Monthly archives: April, 2018

Artists in the House: Who’s attending the Opening of Blue/Green: color/code/context on Saturday

April 25, 2018 0 Comment

Keiji Nio, Rough Sea of Sado,polyester, aramid fiber, 48.25” x 47.5”, 2016. Photo by Tom Grotta

The Artists Reception and Opening for Blue/Green: color/code/context occurs this Saturday at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, Connecticut 06897. Eleven of the participating artists will be in attendance, enhancing what is always an energizing opportunity to experience our annual Art in the Barn event. Keiji Nio and his family are coming from Japan, Pat Campbell from Maine, Wendy Wahl from Rhode Island, Kiyomi Iwata from Virginia, Norma Minkowitz and Helena Hernmarck from Connecticut and Polly Barton, John McQueen, Nancy Koenigsberg, Lewis Knauss and Tamiko Kawata from New York. Wendy Wahl’s work is made of blue Encyclopedia Britannica pages; John McQueen used plastic bottles — a departure for him. Norma Minkowitz has created a detailed and magical stitched drawing and Lewis Knauss a work of pale, pale green and natural reed and twigs. Join us from 1-5 pm to see their work and that of 50 more artists. The artists will be available throughout the Barn, to answer questions about their work, their favorites or about the work of others. They’ll be wearing name tags — feel free to say hello. For more info: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php; 203-834-0623. Or visit us during the week — Sunday April 29th – Sunday May 6th, 10-5 pm.

Make a Day of It: Area Events to Visit on Your Way to Blue/Green at browngrotta arts

April 18, 2018 0 Comment
In planning your trip to browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut for Blue/Green: color, code, context between April 28th and May 6th take some time out of your schedule to visit a few other exhibitions going on in the area.

A short 15-minute drive from browngrotta arts, the Westport Arts Center’s current exhibition HandMade: Women Reshaping Contemporary Art features a diverse array of work from 15 leading female fiber and textile artists, including Ghada Amer, Anna Betbeze, Ligia Bouton, Orly Cogan, Lesley Dill, Terri Friedman, Sermin Kardestuncer, Sophia Narrett, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Judith Scott, Beverly Semmes,  Rosemarie Trockel and Margo Wolowiec. The exhibition also features work by three browngrotta arts artists, Chiyoko Tanaka, Carolina Yrarrázaval and Norma Minkowitz. Curated by Elizabeth Gorayeb, the Executive Director of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc—a New York-based non-profit committed to art historical research—the exhibition examines the role of women in reshaping what has historically been considered “fine art.” Additionally, the exhibition demonstrates how fiber and textile materials allow artists such as Faith Ringgold and Sophia Narre to examine topics such as race, gender and sexuality. HandMade: Women Reshaping Contemporary Art will be on view at the Westport Arts Center through June 2nd. For more information visit the Westport Arts Center website HERE.
Ala Ebtekar, Zenith V, 2014, acrylic over cyanotype on canvas, four panels 60 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. each. © Ala Ebtekar. Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai.

Ala Ebtekar’s Zenith V at Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition. Photo: Katonah Museum of Art

Next stop, the Katonah Museum of Art’s exhibition Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and Islamic Tradition. The exhibition looks at a group of artists of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent whose work engages the diverse forms of Islamic visual tradition to explore religion, culture and socio-political issues today. The title of the exhibition “Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition” was inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar’s essay The Breath of Miraj. Akhtar’s The Breath of Miraj conveys the manner in which Islam and its history can inspire creative life to become a “long, winding journey.” While making the pieces included in the exhibition, artists utilized some of the century-old forms that define Islamic art, such as calligraphy, miniature painting, geometric patterning, textiles and architecture. Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and Islamic Tradition will be available for viewing until June 17th, for more information on the exhibition visit the Katonah Museum of Art’s website HERE.
Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, b. 1938), Untitled from the series Sots Art, 1975-1990, Gelatin silver print hand-colored with aniline dyes on paper at Hot Art in a Cold War: Intersections of Art and Science in the Soviet Era

