Friday July 2 A new exhibition by Lil' Shy: 'All that matter, and all that doesn't' Lil' Shy is a multimedia artist by heart. Her strong love for a Hands-on mentality, Craftsmanship and the art of lettering embodies all of her work, whether it be a painting, a drawing, a piece of clothing, a silkscreen print or a photo. Inspired by daily life, she uses words to vehicle emotions and thoughts. In the last two years Lil' Shy has turned to textile as the medium of her choice, working slowly from typography towards abstraction. Her new exhibition will be showing her latest textile artworks that she has made over the last year.. Your an Paris-born artist, but have been working in Amsterdam for the last ten years. Is Amsterdam your home? YES! Amsterdam is definitely my home now, Amsterdam is the best place to work on my art, because I can isolate myself and focus on my work. For me, coming from Paris, it's quiet here. But Paris does inspire me the most. In Amsterdam there is such a great interest and curiosity for Art. And I have all my friends here, I'm surrounded by inspiring people, that's very special to me. I feel very lucky. I believe that all good things are the same in every city, really, the most valuable thing you can find are friends and good people. Besides your own work and exhibitions you've also been one of the forces behind the 'Ladies First' exhibitions, an exhibition dedicated to ladies art and crafts. What is your motivation behind that? When we started there was that feeling of not getting as much attention in our work as guys would get. But now I think that it's about creating a powerful group of artists and make great exhibitions together. You know, I don't want to be too involved in that male/female discussion it's too political for me already..., at the end of the day it's great to do things with your girlfriends, people you relate to, have fun together, and it happened to be that my girlfriends are great artists too. The Ladies First! exhibition is about creating a good group show for me, in its diversity of disciplines and approach, so when I finally see the end result, and see that it works all together and that the show is strong it makes me really happy, I feel we have created something really special all together, and that is very inspiring. Two years ago you started working with textile and different fabrics. How has this influenced the way you work? Working with textile is more playful the working with paint. When working on a piece with textile, i feel more free when i'm composing a piece. When I used to paint, I would go over and over to cover layer. One of the reasons that i enjoy working with textile is because there is no mistake you can make. I like that feeling, it 's liberating. How do you actually make your textile pieces, which process do you go trough, and what materials do you use? First I make sketches on paper, I have tons of small bits of paper with words that I collect. Then I pick the colors for the pieces. I'm a very instinctive person, and that also goes for my choices. I just have to feel it, the color combination has to give me a certain feeling that it's what I'm looking for otherwise I'm not satisfied with it. When I have the right color combination, I start cutting directly in the fabric. I don't draw on it, I go free hand. After that I spend some time positioning, and fine tuning the composition. I leave it for few days, so that I can forget about it. After that I I start sewing it all by hand. That is a very long process, it takes me days, sometimes weeks to finish a piece. And as weird as it may sound, I always forget the effort and struggle it takes me, and the next time start an even bigger piece! Why is it that you sew everything by hand, and dont work with a machine? For me nothing can replace the hand, the line and the small imperfections that the hand creates. In a sense I compare it to drawing, I want my pieces to feel just as if I had drawn, but instead I sew. And where do you get your textile? Are you looking for all the sunday markets to find the perfect fabric? I have few shops in Amsterdam and Paris that I always go to. When I see a fabric that I like I buy it, I never really know what I'm gonna do with it but I know that the color is right, so something is gonna happen! What kind of direction have you been going into in your latest works? And what can we expect of your new exhibition? My work is slowly moving toward abstraction. At the moment it's very geometrical. I have never been into figuration anyway. I use typography in my work as 'a mass of matter' to explore shapes and color. I'm fascinated by color, to create a good color combination is essential in my pieces. So I think that abstraction is a natural turn in my work. More information on Lil' Shy; www.lilshy.net Official opening: Friday 2nd of July YOUR:OWN Gallery Oude Waal 35 18:00/20.30 (on view untill July 14)

Agenda: 26/03: Gijs Kast (NL) 09/04: The Things We Are (NL) 23/04: Lasse Netterstrom (DK) 06/05: Ed Templeton (USA) 21/05: Panik (UK) 04/06: Stefan Glerum (NL) 18/06: Lennard Schuurmans (NL) 02/07: Lil' Shy (FR) 16/07: Joe Holbrook (UK)            (closing exhibition) Contact: YOUR:OWN Oude Waal 35 1011 CC Amsterdam info@your-own.nl Opening times: Monday - friday 10.00 -18.00