Monthly archives: September, 2022

Make a Day of It: Events to Visit on Your Way to Allies for Art at browngrotta arts


On your way to see Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries at browngrotta arts (October 8-16, 2022)? Here are some other venues of interest in browngrotta arts’ neighborhood or nearby.

1. Aldrich: 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone
Through January 8, 2023.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877
Tel 203.438.4519
6.2 Miles

South Gallery: Aldrich
South Gallery, left to right: Grace Bakst Wapner, Calving, 2020; Stella Zhong, Every Other Chopped, 2021; Merrill Wagner, Inlet, 2010. Photo by Tom Grotta

Aldrich: 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone (https://thealdrich.org/exhibitions/52-artists-revisiting-a-feminist-milestone) celebrates the fifty-first anniversary of the historic exhibition Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists, curated by Lucy R. Lippard and presented at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 1971. 52 Artists showcases work by the artists included in the original 1971 exhibition, alongside a new roster of 26 female identifying or nonbinary emerging artists, tracking the evolution of feminist art practices over the past five decades. 52 Artists encompasses the entirety of the Museum (approx. 8,000 sq. ft)—the first exhibition to do so in The Aldrich’s new building which was inaugurated in 2004.

2. From the Pen to the Knife
From October 15 – November 27, 2022
Westport MoCA
19 Newtown Turnpike
Westport, CT 06880
Tel. 203-222-7070

Marion Christy, Untitled
Marion Christy, Untitled. Photo courtesy of the artist

From The Pen To The Knife features the watercolor paintings of Marian Christy. Christy was a pioneer of the Knifed Watercolors® style, a process that creates original watercolors using only palette knives and puddles of paint.  

3. Grace Farms
365 Lukes Wood Rd.
New Canaan, CT 06840
Tel. 203-970-1702

Grace Farms. Photos by Tom Grotta

Always a rejuvenating place to visit,  Grace Farms is a scenic 80-acre cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, Connecticut. Schedule a tour or make a reservation for one of Grace Farms’ unique events. Visitors must schedule a visit in advance. Admission is free. (https://gracefarms.org/visit/

4. Leaves: The Endangered Species of New England
Through December 1, 2022.
Fairfield University Art Museum, Bellarmine Lawn
1073 North Benson Road
Fairfield, Connecticut 06824
(203) 254-4000
(https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/leaves/

Alan Sonfist, Leaves
Alan Sonfist, Leaves: The Endangered Species of New England (Installation view), 2011, aluminum, on loan from the artist.

The leaves installed on the Bellarmine lawn are on loan to the Fairfield University Art Museum for the next year from the American artist Alan Sonfist (b. 1946), best known as a pioneer of the Land or Earth Art movement. These four larger-than-life aluminum sculptures of leaves were created in 2011 and represent several of New England’s most beloved native trees: the American Beech, the American Chestnut, the Burr Oak, and the Sugar Maple. The sculpted leaves act as reminders to honor and protect the trees, and as a warning that failure to do so could result in their extinction. 

The museum is working with the Biology Department, the Environmental Studies Program and the artist, around a series of programs to be presented in the spring of 2022 to highlight these sculptures, along with climate change and endangered species.

5. Yale Art Gallery: Three New Thematic Displays of Asian Art
1111 Chapel Street (at York Street) 
New Haven, Connecticut
(203) 432-0600
(https://artgallery.yale.edu/news/three-new-thematic-displays-asian-art

Detail: Sultan Tughril III
Detail: Sultan Tughril III, from a Manuscript of Hafiz-i Abru’s Majma’ al-tawarikh. Photo: Yale University Art Gallery.

Yale Art Gallery’s collection of Asian art comprises nearly 8,000 works from East Asia, South Asia, continental Southeast Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey and spans the Neolithic period to the 21st century. Highlights of the collection include Chinese ceramics and paintings, Japanese paintings and prints, and Indian and Persian textiles and miniature paintings. Due to the sensitivity of these artworks to light and climate, they are rotated out roughly every six months. 

