Monthly archives: April, 2022

Make a Day of It: Events Near browngrotta arts

April 27, 2022 0 Comment

Coming to Wilton, CT to see browngrotta arts’ next exhibition, Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textiles and mixed media art (May 7 – 15)? We have three nearby exhibitions to recommend if you want to make a day of it.

1) Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski: Portal Pieces
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877
Tel 203.438.4519
6.2 Miles

https://thealdrich.org/exhibitions/amaryllis-dejesus-moleski-portal-pieces

Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski: Portal Pieces is the third installment of Aldrich Projects, a single artist series that features a singular work or a focused body of work by an artist every four months on the Museum’s campus. Sited in the Leir Atrium, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski presents two large-scale works on paper: Graduation Day, 2021, and The Guardians, 2015. These two works on paper are part of an ongoing mythology that spotlight marginalized histories and femme power. Invigorated by lived and imagined experience, DeJesus Moleski’s utopian storylines speak to struggle, redemption, repair, and reinvention.  Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski: Portal Pieces will be on view at The Aldrich January 6 to May 15, 2022.

2) Spectrum: Renewal 
Carriage Barn Arts Center
Waveny Park
681 South Avenue (Route 124)
New Canaan, CT 06840
8.6 miles

Spectrum is a juried exhibition of original, contemporary artwork by local and regional artists, and includes submissions in all media.  Guest juror, James Barron, a specialist in modern and contemporary American and European art, reviewed original works that speak to the theme of RENEWAL. 

Renewal is the driving force in life — an essential process in nature, relationships, well-being and spirituality.  The exhibit will take viewers on a visual journey, revealing how artists have experienced the challenges and upheavals of recent events, and expressions of renewal and hope for the future.  

Renewal will be on view from April 29th to May 22nd. The Carriage Barn will be open Wednesday through Saturday 10 am – 3 pm and Sundays 1 – 5 pm.

3) Adger Cowans: Sense and Sensibility
Fairfield University Art Museum, Bellarmine Hall Galleries
1073 North Benson Road
Fairfield, CT 06824
Tel. (203) 254-4046
15 miles

https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/adgercowans/

Adger Cowans (American, b. 1936) is a celebrated photographer whose wide-ranging work includes the civil rights movement, jazz musicians, landscape, and artistic studies of the human form, water, and light. He is also one of the founding members of Kamoinge, a Black photographers collective whose mission is to ‘Honor, document, preserve and represent the history and culture of the African Diaspora with integrity and respect for humanity through the lens of Black Photographers.’

This exhibition, curated by Halima Taha, presents Cowans’s use of photography to articulate the beauty within the human condition and the world we live in with over fifty images from his illustrious career.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. The exhibit is up from January 28 – June 18, 2022.

We look forward to seeing you at Crowdsourcing the Collective at browngrotta arts in May. Save your space here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crowdsourcing-the-collective-a-survey-of-textiles-and-mixed-media-art-tickets-292520014237

Exhibition Dates/Hours

Opening & Artists Reception

Saturday, May 7th: 11AM to 6PM (300 Visitor Cap)

Remainder of the exhibition

Sunday, May 8th: 11AM to 6 PM (40 visitors/hour)

Monday, May 9th – Saturday, May 14th: 10AM to 5PM (40 visitors/hour)

Final Day

Sunday, May 15th: 11AM to 6PM (40 visitors/ hour)

Address

276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 06897

(203)834-0623

Safety protocols

Eventbrite reservations strongly encouraged • We will follow current state and federal guidelines surrounding COVID-19 • As of March 1, 2022, masks are not required • We encourage you to wear a mask if your are not vaccinated or if you feel more comfortable doing so • No narrow heels please (barn floors)

Artists New to Crowdsourcing the Collective: Meet Jeannet Leendertse and Shoko Fukuda

April 20, 2022 0 Comment
Baskets by Jeannet Leendertse and Shoko Fukuda
Jeannet Leendertse, Drum-shaped Seaweed Vessel, coiled-and-stitched basket, rockweed [ascophyllum nodosum], waxed linen, beeswax, tree resin, 17″ x 9.5″ x 9.5″, 2022 and Shoko Fukuda, Loop with Corners, coiled ramie, monofilament, plastic, 12″ x 11.5″ x 5″, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta

For our Spring exhibition, Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textile and mixed media art (May 7 -15) browngrotta arts is delighted to introduce the work of two artists new to the gallery, Jennet Leenderste, Netherlands, US and Shoko Fukuda, Japan. Each of them creates sinuous and supple objects — Leenderste of seaweed and Fukuda of sisal, ramie and raffia. 

