Fiber artist Paulette Visceglia has mastered the art of painting exquisite, colorful designs on silk, creating elegant, original works of wearable art that could be equally at home in a designer showroom.

Inspired by such master artists as Picasso, Matisse, Miró, Kandinsky, O’Keeffe and Chagall, Visceglia is not afraid to use bold colors, from rich reds and lush greens to stunning blues and vivacious purples, offsetting them with softer shades of brown and gray.

With a father who served as an officer in the Army, Visceglia and her six siblings moved a lot as children, and it was then that she developed a passion for design.

“My father would sit us around the kitchen table, bring out paper and pencils, and we would draw,” Visceglia recalls. It is those childhood skills, she says, that are now the basis for her fabric designs.

Visceglia took art classes in high school and moved into fashion design, continuing her studies at the Fashion Institute of Baltimore where she learned design, color and management. But as so often happens, art took a back seat to the demands of life when she became a single parent of two children.

She spent the next 20 years in retail, before leaving the corporate world at age 40, when she again resumed her artistic endeavors.

By her early 50s, remarried and living in California, she became interested in fabric art and joined a group of like-minded women to learn more about the craft. Together, they expanded their vision of silk possibilities, designing, cutting and sewing silks into garments that became hand-painted, one-of-a-kind designs.

She also founded Camp Hollywood, a children’s theater camp.

“That was a blast. The kids did everything. They did the play, they made their own costumes. We did it in one week, the scenery, everything.”

After moving to Newport, Oregon, Visceglia says, “I had the good fortune to work with a very fine artist, Michael Gibbons, a gifted plein air artist, well known in the northwest.”

Visceglia moved back to the northeast after the death of her husband, landing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and in 2009, entered a piece in the 25th annual Peddler’s Village Fine Arts & Contemporary Crafts Show that turned out to be a showstopper.

“Fiber Arts never gets credit for anything, but the first year I entered the show, I ended up winning First Place Best of Show in the Fine Arts Category,” says Visceglia.

It was quite the honor, as two of the judges were Victoria Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. The second year she entered, she again won First Place.

“I pushed myself to do more saying, ‘I can do this.’”

The dye process she employs is complex, but Visceglia, who uses Dupont French Silk Dyes and Pebeo Setasilk, says that watching it flow takes her to a different place.

“I’ll sketch and start thinking about color. Color is so important, especially as we age, we need more color,” says Visceglia.

Occasionally dye, which has the consistency of water, needs to be thickened with a ‘no-flow’ product to help control it, and she applies ‘resist lines,’ to keep the colors from running together. Once it’s applied to the fabric, which has already been cut into garment pieces or a wall-hanging, the dye is steam-set, which makes the colors more brilliant.

“You have to watch out when steam-setting that you don’t forget to turn off the burner and the piece gets burned,” says Visceglia, admitting that she has done that twice.

After steam-setting, it then goes into a dye bath (water and fabric softener), is rinsed and dried a bit, before being pressed and either stretched and applied to a canvas frame, or sewn as clothing.

Never one for idle time, Visceglia says she began painting oil on canvas pieces while waiting for the dyes to dry on the fabrics. Again her drawing skills come into play, with inspiration coming from virtually everywhere.

“I love to paint oils, which also allowed me to get a lot of stuff I had tucked inside me for some time to get out. Art has been a blessing for me,” she says, explaining that it helped during the difficulties of losing her son at age 24 and her husband.

Having moved multiple times as child, and spending her adult years in California, Oregon and Pennsylvania, Visceglia says she always dreamt of a time when she could stay in one place. After being snowbirds here for a while, she and her current husband moved fulltime to Vero Beach in 2015, which she hopes will be her forever home.

At the time, she had no idea Vero Beach was an artist’s mecca, but says, “I decided I needed to put down roots here.”

She joined the Vero Beach Art Club and became actively involved, despite having sworn that she would not get involved with another board or nonprofit, but now says, “I love it.”

Visceglia has been president of the Vero Beach Art Club for the past three years, and has volunteered her time to continually improve the club and its place in the community.

In December 2020, the VBAC moved into its new Annex and Gallery on 14th Avenue in the Downtown Arts District, and they are now in the process of expanding into the space next door. The expansion will provide much-needed additional gallery and classroom space for the ever-growing membership, now some 650 members.

Additionally, she is working on Project Awesome Sauce, a collaborative project with United Against Poverty, the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office and the Vero Beach Art Club, with artistically talented inmates guided by VBAC members, creating colorful murals.

“The inmates have painted walls in the rec room of the Indian River County Jail, turning cinderblock walls into an amazing space,” says Visceglia.

Photos by Joshua Kodis