Phyllice Bradner

A well-known artist and designer, Phyllice Bradner recently moved to McMinnville, Oregon after living in Alaska for 39 years. She grew up in Los Angeles and worked for an advertising art studio after college. She was the Art Director of two advertising agencies in Anchorage, ran her own communication consulting business for 17 years, and was the Publication Specialist for the Alaska Division of Tourism.

She is accomplished in several different media. As a weaver, her work won awards in the Alaska statewide juried art shows: Earth, Fire and Fiber (Best of Category) and Sitka Juried Art Show (Best of Show). She paints in oils, paints on silk and experiments with various types of printmaking.

At the University of Alaska in Juneau, she took printmaking and batik classes in her mid-fifties and rekindled her creative spirit after 35 years in the more rigid field of graphic design. The batik class featured silk painting, and she fell in love with the process of working with water soluble resist and Jacquard liquid silk dye. She finds silk painting to be very relaxing and meditative. She particularly enjoys painting on Habotai and Crepe de Chine. Dharma's 8"x54" finished scarves fit perfectly on her worktable made of hollow-core doors. She uses a frame made of ¾" PVC pipe and attaches the scarf with Chinese Suspension Hooks.

Whimsical cats and dogs are featured in both her printmaking and silk painting; she usually free-hands funny animal faces with a squeeze bottle of resist and decides as she goes along which colors and backgrounds to add. She also works with color washes, salt techniques, and fanciful flower designs which she makes from random tie-dye. She studies the tie-dye patterns and makes a resist outline around everything that looks like it could be a flower. After she darkens the background to make the flowers pop out, she goes back and paints in the petal, leaf, and stamen details. It's time-consuming, but the results are very satisfying.

In Alaska, she was a member of the Juneau Artists' Gallery, an artists' co-op, and loved the experience of interacting with other artists in a common venture, as well as meeting and discussing art with the customers when it was her turn to work in the gallery. When she moved to Oregon, she became one of the founding members of Currents Gallery, a co-op in McMinnville which opened in 2005. She loves spreading the joy by teaching others to paint on silk.

Phyllice Bradner's
Katz & Dawgs Studio
605 NE 1st Street
McMinnville, OR 97128
971-237-7564
pbradner@verizon.net