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, b. 1938), Untitled from the series Sots Art, 1975-1990, Gelatin silver print hand-colored with aniline dyes on paper at Hot Art in a Cold War: Intersections of Art and Science in the Soviet Era

Hot Art in a Cold War: Intersections of Art and Science in the Soviet Era will be on view until May 20th at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. The provocative exhibition probes into the consequences of innovation in science, technology, mathematics, communications and design during the Cold War. The exhibition juxtaposes the art made during the Cold War in opposition to state-sanctioned Socialist Realism with artifacts from the nuclear and space programs to explore the triumphs and tragedies unleashed by humankind as it gained the power to both leave the Earth and to destroy it. Produced from the 1960s to the 1980s, the items on view in Hot Art in a Cold War address themes of international supremacy and hegemonic power during a turbulent period marked by the ever-escalating competition for nuclear supremacy and the space race. “The Bruce Museum prides itself in being a museum of both art and science and in finding the interconnections between the two,” states Dr. Daniel Ksepka,  Bruce Museum Curator of Science and co-curator of Hot Art in a Cold War. The exhibition allows visitors to  “see how the triumphs of the space program and anxieties about nuclear arms were captured by period artists. Likewise, many of the scientific objects are works of art in their own right. The elegance of Sputnik, for example, is as striking and undeniable as its impact on the space race.” For more information on Hot Art in a Cold War: Intersections of Art and Science in the Soviet Era visit the Bruce Museums website HERE.
Last but not least, the Wilton Historical Society’s new permanent exhibition Connecticut History, Wilton’s Story is now available for viewing. Through artifacts and objects, the Wilton Historical Society aims to shine a light on Wilton’s roots and connections, as well as the evolution of the town since the colonial period. For more information on  Connecticut History, Wilton’s Story visit their website HERE or call the Wilton Historical Society at 203-762-7257.

 

 

 

 

 

Who is new in Blue/Green: code/color/context — Micheline Beauchemin and Polly Barton

April 11, 2018 0 Comment
Blue/Green: color/code/context opens at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, Connecticut on April 28th (1 pm to 6 pm). Featured in the exhibition are more than 50 artists, including two new to browngrotta arts, Micheline Beauchemin of Canada and Polly Barton from the US.

 

Details of Totem aux Millefleurs Bleues by Micheline Beauchemin and Synapse by Polly Barton

Details of Totem aux Millefleurs Bleues by Micheline Beauchemin and Synapse by Polly Barton

Beauchemin began her career making stained-glass windows but early on turned to weaving and embroidering spectacular wall hangings in vibrant colors, including blues and greens. traveled and studied in Japan, China, India, North Africa, the Canadian Arctic and the Andes, adding depth and mystery to the love of light, water, wings and nets that is evident in her body of work. She created a number of important commissions throughout Canada, including an acrylic curtain for the Grande Salle of the Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts in Montréal (1963-1967) a curtain for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa (1966-1969), tapestries for Queen’s Park in Toronto (1968-1969), the Hudson’s Bay Company in Winnipeg (1970) and the Canadian pavilion at the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. She participated in the 10th Lausanne Biennial, was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. A book about Beauchemin, her life and works, Micheline Beauchemin: Je rêvais de tapisseries à la grandeur des cathédrales, à la largeur de nos rivières (roughly, I dreamed of tapestries, as wide as rivers, throughout cathedrals) can be purchased through our website at http://store.browngrotta.com/books/

 

Polly Barton is a US artist known for adapting the ancient weaving technique of ikat into contemporary woven imagery. She has provided an ikat of silk, Pillar of Cloud, for Blue/Green: color/code/context. As a young artist, Barton worked as a personal assistant to Helen Frankenthaler. She cites that experience as a formative one, where she learned firsthand the inner drive, resilience, and intention necessary for an artist. The year also introduced her to the challenges and rewards of the New York art world. In 1981, she moved to Kameoka, Japan and lived in the religious heart of the Oomoto Foundation to study with master weaver, Tomohiko Inoue. In Kameoka, she practiced tea ceremony, calligraphy and Noh Drama with Oomoto’s master teachers. Barton has shown her woven ikats on both coasts. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Mint Museum among others.

