Darcy Falk is in her studio painting a 10-by-10-inch canvas. The background is awash with shimmering lilac, overlaid with a grid of silver dots. She adds another layer of red and orange acrylic to a pair of glowing poppies. A thin, white halo around the blossoms lifts them from the two-dimensional surface.
She reveals how scary it is to be making these “weird little paintings”; the world knows her as a textile artist. Darcy shakes off the looming fear. “I know this is not what people expect from me. It’s a giant risk. You have to be brave.” She dabs some purple at the heart of the flower, “You have to keep things fresh and interesting for yourself or you are dead.”
What inspired this shift? I look around the studio. Tidbits of inspiration are everywhere, crumbs in the woods marking a path. Invention and risk-taking are what shaped Darcy as an artist. In college she only took one art class but surrounded herself with artists, recognizing them as her tribe. At the time she did not think she was capable of that kind of expression.
Darcy moved to Flagstaff with her husband and son in 1986. She lived in a Doney Park rental with a 10-month-old baby. It was lonely. She began making quilts, working for 20 minutes between the interruptions of a young family. “I was dabbling and I took a risk. Then I just kept doing it.”
For years she never bought more than a half-yard of fabric at a time. Later when she had the resources, she discovered her aesthetic had developed from those years molded by scarcity, parsing out bits of her favorite fabric. You can see this influence in her textile art: layered, bright scraps of hand-dyed, commercial and vintage fabrics form abstract images that ask questions and only hint at the answers.
Around age 8 she discovered that carefully chosen words on the page could make a shy girl feel powerful. She studied journalism in college. “Writing comes easier than visual art. Our culture is more tuned into literary language. After all it is about communication.” When she creates visual art, she often spends an hour looking through a collection of fabric for the perfect piece that “does what I want it to.” So it is with writing; you gather words and pick the perfect scrap from the pile, not the cliché, but words that communicate in an interesting and effective way.
By incorporating visual and literary art into her work, Darcy draws from both sides of her brain, especially for problem-solving. “Giant leaps come from your right brain,” she observes. Her creativity arises from self-doubt and always wanting to be doing more. Her current mission: to cultivate creativity in all parts of her life and into the big picture. When people say ‘I don’t have a creative bone in my body!’ I don’t believe that. I want to ask, ‘Have you ever cooked a meal, painted a room, set a table, or rearranged flowers?’
“Everybody’s got it!” she exclaims.
She believes this constant doubt leads to reinvention. But I wonder what happens when doubt overcomes the ability to reinvent. “You have to keep at it; the doubt never goes away. I’m best friends with doubt,” she smiles. The confidence returns when Darcy discovers something she is passionate about, and there is plenty of that. And she constantly hones her tools—making a small quilt daily at times. “When you give yourself an assignment, there is no room for doubt.”
There is a photo on the wall of a gray-haired Viola Babbitt from 1976—the year Darcy graduated from high school. “I never knew her, but she looks like such a cool lady, and she did so much for the community.” I see a similar ethic reflected in Darcy’s life, where her passion invigorates several local arts non-profits and encourages young artists.
Having been so many things—visual artist, writer, journalist, mother, volunteer and activist—what does Darcy Falk want to be when she grows up?
“I think all the things that I’ve done are what I am now. It is important to be part of the community but at a certain point I want to be in my studio so I can comment, doubt and reinvent.”
