Artist Makes Textiles Her Canvas

She is creative. She is colorful. She has the spirit of a cheerleader and the soul of a poet. Her smile is infectious. You can’t help but love her when you meet her. Kim Gibbs Duease, a native of Clarksdale in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, is truly a gifted artist. Her palette is vivid. Her canvas is broad. Her inspiration is everywhere.

The daughter of Ole Miss Law School graduate Joe Gibbs, Kim began painting and creating as a child and she has never stopped. Now based in Madison, for the last twenty years she has been designing interiors that are a sensual feast – rooms that surprise and delight the senses, places where color and creativity culminate in glorious abandon and touch the soul.
In her interiors, Kim combines styles, colors, and textures to create very personal, one of a kind interiors for each client. Her latest artistic foray is a line of colorful art fabrics. Why fabrics when rolls and rolls seem to be everywhere?
Kim admits she tried her hand at textile design to fill a gap in the fabulous resources for textiles available. As an artist and a designer she would visualizes the ideal textile for a particular project and be unable to find it. I decided to dabble in textile with my art hand.”
And she has done far more than dabble. Since last fall, she has created seven collections – Nouveau Chintz, Artisinal Ikats, Delta Festival, NOLA, LOLA, Ode to Lilly, and Prismatics. Currently, the collections hold over 200 fabrics from her original paintings.
Kim philosophizes on her venture saying, “As I began to review my artwork and the patterns I had chosen to transform into textiles, the story did start to come together. Each pattern had its own voice … Blues River… Big Muddy… Coahoma… and on and on.”

“I believe the influence of my friend and fellow designer Marilyn Trainor Storey was divine intervention. All I had painted was telling the story of my home. I did not see the connection between all the collections until Marilyn noticed and encouraged me to take my work to the next level; to really go out and market my fabric.
The fabrics are bold, full of life and history, and, of course, color.
Kim says the fabric can make a house feel like home but it is well suited for commercial use, too. Anywhere its roots in the Mississippi Delta are appreciated is a place the art fabric can warm and welcome. Wallpaper in each of the collections patterns and colorways is also available.

Next on Kim’s brush is a collection called “Oxford” which will combine her love for Oxford and a classic menswear preppy sensibility with a touch of landed English country gentry. Although Kim did not attend Ole Miss, growing up she spent many happy hours on campus. She fondly recalls “playing in the Grove and the many Saturday bag lunches eaten on the steps of the law library with my Daddy Her new “Oxford” collection will be a springboard for custom designed tailgating linen – everything from napkins to tablecloths, flags, and umbrellas.
Kim sums up her new fabrics saying, “My favorite things about Mississippi are family, friends, and lifelong memories that I will always cherish. Now these are all being documented on my textiles, telling my story in a way that I hope others can use and enjoy.
Kim can help you make her story in textiles your story, too. Contact her through her website www.kimduease.com; send her an email (kimduease@gmail.com); or just pick up the phone and call  at 601-954-9243.





– Written by Jane Boykin, janepboykin@yahoo.com