Linda Darty
Garden Badge Series
I am fascinated by the sentimental value of old badge collections, and the memories they provide long after they are worn. The enameled garden badge pieces were made in homage to my mother and the garden club she joined in the rural town where I grew up. I received my first formal color and design lessons from her as I learned to arrange flowers while a member of the Junior Garden Club. The women in this small town would gather monthly, meeting with armfuls of flowers and greens that were spread over tables. These badges pay tribute to their efforts to create and formalize a time in their lives to celebrate beauty, community, and friendship while also expressing my ongoing inspiration from nature.
I'm intrigued by what kinds of badges I would identify myself with as the adult person I've become, not only what I would wear now, but what would be left behind for some future relative to pour over in a long forgotten jewelry box. I would want them to find flowers, leaves and branches of silver and blossoms of delicately painted glass, and to remember that I wore and made them to keep them alive in my life. that in the midst of the technology, the construction and destruction of this world so often at war, there is beauty to be treasured.
About Linda Darty
Linda Darty learned enameling and metalwork in the mountains of North Carolina, where for 7 years, she lived and worked as assistant to the director of Penland School of Crafts. As professor and coordinator of the metal design program at East Carolina University, she has recently begun a new life in the medieval town of Certaldo, Italy, where she teaches enameling and directs ECU's ITALY INTENSIVES art program for fall and spring semesters and also spring and summer short workshops. Surrounded by vineyards and olive groves in the heart of Tuscany, the beautiful studios are located in a medieval palace near Florence, where Linda began her own art studies in 1973.
Linda has an extensive national and international exhibition record with work in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC and The Arkansas Art Museum. She is the recipient of the North Carolina Board of Governor's Teaching Award as well as The Lifetime Achievement Award for Research from East Carolina University, and The Lifetime Achievement Award from The Enamelist Society, an international organization. In 2003, as a more organized way of providing notes to her students, Linda wrote The Art of Enameling, published by Lark books, and currently used as a text in many universities.
Linda Darty
Garden Badge Series
