Monthly archives: December, 2021

Art Assembled: New This Week in December

December 29, 2021 0 Comment

As this year comes to a close, we’re finishing our New This Week series with some of our favorite artists! Throughout the month of December we’ve highlighted art from notable artists like: Norie Hatakeyama, Mia Olsson, Grethe Sørensen, and Åse Ljones. Here’s a recap of all the art we’re closing out 2021 with.

  • Norie Hatekayama 22nh Complex Plaiting Series Two Force 9801 plaited paper fiber strips, 12” x 12” x 5.5”, 1998. Photo by Tom Grotta.

This piece comes from Japanese artist, Norie Hatakeyama. Hatakeyama is predominantly known for her contemporary and complex plaited works of paper tape. The works resemble living organisms — and, on close inspection, have no apparent starting or endpoints.

  • 11mo Together, Mia Olsson, sisal fiber relief, acrylic, 17.75″ x 15″ x 3″, 2021. Photos by Tom Grotta.

This piece comes from Swedish artist, Mia Olsson. Together is made of sisal fibers, dyed and formed in a technique unique to Olsson. The sisal fibers used are shiny and reflect the light, even more when formed in relief. The colors are richly saturated — engaging the viewer on each viewing.

  • Grethe Sørensen, 21gs Tokyo Nights ‘Light Reflection 2’, Organic cotton, Trevira CS, viscose, 65″ x 82.5″, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta.

This piece comes from internationally acclaimed artist, Grethe Sørensen. Since 2004, she has been working exclusively with digital thread control/digital jacquard weaving. She is credited with revolutionizing the art of tapestry through her method of converting photographic pixels into threads. The technique allows her to create complex motifs; the city, urban landscapes, light and optical patterns are frequent inspirations for her.

  • 15al Tangled In, Åse Ljones, hand embroidery on linen, 31.625″ x 55.25″ x 2.5″, 2016. Photo by Tom Grotta.

This artwork was created by talented Norwegian artist, Åse Ljones. Ljones uses a blizzard of stitches to create her works. Ljones told TextileArtist.org in an interview that, “To embroider by hand takes time. It is a slow process that gives room for silence. I seek silence. In silence, I retrieve memories and find new paths forward. In all my work as an artist I have eliminated the extraneous. I’ve cultivated simplicity to approach the core of myself, in myself, with fewer measures.” For Ljones, “the sewing needle is like the pencil is to the author,” with it, she can create pictures and tell stories.

Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of this past year at browngrotta arts. We’re going into 2022 excited for another year of art-filled fun!

You make it possible! Thanks to our Artists, Clients and Fans!

December 22, 2021 0 Comment

Thanks are due all around this year!

Adaptation: Artists Respond to Change
Social-distanced viewing of our spring exhibition Adaptation: Artists Respond to Change, photo Ezco Productions

At browngrotta arts, we hosted two 2021 exhibitions, Adaptation: Artists Respond to Change and Japandí: shared aesthetics and influences.   Each featured exceptional artwork — more than 75 artists from 18 countries were included. Both were open to the public, with proper covid protocols. We got great press — from Art in America online, to Architectural Digest online to Gessato and ArteMorbida in Italy. Our teams from Juice Creative, State PR and Ezco Productions helped us get the word out through emails and social media. They are probably the reason we had more people attend than any year before. We published a full-color catalog for each exhibition. Tom’s had to head to the basement to print more copies of Japandí five times since the show closed. 

Polly Sutton Facing the Unexpected
Facing the Unexpected, Polly Adams Sutton, western red cedar bark, ash, spruce root, coated copper wire, 11.5” x 18” x 32”, 2013. Photo Tom Grotta

Our artists gathered accolades and awards all year. Just a small sampling – Polly Sutton, whose recently acquired work, Facing the Unexpected, will be included in the Renwick Gallery’s  50th Anniversary exhibition, This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, which opens in May; Adela Akers whose recently acquired work, Compostela, is featured in the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s current exhibition, Parallel Lines: New Textile Masterworks Inspired by Geometry (through August 28, 2022); Simone Pheulpin, whose 80th birthday is being celebrated by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (Simone Pheulpin: Time Bender, through January 16, 2022) and the retrospective of Kay Sekimachi’s 70-year career at BAMPFA in Berkeley, California (Kay Sekimachi: Geometries).

