Martha May’s life interests have been equally divided between Art and Music. Her experiences in the art world have been vast and rewarding and include: printmaking, clay sculpture, crochet sculpture, machine quilting and tapestry weaving.
Most of her work has the common thread of “repetition in the process.” During her clay years it was pinch and coil, in printmaking it was hundreds of lines and dots, in machine quilting hundreds of the same image stitched on whole cloth creating intriguing surfaces, and with tapestry weaving the over and under movement of the warp with the weft to create paintings with yarn.
Martha May studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C., majoring in clay sculpture. After finishing her studies at the Corcoran, she remained in D.C., and continued to work in 3D using cloth and plaster. When married with a young family, her creative time had some limits, so she took on quilting. Her quilting interests lasted well over 25 years until she discovered tapestry weaving.
Her inspiration is the Flax Comb/Hatchel with its metal teeth mounted on a wooden block. It is not the prettiest of tools but the points play into “the repetition in the process.” Weaving the same thing over and over again.
These are all entries under the letter “C” in the book Amherst A to Z, written by Elizabeth Sharpe. The book is illustrated with pictures of artifacts from the Amherst History Museum, historic images from the Jones Library’s Special Collections, as well as photographs of our town and the folks who live here.