Photo by Josh Meredith
Nestled in an enclave of auto mechanics and dismantled hot rods on Crossfield Drive in Versailles, the art-and-textile studio of Alex K. Mason is easy to overlook. The only indication of the building’s non-vehicular nature is the small door sign bearing her company’s name, Ferrick Mason, in more delicate colors and finer font than the industrial signage of the car shop next door.
Stepping into her studio makes the juxtaposition even more apparent. Outside: scattered fenders, scrap metal and the clamor of heavy machinery. Inside: endless yards of fabric, canvasses covered in plants and circles, the hum of a sewing machine – total immersion into Mason’s world of abstract, natural imagery and soft textures.
Mason, a Lexington native, is an artist and designer who specializes in fabrics, rugs and prints. First and foremost, though, she is a painter who says her fate was sealed at an arts festival in sixth grade, where she became enamored with the textures of different paints and surfaces.
“We were able to paint with oil paints on canvas and experiment with different mediums – pastels on big paper, fine paper,” she said. “That’s when I really fell in love with painting. I always loved it, but I think in my mind I wanted to be an artist after the arts festival.”
Since that fateful grade-school art festival in Lexington, Mason has lived in Los Angeles, Vermont, New York, New Zealand and Los Angeles again, before recently returning to Kentucky. In her 26 years away, she has more than fulfilled her childhood ambition.
Photo by Curtis Speer
Photo by Josh Meredith
Photo furnished
She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in art, developed an identity and iconography as an artist, and started a fabric company and a family (at the same time, a combination she does not recommend). Over the course of her career, she has seen her paintings placed around the world, from the Monte Carlo Café in Las Vegas to the Ritz Carlton in Mexico City and the St. Ermin’s Hotel in London.
Like many artists, Mason has had to balance her own creative practice with the necessity of making a living. Her parents nudged her toward interior design; they dismissed fine arts programs as “getting a degree as a starving artist” and said becoming a successful artist was as likely as getting into the NBA. But in a single conversation with Mason, it’s clear that she’s determined to do precisely what she wants. In fact, her parents’ skepticism about life as an artist only motivated her.
“I’ve always wanted to make stuff and make it on my own terms,” she said. “I have a need to create things, and I think if I’m not creating things, making things, I’m not happy.”
The artist has found a way to further work on her own terms by integrating her painting with her textile business, Ferrick Mason, which she established in 2008 in partnership with Brian Ferrick.
Mason’s interest in fabrics derived from the same lifelong fascination with texture that initially drew her to paints and paper.
“I’m a very tactile person – I love fabrics to the point where I can touch a fabric and tell you the content of the fiber, what it’s made of,” she said. “One way that I identify the world is through touching things.”
Nowadays, Mason says, digital design and printing allow anyone to start a fabric line. She, however, paints all of her designs by hand, inspired by the traditional William Morris repeat pattern technique that she learned at the Otis College of Art and Design. The unique artistry of Ferrick Mason’s designer fabrics has landed the company’s products in high-end interior design showrooms around the United States, as well as in Canada, Germany, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
“When I got into it 12 years ago, the market was not so saturated. Today it is overly saturated and highly competitive. What I think I have that gives me an edge over a lot of textile designers is that I learned the William Morris technique,” she said. “I do everything by hand and don’t rely on computers and graphics to create my designs. You see that they’re hand-painted.”
Mason’s aesthetic clearly embodies a fascination with the natural world rather than the man-made. From her paintings to her fabrics to her soon-to-be-launched wallpaper line, Mason’s iconography is abstract, organic, full of circles, leaves and dripping colors. She deconstructs and reassembles, with an obvious attention to texture.
“My iconography is flattened, abstracted forms from nature that have been simplified and altered in a way that makes you wonder what it is. It might reference something, but it’s not going to mimic something or be realistic,” she said.
Her organic style is largely influenced by the landscape of New Zealand, where she lived for several years while her husband worked in film. Her perpetual use of circles, meanwhile, dates back to her college art history classes.
“Women in art have been shafted out of the history books, except for a handful. I learned in those classes that the symbol for female is the circle. I always am drawn to circles and dots and circular forms. And it’s interesting because I think a lot of women are drawn to my work, and I think not all men are,” she said. “Some men are repelled by it and don’t like it at all. But it’s kind of like girl power to me.
“Also I think it goes back to nature,” she added. “The simplest form, or the simplest thing you can create two-dimensionally, is a dot. I like to break things down into lines and dots and then build them back up.”
Not surprisingly, Mason’s fabric work is inseparable from her paintings, and the feedback loop keeps her constantly inspired.
“I base all of my textiles on the iconography I’ve created from my paintings,” she said. “I feel really lucky. I feel that my fabrics inspire the paintings, and the paintings inspire the fabrics. It’s not one thing or another – they’re constantly signaling the next thing where I want to put my attention.”
Mason admits that despite a lifetime as an artist, she is still learning not to be overly attached or critical about her work. She has destroyed some of what she now considers her best work, because at the time she judged too harshly. Now her strategy is to walk away from work she doesn’t like, come back to it in a few months and then see how she feels. Instead of destroying the painting, she’ll go back in and work on it.
“I’m not motivated by money to do things, but I’m motivated to make things better. That keeps me going.”
Where to purchase:
Alex Mason mostly works on a commission basis with her paintings, though she plans to launch an online print shop in mid-August that will offer fine digital prints on canvas or archival paper for purchase. To see more examples of paintings that are currently available, visit alexkmason.com.
For more information and examples of her textile work, which is available at more than a dozen national showrooms – including DeCioccio in the Cincinnati Design Center at Longworth Hall – visit ferrickmason.com.
Creative Types is an editorial series produced by Smiley Pete Publishing in partnership with Creative Lexington, a local initiative that connects the public with Lexington’s arts community through professionally produced “snapshot bio” videos that highlight local artists and other creative types. Visit this article on our website to view the recently published “snapshot bio” video highlighting Lexington painter and textile artist Alex Mason.