MUNCIE, Ind. – The Murray Building in downtown Muncie houses many local businesses. Carrie Wright’s Silk Gifts & Gallery is a unique business with a fascinating story. Carrie Wright is known for her award-winning silk paintings. She says meeting her husband helped open her eyes to what she could do as a full-time artist.
“I did not set out to silk paint because I wanted to win awards, per se, I set out to silk paint every single day because it’s what feeds me. It’s what I’m passionate about,” Carrie said.”
Silk itself is very lightweight and translucent. There’s many different ways to create images on silk. Using washable resist and wax in her work, Carrie loves to experiment and express her freedom in creation. The process of hand painting silk, letting it dry, cutting it, placing it, steaming it, and much more takes a lot of hard work and time.
Carrie described how she puts heart into her work as she explained, “I think it you’re going to take the time to make something that’s handmade that you’re going to ask people to spend their hard earned dollars on, and you want it to be a gift to someone else, generally people are buying a handmade gift here because they know that I’ve put my heart into making the things so that it is authentic and completely one of a kind and is an expression of the love of the person that is giving the gift.”
Carrie’s husband, Danny Wright, is a cartoonist who loves to make people smile through his work. His creations are sold alongside Carrie’s silk art. His favorite thing to create is animals doing human things. An example he gave was a frog eating a piece of toast.
Danny said, “I think that when people encounter funny animals they can emote inside that character and see themselves inside those characters far faster than if it was a photographic representation.”
Danny focuses on simply having fun with what he creates. When it comes to putting heart into his art, he makes sure that what he creates is enjoyable to his own self and fun to create. A man of all trades who explores the joy of a child on the inside truly captures the fun in life.
“I don’t think you can help putting yourself into your work. I have a belief that all is self-portraiture and that you can’t make something that doesn’t look like you ...You have to please your own artistic self before you please an audience,” Danny said.
Overall, when it comes to putting heart into art, Carrie and Danny truly know how to create things that are unique to them and enjoyable to do. Their love for creating art is a motivation that some artists may miss out on. Focusing on the goodness of what you create can help you push farther, and acknowledging the things you need to work on can help make your work better. A picture is truly worth a thousand words.
Contact Stephanie Weaver with comments at stephanie.weaver@bsu.edu
