Laura Foster Nicholson began weaving while attending the Kansas City Art Institute in the early seventies and today her tapestries are found in numerous museum collections, including the Cooper Hewitt Museums in New York, the Denver Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, the Racine Art Museum, the Reading Public Museum and Cranbrook Art Museum and Archives. She is the only fiber artist to be awarded the coveted Leoni di Pietra at the Venice Biennale.

Over the years, Nicholson has explored various themes, like gardens and gardening tools, landscapes, flowers, birthday cakes and more. There is something essentially feminine about her subjects. Rendered in rich and interesting palettes, these provide the foundation for a new group of work that diverges dramatically from that of her past. This is more conceptual and more abstract, and it goes deeper.

Bees have always been a part of her work, their tiny shapes dancing through her compositions. After moving from Chicago to Indiana, Laura and her husband began keeping bees. Beekeeping was to be a part of their new rural lives. They also planted a garden and bought a tractor and then, sometime later, decided to separate. Nicholson's new work comes from this.

Bees are even more prominent in the new weavings, swarms forming the outline of a human form, buzzing between silhouettes of a man and woman. Clouds of them swirl in their ordered way through space. When they appeared in her earlier tapestries the bees provided a touch of wit and delicacy. Now, as her principle subjects, they are ephemeral and fragile, creatures that create and disperse with the shifting breeze. Her work remains essentially feminine but deepened and thoughtful, even more beautiful without its smile.

And her palette has changed, too. While some of her new works are subdued and muted, with soft and dark greys others are vividly intense, strong pinks and reds together and even bright yellow. Nicholson is an expert colorist and designer who understands the emotive capacity of color. There are no accidents here. This is personal work and it takes her narrative style into terrain rarely approached by fiber artists.

This will be Nicholson's second Patina exhibition. Ten works will be shown.

"Being Here" opens Friday, October 7 with a gallery talk by the artist, beginning at 4:00. A reception will follow. The exhibition ends October 29, 2011.