Mirka Knaster

ARTIST STATEMENT

Mirka Knaster finds inspiration in East Asian aesthetics, 20th-century abstract art, and meditation practice. Environment exerts a profound influence as she witnesses, with awe, how the ever-changing light transforms the colors of land, sea, and sky from dawn until nightfall on the northern Sonoma coast. She is drawn to the simplicity and universality of geometric shapes and flow lines and notes that space is as important as form, if not more so.

Mirka’s 2-D and 3-D pieces are created in a non-representational style with textiles, handmade paper, and other materials. Her approach is an open-ended improvisation in which the work emerges intuitively, as a communication through color, texture, line, shape, space, and pattern. Each one conveys a feeling, an idea, an observation, an impression or recalls a place, an experience. The process of composing, making, and marking ignites Mirka’s curiosity and joy. Along the way, she embraces and celebrates the surprises.

ARTIST BIO

Born along the Adriatic Sea and educated on both coasts of the U.S., Mirka Knaster earned degrees in three cross-cultural fields before embarking on a journey into fiber art. Worldwide adventures deeply inform her sensibility and exploration of international art and craft. She currently works in a studio overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

 As an independent curator, she has highlighted artists from other cultures and such issues as immigration and plastic pollution. She has presented and taught at venues in the U.S. and Korea, is one of the founders of Korean Textile Tours, and a former board member of the Textile Arts Council, Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco. She also reports on the wide-ranging field of art in her blog “exploring the heART of it”.