On view through November are three new thematic displays of Asian Art including: Understanding an Eighteenth-Century Indian Album which brings together several manuscript pages featuring exquisite paintings of musical modes, given to Yale in 1939 and 1940. Second, Chinese Painting between War and Revolution, 1830–1950 highlights the vibrancy and experimentation with Western and Japanese visual traditions that characterized Chinese painting during the tumultuous period between the Opium War (1839–42) and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Finally, celebrating the varied rendering of cherries in paintings, woodblock prints, lacquer, and metalwork, Sakura: Cherry Blossoms explores the longstanding Japanese fascination with the beauty of this delicate blossom as a symbol for the ephemeral nature of life and its pleasures.

Have great trip! We look forward to seeing you at browngrotta arts:

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries
Saturday October 8, 11 -6
Sunday, October 9, 11-5
Monday, October 10 to Saturday October 15, 10 – 5
Sunday, October 16, 11 to 6
276 Ridgefield Road

Wilton, CT 06897

203-834-0623


Art Assembled: New This Week in September

As we settle into fall, things have not stopped heating up in our neck of the woods! This past month, we’ve been busy prepping for our Fall Art in the Barn exhibition and introducing you all to new artwork from artists all across the globe. Today, we’re recapping what we’ve brought into the mix throughout September.

Aleksandra Stoyanov
11-14as Waiting 1-4, Aleksandra Stoyanov, weaving and pencil drawing on cotton fabric, sisal, cotton fabric, 92.0” x 33” each, 2012. Photo by Tom Grotta.

To start off our series, we bring you Waiting 1-4, which was crated by Ukrainian artist, Aleksandra Stoyanov. This specific collection was the result of some of the unimaginable circumstances that this Stoyanov has experienced throughout her life.

This artwork’s inspiration dates back to the 1990s, after Stoyanov immigrated to Israel amid the worsening anti-semitism in Ukraine where she was born. Each panel in this collection stands nearly eight-feet tall and incorporates the image of a Ukrainian person drawn in pencil and woven in cloth.

This work was woven from Stoyanov’s own handmade threads of raw wool and portrays a deeply emotional quality.

Jiro Yonezawa
111jy Red Fissure 22/3, Jiro Yonezawa, bamboo, cane urushi lacquer, 17″ x 20″ x 17″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta.

This next piece was created by internationally acclaimed artist, Jiro Yonezawa. Yonezawa has been paving the way with his innovative bamboo craftsmanship for nearly 40 years.

His artwork can often be recognized for the contrast of disciplined formality in technique and natural freedom in form, which Yonezawa creates through exploration of traditional techniques.

When asked about his work, Yonezawa said:

“Bamboo basketry for me is an expression of detailed precision. In each basket there is the contrast of disciplined formality in technique and natural freedom in form. There is an element of intrigue and an element of complexity for what lies beyond form. These baskets represent a search for the beauty and precision in nature and a way to balance the chaos evident in these times.”

Anda Klancic
19ak B’ Still life, Anda Klancic, hand-controlled machine-embroidered lace, cotton, synthetic, metal threads, 54” x 37,” 1996/2020. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Our next piece was created by Slovenian artist Anda Klancic. Klancic has been recognized internationally for her use a combination of innovative embroidery techniques, many of which are patented under her name, allowing her to meticulously blend metal with cloth cotton or tree bark to fashion abstract pieces that crystallize the aesthesis of nature.

Klancic’s work can often be identified from her innovative and creative use of the machine-embroidered lace technique, which she skillfully combines with experience from other disciplines like photography. Often, her work attempts to express the relationship between humanity and nature.

Micheline Beauchemin
7mb-Petites ailes de glacé blanc, Micheline Beauchemin, nylon, silk and silver aluminum wire, lead wire, 30″ x 32.25″ x 7″, 1980’s. Photos by Tom Grotta.

Last, but not least, we brought you artwork from the late Micheline Beauchemin of Canada. Beauchemin was and still remains a major figure in visual arts – best known for monumental tapestries and theater curtains, as well as works of embroidery and stained glass, costumes and paintings.

As a weaver, Beauchemin’s repertoire of materials included unique combinations of handspun wool, silk and other natural fibers, as well as nylon, aluminum, and gold and silver threads.

As always, we hope you enjoy viewing and learning about these talented contemporary artisst. If you like what we highlighted throughout September; we keep them coming every week, so stay tuned!

As we approach October, make sure you mark your calendar for our upcoming Art in the Barn event, Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8-16, 2022), it’s an event you won’t want to miss! Click here for more information and to reserve your spot.


