Artist Statement
As a multidisciplinary artist, my practice is a meandering journey. Much of my work explores memory and legacy. Sometimes a connection between the materials and their history is obvious, such as using flattened metal collected along the roadside, working with discarded clothing or with letters and cards I’ve saved over 50 years. Other times the connection is more obscure, as I retrieve and revisit art ideas from childhood.
With a wide variety of materials and techniques, I engage my eyes and hands to explore and experiment. A student at heart, it’s the discovery, the surprises that delight me most! Metal, paint, screening, wire, pastels, charcoal, masking tape, bones, cardboard, fabric, stones, pods, graphite, wood, ink all find their way into my work. Painting and drawing, assemblage, printmaking, stitching, stringing, layering, twisting, glueing, binding and tying are methods I use to create.
I often work in multiples -- repeating a form to create variations on a theme and making a whole that is bigger than the sum of its parts. Narrative is another important element of my work -- every piece carries a story. This impulse reflects the decades I worked as a broadcast journalist before turning full-time to visual art making.
Following my instincts, I pursue things that catch my eye and move my heart. Consciously or unconsciously, my work reflects a life-long connection to nature. That’s where I find joy, solace and glimpses of the divine. My imagination is sparked by what’s outside myself, which simultaneously reflects the inner experience of human life.
Biography
Margot Stage was introduced to fabric art in 2001. Before that pivotal moment, her expressive media had been words and sound, as she worked as a National Public Radio host and producer, primarily at WGBH in Boston. Turning to visual art was like coming home to an earlier self. Stage’s work was immediately accepted into juried exhibitions and has been shown extensively nationwide.
Her art has been selected for exhibition at Provincetown Art Association Museum, Cape Cod Museum of Art, Heritage Museum and Gardens, Bristol Art Museum, Fruitlands Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, DeCordova Museum, Whistler House Museum of Art, The Schoolhouse Gallery, Brickbottom Gallery, Lesley University, Bunker Hill Community College, Lasell College, Lawrence Academy, The Carnegie Center for Art, Cambridge Art Association, Concord Art Association, Indian Hill Music Center, Arnold Arboretum, Moose Hill Audubon Gallery, The Center for Art in Natick, Fiber Arts Center, Gallery 119, Brush Art Gallery, Loading Dock Gallery, Ayer Lofts Gallery, Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and Parish Center for the Arts.
Stage’s work has appeared on Lower Cape TV, in The Provincetown Independent, Fiber Arts Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Lowell Sun, The Middlesex Beat, The Ithaca Journal, The Boston Phoenix, and The Westford Eagle. Her work is held in the collections of Enterprise Bank, The Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union, Lowell Community Health Center, the Free Software Foundation and by many private individuals. MIT and Lando & Anastasi borrowed her work through a corporate loan program. Stage has received several residencies at The Studios at Mass MoCA, and multiple grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Stage lives with her sculptor husband in Eastham (Cape Cod), Massachusetts.