Adela Akers Compostela
Compostela, Adela Akers, sisl, linen and wool, 60” x 180” x 6”, 1985. Photo by Adela Akers

Our charitable project for 2021 engaged hundreds of people. It involved our contribution of a early, accomplished work, Spatial Ikat 2, by Lia Cook, created in 1976. The work was the prize in a sweepstakes on the UncommonGood nonprofit platform. Hundreds of people entered the sweepstakes. The proceeds from their entries went to the Breast Cancer Alliance headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut

Lia Cook Spatial Ikat III
Spatial Ikat III, Lia Cook, rayon, cotton; woven, 72″ x 48″, 1976.. Photo Tom Grotta

Great feedback was received from our clients, artists and fans: “Over these past years, I do not walk past any of the pieces you hung for us without appreciating how it enhances my life.” • “We are so delighted with our sculpture.” • “Thank you also for sharing all the rich documentation on the Japandi exhibition! It’s a real pleasure for us to discover this beautiful exhibition from afar.” • “We so enjoyed seeing your fabulous show on display in your amazing home …. Thank you for sharing the art and your time.” • “The new exhibition is such a thoughtful juxtaposition of the Japanese and Scandinavian.” • “I am happy and proud to be a part of your family of artists.”

We have plenty of plans for 2022 — an exhibition April 29th to May 8th, a browngrotta arts produced book, scheduled for Spring 2022 publication. More on these to come in the next few months.

In sum, a heartfelt thanks to all of you for letting us live a life filled with art and to fill others’ lives with art, too!

Artist Focus: Mia Olsson

December 15, 2021 0 Comment
Mia Olsson portrait
Portrait of Mia Olsson by Kerstin Carlson

Agave sisalana, better known as sisal, is a cactus-like plant cultivated in Mexico and Central America. Known for its stiff fiber, most often used to make ropes, rugs and even construction materials, sisal fibers are yellow-white in their natural state. Through a kind of alchemy, Swedish fiber artist Mia Olsson manipulates the prickly sisal into airy, semi-transparent wall sculptures, dyed in richly saturated warm tones. “I am interested in exploring textile fibers, how they are, their properties and characteristics, and what I can do with them,” say Olsson. Sisal fiber is flat and shiny, reflecting light beautifully and strengthening the color. Olsson describes it as “so interesting to work with, especially when forming three-dimensional pieces. My work is experimental and I never know on which journeys the fibers will take me.”

Detail Pleated, Golden
Detail of 10mo Pleated, Golden, Mia Olsson, sisal fibers, 24″ x 20″ x 2.25″, 2020. Photo by Tom Grotta

Dyeing is an important part in the process. The last couple of years, Olsson has been working with natural dyestuffs to see if she can replace synthetic dyes with natural ones. “The most difficult fibers to dye natural is plantfibers. It´s hard, but I am working on it,” she says. “My goal is to have the same ‘paintbox’ with natural dyestuff as with my ordinary ones.”

Map of Warm Are by Mia Olsson
9mo Map of Warm Area, Mia Olsson, sisal, 24.75″x 19.75″, 2012. Photo by Tom Grotta

In creating her works, Olsson dyes the fibers, then organizes them into a kind of fiber cloth, making it possible for her to connect them on a sewing machine. “I save all fibers, even ones that are too short, fiberscraps and cut-off pieces,” she says. “They can lead me on to new exploring paths.” Even very short fibers can be formed into circles or other shapes that can be joined together and then formed to create bigger or smaller pieces. An example is the patchwork of sisal squares that make up Map of a Warm Area. The piece offers a textured topography mapped in a wanderlust hue of orange, red, yellow, rust and black. “When working with Map of a Warm Area I was thinking of a very hot place, hard to live in, too dry and sunny,” remembers the artist. “It was made 2012 and then I didn’t think about climate change in the same way as we do today, But it can absolutely be read as reflecting concerns about the environment.”

Blue/Purple Pleats by Mia Olsson
7mo Blue/Purple Pleats, Mia Olsson, sisal, 56″ x 47″ x 2″, 2008 8mo Orange Pleats, Mia Olsson, sisal, 55″ x 46″ x 4.5″, 2008. Photo by Tom Grotta

Olsson also works with larger sisal pieces, Her larger sisal banners, like  Blue/Purple Pleats and Orange Pleats, float effortlessly in space highlighting their dimensionality, bold color and tactile dynamics. She creates sculptural works from fiber as well, groupings of soft stones in jewel-colors. And, more recently, she created Together, a minimalist work,

5mo Traces 5 Relief, Mia Olsson, sisal and coconut fiber, acrylic glass, sisal on blastered acrylic glass, 14″ x 11.875″ x 1.25″, 2006

Other themes Olsson identifies in her work are clothes and their symbols, memory and time. and maps and game plans. Living part of her time close to nature also affects and inspires her work. She also credits Japan as an influence, “I am inspired by and fascinated of Japanese art and crafts. Their exquisite ways of using natural material, as well as synthetic material, their skilled dyeing techniques and the way traditions and innovations are combined in textile art is an inspiration,” she says.   

