Christy DeWitt Artist Bio

Artist Christy DeWit spent her childhood exploring the rural landscape of New York state. Growing up in the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley offered her endless interactions with nature and its inhabitants. She was taught early on, by her grandmother, to respect the local wildlife and to appreciate the flora and fauna of the area. 

One prominent memory is of the times they spent during the summer raising Monarch butterflies to tag and release into the wild. In the spring, DeWitt would follow her grandmother out into the fields among the milkweed to look for the tiny yellow eggs that the Monarchs would lay on the underside of the leaves. Carefully they would pick the milkweed and bring it back to the house where they would nurture the eggs, then the caterpillars would transform into precious jade chrysalis. A few weeks later, met with the same awe and excitement every time, a delicate butterfly would emerge. 

Experiences like these have taught DeWitt to appreciate and seek out the beautiful wonders nature provides. “I am intrigued by nature, its power and how it changes. It is filled with awe inspiring landscapes, creatures of all sizes, patterns and colors that have become a recurring theme throughout my work,” DeWitt says. “Whether I am creating transfer prints, watercolor paintings or my fiber art sculptures, my inspiration is derived from a facet of nature.”

Encouraged by artists and craftsmen, DeWitt has learned to express herself from a very early age. Her grandmother traveled the world taking photographs of animals and birds. She included DeWitt on many of her bird watching hikes in the local area sharing her love for capturing a moment and observing your subject. She taught DeWitt the importance of using tools correctly, respecting the materials, being patient, and selecting a good composition. Her uncle is a carpenter, furniture maker and master woodturner. DeWitt recalls that she was always inspired by the way her uncle could take a block of wood or a large root and turn it on a lathe into something beautiful. As a child DeWitt was exposed to lessons in painting, ceramics and drawing with local artists, and through classes at the local university. “My parents respected the arts and sought out classes for me. It was fun to explore new mediums and each one was more exciting than the next.”

High School was a turning point for DeWitt. Enrolled at Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, DeWitt realized that art was going to be her career in life, and not just a hobby. Her teachers recognized her talent and helped her cultivate her creativity through encouragement and exposure to the creative world. Through her high school years, she took classes in drawing, painting, art appreciation, ceramics, photography and weaving. She exhibited her work in the school gallery and in Albany, NY. DeWitt met many artists and sought professional artists and art professors to help her define direction of her abilities.

In her senior year, DeWitt was honored to be a part of the one percent accepted into the Rhode Island School of Design. She entered school as a painting and photography major, then enrolled in the Industrial Design degree program after the foundation program but in the winter of her sophomore year she transferred into the Textile Department. DeWitt says “I never considered textiles as a career before college but once I took an elective course in the department it was obvious that it was my calling.” With a family background in computers and playing around with  code as a child, weaving was natural. DeWitt’s senior degree project explored the integration of  complex weave structures and design on a historical Jacquard loom with punch cards. “I could see the weaves in my head. The difficult part was translating them on huge pieces of graph paper for someone else to understand.” 

After graduation, DeWitt was invited to accompany one of her professors to Brittany, France for the summer. There she traveled the countryside, spent hours walking and drawing along the cliffs by the ocean. She visited Paris and several places in Switzerland and along the way she was introduced to museum curators, and other professors of art.

For the next decade, DeWitt went on to establish herself as a successful textile designer in the foreign and domestic upholstery industry, where she applied her fantastic knowledge of color, fabric construction and design. She worked in New York City for a year at Sunbury Textiles creating decorative jacquard fabrics for home application. Later, DeWitt accepted a job at Main Street Textiles in South Eastern Massachusetts. Here she spent 10 years developing jacquard designs for the home furnishing markets around the world, the auto market and recreational vehicle market. DeWitt’s job encompassed areas such as purchasing artwork, designing in-house patterns, construction/weave development, yarn development, seasonal market lines, testing, and sales and marketing with customers.

DeWitt retired from the commercial textile field in 2004 to pursue her own work. She began painting again and creating fiber art in the form of one-of-a-kind wool coats. At this time, DeWitt and her husband were growing her family. She had a two-year-old son and was very surprised with the news she was having twins. 

In 2008, DeWitt began pursuing a career in teaching. She enrolled in classes and took the required tests to gain her teaching licenses, eventually earning a Masters of Art Education.

DeWitt has continued developing her own art and has been active in the art scene surrounding her area throughout her employment. She is a member of the South Coast Artist Association, runs an art club and volunteers yearly to create the sets for the theater productions at school. Her own work has evolved over the years, going through changes while each step builds on the knowledge she had gained from the previous direction. 

Today DeWitt’s work has evolved to encompass hand-tinted transfer prints, eco-printed silk scarves and fiber art sculptures. Her work is a culmination of the knowledge and insight she has gained throughout her years of study and creation. It is not surprising that her love of nature and continued fascination with the changes that occur naturally that she has chosen these mediums to reflect her visions. 

DeWitt creates her work on a seasonal schedule to accommodate the materials and weather needed to make the transfer prints and eco-printing. The prints are created during the warm months of spring and summer in her outdoor studio using leaves she forages from local sources and her own gardens, an iron mordant, and a heating apparatus she designed herself. Then through the winter months she completes the artwork by hand-tinting the images with watercolor and ink. The fiber art sculptures and watercolor painting are dispersed between the others allowing DeWitt the opportunity to maximize her creative time.