Dawn Murtaugh is the artist who is currently featured in our Begley Art Gallery. Murtaugh is a multifaceted woman with seemingly boundless amounts of energy and a zest for life that has followed her from Chicago, to Italy, to our very own Evansville. Her textile pieces, which pay homage to the textile artists who came before her, are created through an intricate process using reclaimed materials. The best part? All of the proceeds of her work are donated to nonprofits, serving those in need. She quite generously found some time in her busy schedule amidst moving house and creating artwork to sit down with me for an interview.
Chey Miller: When did you start creating art?
Dawn Murtaugh: Very, very, very young. My father used to have me draw a squiggle, then he would create a picture out of it. My father probably would have been a good artist, but he felt that it would be too difficult to make a living doing art and that he might grow to resent it if it were his job. Instead, it was play for him. It was fun and relaxing. My mother was creative out of necessity - she made her own clothes out of nothing. She would get bags of clothing because we weren’t doing well, but instead of thinking “we’re so poor, we just get all this garbage,” she would hold up a piece and ask, “what can we do with this?” She would also take me to the paint store, where I took out all kinds of different colors to play with. I couldn’t not do it. Art was just always part of my life.
CM: Were you always a textile artist, or did that come later in your artistic journey?
DM: I would say it came both before and after. My mother would sew everything and taught me at an early age. She was very meticulous about her work. I made a skirt out of newspaper pattern and I put a zipper in it. It took me seven times before she told me “rip it out, rip it out. I’ll get it.” She was as nice as she could be about it. Her famous line was, “Be the job big or small, do it well or not at all.” I also really enjoyed painting, especially paint-by-numbers. Later, I did go to college for art. My father and I both enjoyed letterpress. I tried to go into photography, but I put my contacts in the wrong eyes and didn’t know it, so I ended up losing a whole semester. I wanted to be an architect - I liked the three-dimensional aspect of it and my father brought home real blueprints from work that I got to look at. I even made designs with bathroom tiles. I preferred more hands-on, three-dimensional work. I was never a sketcher, but I enjoyed painting. When my husband and I lived in Italy, we didn’t have much of anything, but we managed to afford some paint. I remember for one painting, just doing one swoosh across the canvas, then I can’t recall anything else before I stepped back and went, “I’m done” because I was so enmeshed in the physicality of it. I could never afford to do anything like jewelry or painting since they were so expensive; with recycling and reclaiming my materials, I don’t have to worry about the stakes. It is totally liberating. I get to create and make mistakes and I don’t have to feel bad about it. I didn’t really start working the way I do now until I moved to Evansville, around 19 years ago.
CM: How did you develop your current process?
DM: We decided early on that my goal was teaching, mostly teaching art. Throughout my career, I taught weaving classes, pre-school, grade school, college, prison work release, English as a second language, parenting classes. I was creative in everything I did. I’m not good at following the rules - I call it quiet subversion. I break rules, but I’m polite about it. I taught out of necessity, to help get my husband through school, but also because I loved it. Both of our jobs were such giving activities. He worked seven years without a vacation - there were no meals or evenings without a phone call. So we decided that I could basically do whatever I wanted, I could develop things as long as I could make it on our terms. I homeschooled so that we could be more flexible, taking vacations and spending time as a family when he was able to. So I think every part of my life has been, “how can I solve this? How do I make it work?” but it wasn’t really until we moved here that I felt free and could truly let loose.
CM: Do you get to continue problem solving while making these textile pieces?
DM: Absolutely. Every single minute. My daughter has her MFA in Costume Technology. She does opera, ballet, and theatre costumes and she’s convinced all of her coworkers to donate their fabric scraps to me. So she came home this past weekend, and she brought back 12 bags of scraps. My house is a disaster because I’m still in the process of sorting them all. When I make something, I pull out a piece of batting. The size is decided by what size I have, which is leftover pieces from other people’s quilting. Then, I start thinking “Oh, I need to work in blue right now,” but I might find a green fabric that’s really cool and I feel like I have to use that. It comes to me. Sometimes there isn’t enough fabric, so I have to figure out what I’m going to do about that.
CM: Why do you use reclaimed materials in your work?
DM: I want to honor the women who came before me, who used quilting both as a necessity and a form of self-expression. Every single person has a junk drawer with something in it, like an old piece of lace from somebody else for example. They’ll say, “I can’t throw this away,” but they don’t know why. I think it’s intrinsic for us to feel in texture. I try to honor the spirit of old quilting: I won’t paint on top of the quilting, I use the traditional methods, I stitch three different layers of fabrics together. I will hand stitch, or machine stitch, or use my long arm - whatever works - because that’s what they would have done. This relates back to the Cosmos - every single aspect of that piece of fabric and the life that went into it, the energy that went into it, is honored in my own work. I try to take what most people would consider garbage and make them aware of the fact that everything is beautiful - it’s just how you use it and how you show it. It’s very intentional.
CM: What does your process look like from the idea phase to the finished stage?
DM: The main thing about my work is that I try to relate to people. I try to create, educate, and donate. I have to collect the fabric, wash it, deconstruct it, iron it, sort it, design it, cut it, do the layout, sew it, add details, bind it, frame it, sew on the label, price it, title it, and document it on my spreadsheet. It’s hard to say how long it takes. I timed myself during the design, layout, sewing, binding, and framing phases. That took me about 40 hours. But that doesn’t include the prep work that goes into it.
CM: Would you say the whole process is therapeutic, or are some parts more calming than others?
DM: I go through an interesting spectrum of feelings. When I first get down to my studio, my entire body is tense, like it’s asking “What do I do? What do I do?” Most people make a sketch and they know exactly what they’re going to do and then they cut it out through the dye cutters and glue it down before sewing over it. That doesn’t happen with me. For the work in this exhibition, I was sticking to a theme. Cosmos and trees, cosmos and trees. What kind of tree am I going to do? I don’t know, I have to see what fabric I have. I start off with this huge anxious energy because I can’t wait to get in, but I don’t know what I’m doing until I find the fabrics that speak to me and speak to each other. Once I have those, I have enough to at least start. Then it’s calm again. The preparation stage is also more soothing, especially ironing.
Dawn Murtaugh: Bits and Pieces of the Universe will be on display in the museum’s Begley Gallery until September 14th, 2025.