Books Make Great Gifts 2021, Part Two: Novels, Art Books and the Like

December 8, 2021 0 Comment

2021 has brought us a bumper crop of book recommendations. In Part One, we looked a biographies and autobiographies. This week. in Part Two will look at a broader list — novels, art and reference books, politics and philosophy and a charming children’s biography of Ruth Asawa that we didn’t discover until after Part One was posted.

Nocturnes by Kazue Ishiguro and Netsuke Soseki And Then
Putas asesinas / Murdering Whores

Novels:

Wlodmierz Cygan recommended Nocturnes, Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Tamiko Kawata is rereading another Japanese novelist, Soseki Netsuke, while on an exercise bike — currently Sorekara. Carolina Yrrazaval is finding  Putas Asesinas by Roberto Bplagno, Murdering Whores in English, “very interesting.”

Bauhaus Textiles, Art for the built environment in the Province of Ontario
Soft Art and Te Aho Tap
Beyond Craft: the art of fabric and Anna Albers on Weaving

Art and Reference Books:

Young Ok Shin offered us a sampling of favorite books from her bookshelf — those of lasting import:

Bauhaus Textiles (T&H, London, 1993), by Sigrid Wortmann Weltge (who wriote the essay in our catalog, Lenore Tawney: celebrating five decades of work); Art in Architecture, Jeanne Parkin (Visual Arts, Ontario 1982); Soft Art, Erika Billetier (Benteli 1980); Te Aho Tapu–The Sacred Thread, Mick Pendergrast (Reed Publishing, NZ, 1987). This book is based on the Te Aho Tapu exhibition of traditional Mâori clothing, mainly cloaks, put on by the Auckland Institute and Museum; Beyond Craft: the art fabric, Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen (Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1973) and On Weaving. Anni Albers (Wesleyan University Press, 1974).

Basketry and The Grotta Home by Richard Meier

Stéphanie Jacques has a classic that she returns to again and again: Hisako Sekijima’s  Basketry, projects from baskets to grass slippers (Kodansha USA, 1986).

Woman Made and Japandi

The Grotta Home by Richard Meier: A Marriage of Architecture and Craft (Arnoldsche, 2019) remains Dawn MacNutt’s “fave and inspiration.” She kindly shared a comment on the book from her correspondence with the late Jack Lenor Larsen: “Have you seen the newest Grotta Book?. It’s spectacular and a durable tribute to Son and Author.” Well, we can’t argue with that! At browngrotta arts we recommend Women Made: Great Women Designers (Phaidon 2021). The Wall Street Journal says it’s: “Thoroughly international in scope… a compendium of disarming surprises.” We’d also recommend our Japandí catalog (Japandí: shared aesthetics and influences, browngrotta arts 2021) our best-selling catalog of the year.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary

“Recently, I had to discard our family dictionary that I’ve depended on for 50 years,” Wendy Wahl, writes. “I could no longer engage daily with my trusted lexicon because every time I turned the pages to discover a new word it released its microbial matter causing me to sneeze. As much as I loved this book I knew it was time to let it go. This Webster’s Third New International Dictionary has been temporarily replaced by a two-volume World Book Dictionary set from my collection of encyclopedic materials reserved for artwork. Fortunately, WTNID, while not cloth bound, is still in print and available from amazon.”

Craft An American History

Annette Bellamy and James Bassler both recommended Craft: An American History by Glenn Adamson (who wrote the essay in our Volume 50 catalog in 2020). “Well worth reading!,” says Bellamy.

Undinge and Say it Loud

Politics and Philosophy:

“The most important book for me this year is Un-Dinge written by the philosopher Han, Byung-Chul,” says Heidrun Schimmel (Ullstein, Berlin 2021)There are some essays about ” our hand”, meaning “working by hand,” today in our digital world, she says. “This fact is very interesting for me as ‘craft artist.'”

