Artist DonCee Gains New Audience with Unique Fabric Art

It’s New Year’s Eve morning, and artist Don “DonCee” Coulter is seated at a drafting table in a cramped upstairs bedroom at his Dublin apartment, staring at a bow tie.

A seamstress gifted Coulter the tie, but not for him to wear. She wanted him to use it in a piece of art. Coulter holds the tie, with paisley-like swirls of black, gold and ruddy brown, against a large pencil sketch of a dapper man holding a trumpet.

Nearly completed artworks lean against the bedroom walls. In “Dance with Me,” a woman beckons to a suitor, but the tattoo of a bitten apple and the gold snake wrapped around her arm would make a wise man think twice. At first glance, the portrait looks like a bright, glossy, finely detailed painting, but a closer look reveals layers of precisely cut and glued fabric — leather, cotton and whatever else Coulter digs out of the huge plastic bins that surround him. One container is labeled “hair.”

Continue reading Joel Oliphint's story on DonCee at Columbus Alive.