 

Blue/Green: color/code/context opens on April 28th for just 10 days. The 140-page color catalog will be available on the 28th at browngrotta.com.
Details: Opening and Artists Reception, Saturday, April 28th, 1-6 pm; Sunday April 29th – Sunday May 6th, Hours: 10-5 pm. For more info: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php; 203-834-0623.

 

First Look: Blue/Green: color/code/context, April 28th – May 6th at bga, Wilton, CT

April 4, 2018 0 Comment
Blue Green exhibition Marian Bijlenga

30mb Dutch Blue (Oval), Marian Bijlenga
camelhair, fabric, stitched
35” x 35”, 2006, photo by Tom Grotta

For this year’s Art in the Barn exhibition, we asked artists to enter a blue or green period of their own and send us a work that conveyed one of the many meanings, connotations and moods of these colors. The result is Blue/Green: color/code/context, an exhibition of remarkably diverse works from more than 50 artists from 15 countries. Marian Bijlenga of the Netherlands, for example, has created an enigmatic wall work inspired by Dutch blue china fragments. The work is inspired, she says,  by the patterns of Chinese porcelain and the Japanese philosophy of the reuse of broken tiles and her collection of Dutch blue shards, collected in Amsterdam.

Ceramic Blue Green exhibition

Yasuhisa Kohyama
51yk Kaze
ceramic
14.75” x 11.5” x 4.75”, 2017

Yasuhisa Kohyama has created, Kaze,  a ceramic with a grey-greenish cast, hand built and wood fired in an anagama kiln. “With the properties of the shigaraki clay and its inclusions of feldspar and silica, the high heat, the atmosphere in the kiln and the falling of the wood ash on the pots all present, warm colors as well as attractive markings can be captured on the surface of the clay,” Kohyama explains. “The blue-green and red-orange colors develop in the mid-section of the kiln; In the back of the kiln, a heavily reduced atmosphere creates rich dark gray and brown colors.”

Tapestry Blue Green exhibition

4gp Thin Green Horizon
Gudrun Pagter, sisal, linen and flax
45.25” x 55”, 2017

The Green Horizon is the striking abstract tapestry created by Gudrun Pager of Denmark for the exhibition. “Perhaps it is the horizon between heaven and sea, or between heaven and earth – or the line between heaven and earth?” Pagter muses. “The thin, horizontal line is made with many shades of blue and green thin linen. The main color is blue, but the thin, green horizon is essential to the whole picture.”

Wendy Wahl Blue Green exhibition

37ww Changing Tides
Encyclopedia Britannica pages
27” x 42”, 2018

Encylopedia Britanica pages are the material Wendy Wahl uses to express our  station in  time, recognizable as they are as  a   part  of  a  particular  collective  consciousness. Wahl’s Changing Tides is made of 275  pages of the 1988 Encyclopedia Britannica Annual of World Data, the only book in Wahl’s collection of EB volumes that contained blue paper. The pages were cut into seven sections, for each of the continents, contemplatively scrolled and compressed into 1925  whorls to symbolize the reality of rising water around the globe. These four are just a sampling of the more than 70 works that will be on display in the Blue/Green: color/code/context exhibition and in the companion catalog, which will be available at www.browngrotta.com after April 28th. To visit Blue/Green: color/code/context, here are the details:  Saturday, April 28th, 1-6 pm: Opening and Artists Reception

Sunday April 29th – Sunday May 6th, Viewing Hours 10-5 pm.
For more info: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php; 203-834-0623.
This year’s exhibition is co-sponsored by Litchfield Distillery.