- I am a collage artist, a textile collage artist.
Well, the first thing you would see is a lot of colors.
I like colors, but you also would have an illusion, from a distance that this is a painting.
You have to come closer to see, "Oh, it is fabric."
(bright music) Over the years, I developed an attunement to feeling like I'm painting.
I'm painting, dancing with my scissors, or painting using a collection of fabric from all over the world.
I was born in Paris, France.
My mother was from the French Caribbean island, the one called Guadeloupe.
My mother came to Paris, and she came as a seamstress, a protege.
She was excellent at it, plus she was doing costumes.
But as a little girl, I saw all the fabric, all the shimmery fabric, and it was the time of Cuban dances.
So dancers would have all this Hispanic flair, and wonderful colors.
She traveled a lot, so she sent me to a place, a boarding house.
There were no more than 60 kids there, and they were all children of artists of various discipline.
We were exposed to a lot of art there.
I came to the United States at the age of 26, and I followed an American I met in Paris, and he said, "You're very talented."
I made all kinds of things for him, and he thought it was wonderful.
And he said, "You're very talented.
I have a good job in the United States.
Follow me and you can do your art."
And I did that.
That's how my adventure started in America.
(bright music) Okay, so I'm going to select today some colors that I feel would be fun to start playing with.
The colors that I really like would be, I'm going to say it in French, so... (Francelise speaking in foreign language) So that's yellow, blue, green.
Those are my, really one I go to.
But I really like the magenta colors, and everything that's derived from putting a little bit of, red and blue and creating nuances with those colors.
They call it a fat quarter, just a little piece like this.
I discovered fusible web, which is a glue, that you apply on the back of fabric.
You heat fuse it with an iron.
So the glue is, when I peel it off on the paper, you can see this web.
So it's called fusible web.
So I'm going to leave the whole thing here, and I'm going to apply the blue side.
So again, attached to make sure I don't put the blue on the side of the iron.
And I'm choosing the part that I want to use as collage on that.
And I go for it, making sure that my corners are well taken into account.
So at first you do like this and then patiently.
(bright music) So what is interesting is when you touch the fabric, how soft it is.
But then when you have the glue behind, then it nearly behaves like paper.
I'm going to take a part there that I like.
I'm going to leave the paper behind.
I will peel it after, but then I start and I start cutting.
So if I want a shape that's sophisticated, and I'm listening to the music, or sometime I'm even dancing, and I'm cutting and, here it is, and then I take off the paper.
Once you cut something in itself, that one piece is already art, 'cause it's cut, but then placed in where I'm going to put it, I will create a whole landscape or whole language, because collage is a language.
Looking for what the piece wants to say.
So that's the part that becomes exciting.
(bright music) I can see dancing in beautiful costumes.
The work is like poetry.
Same thing when you have poetry, you make it yours.
When you have a piece of artwork, there you are in an exhibit or somewhere, and suddenly its, "Oh!"
I've seen people cry.
They look and they go, "Oh, that says something to me."
And it's abstract.
So I'm looking and I'm waiting to see what they're going to say.
But they have a relationship with the color, with the shapes, with the atmosphere created by the piece.
So the piece is alive.
So my goal is really that.
That I could, with my work, touch more people who need this work.
It's food to the soul.