Portrait Jeannet Leendertse
Jeannet Leendertse portrait by David Grinnell

Jeannet Leenderste crafted with fabric as a child. She studied graphic design in the Netherlands and at 27 left for New York in search of an internship. After completing her degree cum laude, she moved to the Boston area and became an award-winning book designer. In recent years, has turned her focus again to textiles. Having grown up on the Dutch shore, her fiber work responds to the rugged coast of Maine, where she now lives and finds sculptural forms in the landscape and its creatures. As an immigrant, she says, her Dutch culture and heritage are always with her, while she continues to make this new environment her home. Exploring the concept of belonging, she develops work that feels at home in this marine environment. Adaptation and reflection are ongoing. Her fiber process brings these outer and inner worlds together.

Seaweed Vessels
Reclining Seaweed Vessel, Jeannet Leendertse, coiled-and-stitched basket rockweed [ascophyllum nodosum], waxed linen, beeswax, tree resin 8″ x 13″ x 7″, 2022; Seaweed Vessel with Stipe Handle, Jeannet Leendertse, coiled-and-stitched basket, rockweed [ascophyllum nodosum], sugar kelp [saccharina latissima] waxed linen, beeswax, tree resin, 11″ x 13″ x 5.5″, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta

“My work grows from coastal impressions and material experimentation,” Leenderste explains. “It takes on a new life when moved out of the studio and placed back in its natural environment.” That feedback propels her process. “I feel a strong responsibility to consider my materials, and what my creative process will leave behind. She began foraging seaweed—in particular rockweed—to work with, and discovered the amazing benefits this natural resource provides. “Seaweed not only creates a habitat for countless species,” she says, “it sequesters carbon, and protects our beleaguered shoreline from erosion as our sea levels rise.  Rockweed vessels show the beauty of this ancient algae, while drawing attention to its environmental value.” Several examples of Leenderste’s seaweed works will be featured in Crowdsourcing the Collective.

Portrait Shoko Fukuda
Shoko Fukuda portrait by Makoto Yano

Shoko Fukuda is a basketmaker and Japanese artist who holds a Bachelor of Design from Kyoto University of Art and Design, and a Master’s degree from Osaka University of Art, where she focused on research in textile practice.  She has exhibited her work internationally for the past 10 years. Shoko Fukuda currently works as an instructor at Kobe Design University in the Fashion Design department.

At browngrotta arts, we were recommended to Fukuda’s work by noted basketmaker Hisako Sekijima. “I encountered Sekijima’s artworks about 20 years ago,” Fukuda says. “Lines made with expressive plant materials were woven into an abstract and three-dimensional shapes. I had never seen such small artworks, like architectural structures before. I have been fascinated by the structural visibility and the various characteristics of the constructive form consisting, of regular lines ever since then.” 

Fiber Sculptures by Shoko Fukuda
Vertical and Horizontal Helix, Shoko Fukuda, raffia, 5.125″ x 6″ x 7.5″, 2015; Traced Contour II, ramie, monofilament, plastic, 6.5″ x 17″ x 3.5″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

In Loop With Corners, Fukuda considered how to create a multifaceted form from a flat surface. By making corners, shapes are formed based on intentional decisions that lead to unexpected tortuous and twisted shapes. By weaving and fastening as if making a corner, a rotating shape was created. The movement of coiling creates a rhythm, and the lines being woven together leave organic traces in the air. In Vertical and Cylindrical helix is made of cylindrical spirals stacked like layers. They were woven from different directions — up and down, left and right — to form a single piece. The work has a dense structure, dyed black and shaped like a tightly closed shell. 