Who’s New for Fall’s Art in the Barn? Introducing Baiba Osite and Mercedes Vicente

Baiba Osite and Mercedes Vicente are two more artists we are pleased to introduce whose work is included in Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries, our upcoming Art in the Barn exhibition this Fall.

City Walls driftwood wall sculpture Latvian artist by Baiba Osite
Detail: 1bo City Walls, Baiba Osite, driftwood, canvas, 70″ x 54″ x 4.5″, 2019. Photo Tom Grotta

Baiba Osite is from Latvia. Since graduating from the Latvian Academy of Art Textile Department and finishing her Master’s degree, she has participated in art exhibitions worldwide. Among those exhibitions were the biennial Textil Art of Today which traveled to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, International Fiber Art Biennial, From Lausanne to Beijing, China, the World Textile Art Biennial, Madrid, Spain, and the 3rd International Textile Competitions, Kyoto, Japan. She works in education and is a member of Latvian Artist Union and Textile Association. Recently, she has enriched her experience in two valuable residencies: ”Cite des Arts” in Paris and “Textilsetur” residency in Iceland. Osite leads a folk art textile studio. Partipants there spent two months sewing a safety net for Ukrainian national guards, a project they will continue again in the fall.

Detail: 1bo City Walls, Baiba Osite, driftwood, canvas, 70″ x 54″ x 4.5″, 2019. Photo by Tom Grotta

Osite is known for her work with different fiber materials including driftwood, glass beads, wire, metal spirals, wool and linen. “Historically,” Osite says, “these materials were used in household textiles. I assign to them contemporary understanding and concept.” The various materials are sources of inspiration for Osite to create new works. Her work is also inspired by traditional ethnographic patterns and influenced by different cultures.

The works that Osite will exhibit in Art for Allies are made from driftwood segments that she collects  on the shore of the Baltic Sea. One of Osite’s driftwod works, Substantia, was awarded the Acquisition Prize of Contextile 2018, the Contemporary Textile Art Biennial in Portugal. The work was based “on the paradoxical game between ‘being’ and ‘not being’ and the transformation of ‘being,’” Osite explains. Driftwood works like City Walls reflect her propensity for dissecting patterns from nature and recreating them in a new form. Osite created City Walls for the World Textile Association Biennial, Sustainable City in Madrid in 2019.

2mv Coralima, Mercedes Vicente, canvas, 13.5″ x 23.5″ x 12″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

Mecedes Vicente is an artist based in Galicia, Spain, specializing in craft art. A regular participant in exhibitions around the world, Vicente is currently working with wood and textile projects, including sculptures made of canvas strips. Her work is influenced by the French artist Pierre Huyghe.

Born in Madrid in 1958, Mercedes Vicente’s family moved to various locations in Spain during her youth, an experience that pushed her to approach learning in a fundamentally self-taught manner. Initially, her art was pictorial, but it evolved into sculpture, with canvas as her primary medium. She loves the elastic, organic, flexible and translucent properties of the fabric with which she works. She must first prepare the untreated canvas by gluing it and priming it.

“When I started using this technique, I realised that people were amazed by such a manual process,” she says. “Then I started to think that what I was doing was within the realms of craftsmanship, art and design.” She chose fabric in part because it was easy to get hold of, since a member of her family worked in a factory producing canvas.

Vicente’s works often being or adapt a spiral shape. She told Thought Object about the significance of that shape. “Space is where the spiral arranges itself and where it’s subject to effects that impact it as if it were an architectural work: it’s exciting and moving how light acts upon the figure and how you can imagine yourself for a moment inside the spiral,” she points out. “This is part of the experience of space, dimensions, and volumes. It’s also the material with its finish and configuration and moreover, it’s the empty space around it where emotion lives.”

3mv Carinaria, Mercedes Vicente, canvas, 10″ x 13.75″ x 6″ , 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (browngrotta arts, October 8 – 16, 2022) will feature nearly 50 artists and highlight work from 21 countries in Eastern and Western Europe, 18 countries in NATO and the three current applicants. The artists in the exhibition reflect diverse perspectives and experiences. Allies for Art will include art created under occupation, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, art by those who left Hungary, Romania and Spain while occupied, and art by other artists who left Russia in later years. Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related Countries will also include works created by artists. like Osite and Vicente, who are currently working in Europe. Reserve your spot in Eventbrite


Who’s New in Allies for Art? Anneke Klein and Aby Mackie

We are excited to include the work of five artists new to browngrotta arts in our upcoming exhibition, Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8-16). Among these artists are Anneke Klein of the Netherlands and Aby Mackie who lives and works in Spain.

