything she incorporates into her pieces is in some way reused or recycled.

“I have a hard time throwing anything away,” she explains. “Some shape that looks like a little body – I sew it up and stuff it. I want to see how I can use it.”

It’s a philosophy we could all aspire to.

View more of Carbonell’s work at www.carbonellnyc.info.

Carbonell transforms unwanted building materials into art in her iconic Hand series.