Fukuda is interested in “distortion” as a characteristic of basket weaving. “As I coil the thread around the core and shape it while holding the layers together, I look for the cause of distortion in the nature of the material, the direction of work and the angle of layers to effectively incorporate these elements into my work. The elasticity and shape of the core significantly affect the weaving process, as the thread constantly holds back the force of the core trying to bounce back outward.” By selecting materials and methods for weaving with the natural distortion in mind, Fukuda saw the possibility of developing twists and turns. “I find it interesting to see my intentions and the laws of nature influencing each other to create forms.”

Fukuda’s work, like Leenderste’s, will be well represented at Crowdsourcing the Collective, our Spring 2022 exhibition. Join us at browngrotta arts May 7-15, 2022. Save your space here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crowdsourcing-the-collective-a-survey-of-textiles-and-mixed-media-art-tickets-292520014237

Artist Focus: Rachel Max

April 13, 2022 0 Comment
Rachel Max portrait
Rachel Max in her studio, Photo by Tom Grotta

Rachel Max’s interest in basketry grew out of experiments with the tactile and the textile properties of metals. The UK artist’s work will be included in browngrotta arts’ upcoming exhibition Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textile and mixed media art.  A background in metal work that informs her work, while the materials and techniques used in basketry enable her to create a “fabric” with which to shape sculptural forms. The fabric is a delicate grid structure forming an intricate network of lines that are interlinked. Her pieces are often inspired by natural shapes. The unique shapes that result are endlessly engaging — each takes on a different appearance when viewed from varying vantage points.

The weave creates the foundation of all Max’s work. “I have developed a technique of layering to form structures that explore the relationship between lines and shadows and space,” she explains. The relationships between containment and concealment and movement and space are the constant rudiments in her works. “The materials used may vary; however, I have a particular penchant for fine cane, which has a delicacy that is pliable, with wire-like characteristics that suit the open weave compositions that I have been exploring. The contrast of very regular patterns with looser weaves is a recurring theme.” This weave has become her vocabulary, “a way of drawing in space that enables me to explore patterns and form through the interplay of lines, or light and shadow through density and color.”

Rachel Max wall basket
6rm Tonal Fifths, Rachel Max, dyed cane, plaited and twined, 25″ x 21″ x 7.5″, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Music is a large part of Max’s life and an important artistic influence. She has been exploring the ways in which musical terms, structure and composition can be translated into woven form. Both Endless and Tonal Fifths use, as a starting point, the fugue, a musical composition based upon one, two or more themes, which are gradually built up and intricately interwoven into a complex imitative form. “Elements of weaving are comparable to notes in music, a measure of time, a beat or a pulse. Rhythm is everywhere, in the movement of my hands as I weave, in the tension and spaces between each stitch, in the beat of our hearts and in the pace of our footsteps,” says Max.

Rachel Max, blue basket
8rm Continuum, Rachel Max, dyed cane, plaited and twined, 15.5″x 17″ x 17″, 2018. Photo by Tom Grotta

Color, the final stage in Max’s work, does not appear as an afterthought, but as an integral element. Color is “a necessary ingredient that unifies the process; it is paramount in my work,” she says. Works like Continuum explore the temporal and spatial elements associated with color. The color blue Max describes, for example, as an “ambiguous” color — cold yet often warm and comforting. “It is a color of depth and distance,” in Max’s view,  “of darkness and light and of dawn and dusk. It is a color linked closely to the sky and sea, both of which seem infinite and finite. Blue is paradoxically continuous, yet like the sky and sea, has a beginning and an end. Our lives, too, are structured around the continuous cycle of beginning and end. Our perception of color constantly shifts as the light changes. My aim was to translate these seemingly abstract ideas into something concrete. Continuum is a piece about such contrasts and opposites. It is both infinite and finite. A Mobius strip forms the inner core of the piece and the structure gradually shifts, forming a piece with two very different aspects.”

Rachel Max, Red basket
12rm Balance, Rachel Max, plaited and twined cane, 12″ x 16″ x 9″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

Max was eager to participate in Crowdsourcing. “The way in which we are all currently living is one of the biggest adjustments I have ever had to make and one none of us could ever have imagined,” she wrote. “I would like to make something in response to the situation. At the moment it all feels uncontrollable, weighty and fragile. But the words ‘ together and apart’ keep coming to mind and I remember writing them down back in March. There is a huge sense of solidarity and compassion. We’re looking out for each other, we’re closer than we ever were but we cannot touch, hug or meet up. Our spatial awareness and of sense touch has become heightened as the air between us and the surfaces we touch have become dangerous. I would like to make piece which reflects this.” The result is Balance, which explores notions of infinity and time. “My aim was to distort the form, but still create something that is both finite and infinite. It’s rare that the title of a piece comes to me during the making process but as I was weaving this I became aware of its changing weight and stability, forcing me to rethink how I originally intended it to be seen. It became a subconscious reflection on the world we are in now: Everything seems to be in the balance.”