Detail: 1-2akl Family and Labels, Anneke Klein, hemp, cotton, linen, acrylic paint, 21.5″ x 21.25″, each. Photo by Tom Grotta

Anneke Klein of the Netherlands was originally educated as a goldsmith. Her passion for weaving was born from her struggle with hard and cold materials. In order to pursue her preference for warmth and softness in materials, she retrained herself as a weaver.  After a period of designing and manufacturing clothing, she worked on a commission for the American minimalist Richard Tuttle for his exhibition in the Vleeshal of the Frans Hals Museum and for Alexis Gautier in the Bozar Museum Brussels. She developed her own style for wall objects. As a goldsmith she learned to express in miniature. It suits her, and she often applies that approach in her textile works as an element for rhythm and repetition. “I create a variety of shapes, textures and structures to express my imagination of social themes,” she says. “It is an ever-growing process inspired by instinct and intuition, an investigation, a translation, as if looking through a symbolic lens at the everyday and the things that touch me emotionally. It stimulates social awareness in myself and probably the viewer, too.”

Detail: 1-2am Between Chaos & Order 5 & 6, Aby Mackie, gilded gold lead deconstructed and reconfigured antique textiles, 72″ x 24″ each, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

For Aby Mackie, an emerging artist who lives and works in Spain, the very act of making artwork is political. Mackie responds to current economic and social inequities in her country, particularly in housing and food, by confronting consumerism head on. “Everything I buy, from the materials for my artwork to the clothes that I wear, the furniture in my house to the books that I read, I buy second hand — recycling, reusing, reimagining — standing against the insane consumerism that adds to that sense of us all living in a system that is broken.” Mackie reconstructs textiles — cutting, painting, stitching, weaving and gilding them … a process of deconstruction and transformation. “The materials that I use,” she says, “are sourced from the local flea market, a practice that was born out of necessity to find cheap (but unique, high quality, interesting, often sumptuous) and free materials to use in my artwork. I go at the end of the day and buy up all the unwanted antique cloth, clothing, and domestic textile, collecting the discarded, such as flamenco dresses, Spanish plates, antique dolls, horse collars integrating them into my practice.” In Mackie’s hands, these “discards” are given a new life as elegant and engaging artworks. A rich mix of influences can be seen in Mackie’s work in terms of concept (the found object sculpture of Picasso, Miro, Tapies, Grau-Garriga), techniques and materials (Anatsui) and subject matter and aesthetic sense (Basquiat, Schwarz), inviting the viewer to create their own connections and interpretations and encouraging a personal storytelling through materiality.

Join us at browngrotta arts in Wilton, CT
for Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8-16):

Exhibition Schedule:
Opening & Artists Reception (300-Visitor Cap)
Saturday, October 8th: 11AM to 6PM  
Viewing Dates & Times (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, Sunday October 9th: 11AM to 6 PM
Monday, October 10th – Saturday, October 15th: 10AM to 5PM 

Final Day (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, October 16th: 11AM to 6PM  

Address
276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 068977

Safety protocols
Eventbrite reservations strongly encouraged • We will follow current state and federal guidelines surrounding COVID-19 • As of August 1, 2022, masks are not required • No narrow heels please (barn floors)

RESERVE YOUR TIME: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/allies-for-art-work-from-nato-related-countries-tickets-392833123447

Contact Information
P: 203.834.0623
E: art@browngrotta.com


Art Out and About: Exhibitions Here and Abroad

It’s September and it’s not just schools that are opening their doors. Tanned, rested and ready — museums and galleries like browngrotta arts are presenting fall events. Here’s a round up of some fiber events to view in the next few months.

NYTM
New York Textile Month
New York City and nearby locations
https://www.textilemonth.nyc

In New York, it’s NYTM — New York Textile Month.  That means range of activities — talks, films, studio visits, workshops, an in-window exhibition at Bergdorf Goodman, exhibitions at Mana Contemporary and elsewhere, and Eva Hesse’s Expanded Expansion at the Guggenheim — all celebrating textile art, making and conservation. Check out the NYTM website for suggestions, times, and dates.

Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6: Kyoko Kumai
Through November 6, 2022
Nakahechi Museum of Art
891 Kinro Nakahechi-machi
Tanabe-shi Wakayama-ken Japan
Tel; 0739-65-0390 
https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/en/events/-/2022%2Fcontemporary-weaving-artist-series-vi-kyoko-kumai

Detail of Memory, Kyoko Kumai, stainless steel filaments, 41” x 19” x 19”, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Since 2017, Tanabe City Museum of Art has been presenting Contemporary Weaving, an exhibition series that showcases outstanding contemporary weavers who create world-class works by combining traditional and unique materials and techniques with new weaving expressions that reflect the times. This year’s Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6 features the art of Kyoko Kumai (1943), who has expanded the world of weaving through her innovative use of metallic threads, and continues to develop a variety of expressions that evoke light and wind.

Intellectual Beauty
2nd International Exhibition of Textile Art and Mixed Media
Museu Textil 
September 1 – February 28, 2022
Virtual
https://www.museutextil.com

Vessel from Intellectual Beauty by Jeannet Leenderste. Photo by Jeannet Leenderste

Rodrigo Franzao founded a fully envisioned virtual museum that focuses on the work of artists who “use textile strategies as support for their creations.” For Intellectual Beauty, Fanzao has gathered 43 artists from 18 countries, who have used their “sensitive reality to introduce to the beholder the sensorial perceptions of a reality emancipated from rules and theory, free and absorbed by inspiration.” You can view the entire exhibition, 116 artworks, including two by Jeannet Leenderste, online.

Contextile 2022
September 3 – October 31, 2022
Guimarães, Portugal

Landscape Here West, by Åse Ljones from the Intellectual Beauty exhibition. Photo by Helge Hansen.
Anthropocene by Neha Puri Dhir from Contextile 2022. Photo by Neha Puri Dhir.

Contextile 2022 – Contemporary Textile Art Biennial celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year. The exhibition features 57 works by 50 artists from 34 countries chosen for their high creativity, originality and technical competence around the textile element, by construction, theme, concept or material used, as well as their adherence to the concept of Contextile 2022: RE-MAKE.  Among the artists included are Neha Puri Dhir of India. In addition, the Contextile organizers selected Norway as its invited country and are presenting work from 13 Norwegian textile artists including Åse Ljones.

X International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, “25 Years World Textile Art”
From November 3rd to December 15th, 2022
Miami International Fine Art (MIFA)
5900 NW 74th Ave
Miami, FL 33166
Colombia Consulate
280 Aragon Ave Coral Gables, FL 33134

https://wta-online.org/blog/x-biennial-of-contemporary-textile-art-wta-25-years/

This year 2022, WTA celebrates its 25th anniversary with the X International Biennial “25 YEARS WTA”, from October through December 2022. For the 10 th Biennial, more than ten countries will be interconnected to celebrate WTA history through salons featuring 25 artists each. A number of artists will have worked displayed in connection with this exhibition including Anneke Klein.

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries
October 8-16, 2022
browngrotta arts
Wilton, Connecticut
http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php

Detail of River by Jolanta Owidzka, 1978 and Ultima Copper, Green, Orange vessels by Gertrud Hals, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Mindful of the impact that poitical events can have on artists and their art, browngrotta arts will present to work of nearly 50 artists from 21 NATO-related countries in Europe whose work reflects diverse perspectives and experiences. Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8 – 16, 2022) will include art created under occupation, in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, art by those who left Hungary, Spain and Romania while occupied, and who left Russia in later years, including Jolanta Owidzka, Zofia Butrymowicz, and Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet of Poland and Luba Krejci and Jan Hladik of Czechoslovakia, Ceca Georgieva of Bulgaria, Gyöngy Laky (Hungary/US), Ritzi Jacobi (Romania/Germany), Adela Akers (Spain/US), Aleksandra Stoyanov (Ukraine/Israel) and Irina Kolineskova (Russia/Germany). Allies for Art will also include recently created art by artists living in Europe, including works by Gudrun Pagter of Denmark, Åse Ljones of Norway, Ulla-Maija Vikman of Finland, Heidrun Schimmel of Germany, Lilla Kulka and Włodmierz Cygan of Poland, and, five artists new to browngrotta arts, including, Esmé Hofman of the Netherlands, Aby Mackie of Spain and Baiba Osite of Latvia.

Reserve your space on Eventbrite.