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Say it Loud by Randall Kennedy (Random House, 2021) is Polly Sutton’s choice. It’s a collection of provocative essays exploring the key social justice issues of our time—from George Floyd to antiracism to inequality and the Supreme Court. The New York Times says Kennedy is “among the most incisive American commentators on race.” James Bassler has just begun Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2020) highly recommended last year, too, by Gyöngy Laky.

biography of Ruth Asawa

One more biography:

While gift hunting this season, we discovered Andrea D’Aquino’s biography of Ruth Asawa (A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa (Princeton University Press, 2019) for children. It is lovely and informative. D’Aquino is an artist. The book is charmingly illustrated, describing Asawa’s interest in spider webs and education in wire work in Mexico. It includes additional factual information in the back and also an activity guide.

To a Year of Good Reading in 2022!

Art Assembled: New This Week in November

December 1, 2021 0 Comment

This holiday season, we’re feeling extra thankful to be able to introduce you all to new artists and their impressive artwork. Over the course of the month, we’ve highlighted art from notable artists like: Irina Kolesnikova, Norma Minkowitz, Gudrun Pagter, Masakazu Kobayashi, and Toshio Sekiji. Just in case you missed it, we’re recapping all the pieces we think you should check out sooner rather than later!

  • Letters from Quarantine 5, Irina Kolesnikova , flax, silk, polyester, hand woven, 16″ x 11.5″, 2020. Photos by Tom Grotta

This piece comes from renowned Russian artist, Irina Kolesnikova. Kolesnikova created this piece amid the pandemic, where she was able to take the time to reflect and do a deeper dive into herself; the end result was a series of powerful works titled Letters from Quarantine.

  • Around and A Round fiber and mixed media 26.75” x 26.75” x 2”, 2020. Photos by Tom Grotta

Around and A Round comes from internationally recognized textile artist, Norma Minkowitz. Often, Minkowitz works with fiber to create transparent mixed media sculptures – creating work that is at times fragile and relates to the human form and forms from nature. When asked about her artwork as a whole, Minkowitz said: 

“I seek mystery in the shadows of the work. The netting’s effect is to blur the shape within. There is often paint on the surface, which can at times be invisible and at other times obvious depending on the light, another important element of my work. I want the openness to convey a sense of energy as the viewer moves around the sculpture. My work retains implications of containment and psychological complexity, while focusing on the human form and often the land-scape. I am engaged in a process that weaves the personal and universal together. The interlacing suggests a delicate quality symbolic of the human condition, but conversely, the pieces could also imply the strength of steel mesh. In many of my works twigs and branches are left inside, and are visible in an eerie way through the exterior of the sculpture, often suggesting connections to the human skeletal or circulatory systems.” 

  • Into Black-Blue-Red, Gudrun Pagter, linen, sisal, and flax, 34.25″ x 30.25″, 2021. Photos by Tom Grotta

These woven tapestries come from talented Danish artist, Gudrun Pagter. In Pagter’s work, she often uses lines and shapes to achieve a tension and a spatial effect, with inspiration drawn from architecture. Pagter’s minimalism is emblematic of the shared sensibilities of Scandinavian and Japanese artists, popularly termed Japandi.

  • Bow W98, Masakazu Kobayashi, rayon and aluminum, 30″ x 33″ x 3.75″, 1998. Photos by Tom Grotta

This one-of-a-kind contemporary piece comes from the late Masakazu Kobayashi. When interviewed, Kobayashi once stated that when creating his own work he searches for an equilibrium between his capacity as a creator and the energy of the world around him.

“In my own work, I search for an equilibrium between my capacity as a creator and the energy of the world around me,”  said Kobayashi. ‘When I am able to find this equilibrium, my works exist on their own. Among the works I have created are projects that incorporate several styles and emphasize primary colors. In creating such combinations, I want the viewer to experience the resonating chords that come from each element of the work.”

  • Lacquered and Torn, Toshio Sekiji, lacquered japanese newspapers, Museum plexi wood frame, 22.375″ x 20.5″ x 2.5″, 1998.
    Photos by tom Grotta

Toshio Sekiji is a Japanese artist widely known for his exploration of merging cultures in his complex collages and weavings. Often, Sekiji uses repurposed newspapers, maps and book pages within his artwork. The end result is the creation of new stories atop the old – intertwining strips of paper from various cultures, rewriting messages and imaging a harmonious confluence of disparate cultures, languages and nationalities.

If you like this lineup, be sure to keep your eye out for the artwork we will be highlighting throughout December. We have another round of impressive artwork coming your way!