See Max’s work at Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textile and mixed media art (browngrotta arts, May 7 -15, 2021). https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crowdsourcing-the-collective-a-survey-of-textiles-and-mixed-media-art-tickets-292520014237

browngrotta arts and associated artists get good press

April 6, 2022 0 Comment

browngrotta arts and the artists we work with have been in the news lately — quite a bit in fact!

• In January, Simone Pheulpin’s remarkable career was the cover story in Crafts magazine from the UK. The work of Crafts “cover star” defies expectations. Her “ambiguous textile forms recall geological strata and the rings of a tree,” the magazine notes and “evoke the passage of time.” (Cynthia Rose, “Life Lines,” Crafts magazine, January 2022.)

• Karyl Sisson’s work graced the cover of the National Basketry Organization’s basketry+ in its Fall 2021/Winter 2022 issue. The article, “Karyl Sisson: From Nostalgic to Unexpected,” by Janet Mendelsohn, talks about Sisson’s Shapeshifters, a new series of vessels, which will be featured in browngrotta arts upcoming exhibition Crowdsourcing the Collective (May 7 – 15). The works are created of tightly quilled paper straws, laced like beads, threaded in circles, row by row to create cylinders that are manipulated to create lively sculptures. “I see my work as the expression of hidden energy and forces inside all of us,” the magazine quotes the Sisson. “The structures I create are diagrams of physical forces and laws that govern all growth and patterning.”

• A recent issue of the German publication of Art Aurea, profiles Yasuhisa Kohyama in its World Arts section. The magazine quotes Kohyama and it also quotes a German gallery owner, Marcus Müller, on the special tension Kohyama creates between the rough and smooth surfaces in his work and the unique colors of his work, created by the ash in his anagama kiln.
  • The Bay Area Artists’ Legacy Project has published its second volume, The Seventies, with a foreword by Maria Porges. One of the artists included is Lia Cook.
  • Maria Rosaria Roseo interviewed Carolina Yrarrázaval for a recent issue of Arte Morbida. “[Yrarrázaval’s] tapestries,” Roseo writes, “in which dark chromatic shades predominate with red and orange overlaps, together with the essential elegance of vegetable fibers such as jute, silk, cotton, hemp and linen, are the result of continuous research about the weaving techniques of ancient cultures such as pre-Columbian and Japanese which the artist draws inspiration from, creating textile abstractions with a refined, sober and rigorous aesthetic.” (https://www.artemorbida.com/interview-with-carolina-yrarrazaval/?lang=en).
  • HANDWERKEN, zonder grenzen (Crafting without limits) (https://www-handwerkenzondergrenzen-nl.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc) in the Netherlands featured a profile of Aleksandra Stoyanov in a recent issue. “Her work often contains images of the life she left behind in Ukraine [before emigrating to Israel] and has an emotional character that focuses on the social dilemmas of immigrants experiencing the loss of family and disconnecting their connection,” writes Alie Dijk. “She also incorporates family photos in her work, as in From the First Person. In Silence, she creates a space for personal memories.”
  • In “Wonder Wall,”by June Hill, Embroidery magazine profiled Dutch artist Marian Bijlenga last year. Rather than drawing on paper, the author points out, Bijlenga draws in three dimensions, “creating a series of rhythmic, visual relationships between form, pattern and mark.”
  • Finally, 068 (formerly Wilton Magazine) touted browngrotta arts’ Spring 2022 exhibition in its March/April Issue (“Uncovering a Hidden Gem”). Author Julia Bruce says browngrotta arts is “a unique, international showcase for contemporary fiber arts.” The magazine further notes that fiber artists tend to be women, and that browngrotta arts is committed to promoting, exhibiting and documenting their work.

We’re all pleased to be noticed!