Monthly archives: May, 2022

Hot off the Press: the Crowdsourcing the Collective: survey of textiles and mixed media art (our 53rd volume)

Crowdsourcing the Collective Catalog

We’ve made our reputation on documentation and photography of art at browngrotta arts (“Beyond Measure,” Glenn Adamson, Volume 50: Chronicling fiber art for three decades (browngrotta arts, Wilton, CT 2020)). Crowdsourcing the Collective: survey of textiles and mixed media artour 53rd volume, is the latest of our efforts. 

Lia Cook Spread

In an essay titled “State of the Art: where we are/how we got here” the catalog takes a look at fiber and art textiles today, as these art forms bask in renewed popularity. It also sheds some light on where fiber art has come from — featuring work that ranges from 1982 to 2022. The 42 artists featured in the exhibition (from 13 countries), are both a part of that legacy and a reflection of fiber’s current state.  In the 1960s, Adela Akers was creating large-scale weavings; by the 1970s, her works were noted for their spare designs and darker colors — brown, black and maroon. Gyöngy Laky has been a force since founding Fiberworks in the 1970s, a prestigious textile gallery and academic program in Berkeley, California. Lia Cook and Naomi Kobayashi participated in the prestigious Lausanne Biennials of International Tapestry in the 1970s; Laky in the 1980s. Artists in the exhibition who began exhibiting in the 2000s continue this legacy. Stéphanie JacquesRachel Max and Neha Puri Dhir all claim textile artist pioneers as an influence — Ed Rossbach and Claire Zeisler for Jacques;  Anni Albers and Ruth Asawa for Dhir and Max.

Adela Akers Spread
Shuko Fukuda Spread

The catalog also includes the artists’ perspectives in their own words in “State of the Artist: how we are working/what’s front of mind?” and in the comments on their individual works. Not surprisingly, their preoccupations vary. For some, like Lewis Knauss and Laura Foster Nicholson, it’s the environment in the large sense — fires and climate change and the impacts of over consumption. For Lia Cook, and her garden, it’s more immediate. For still others, like Caroline Bartlett and Polly Barton, an abstract consideration is underway on the power of thread as a medium to reflect the fragility and connectivity of our world, and the cross fertilization of the senses as expressed in fiber. 

Laura Foster Nicholson spread

Crowdsourcing the Collective: survey of textiles and mixed media art is in full color, 148 photographs, 42 artists from 13 countries. You can obtain your copy at browngrotta.com. Learn more about the exhibition by joining our Zoom presentation on June 3rd at 5 pm EST, Art of the Rocks: an exhibition walkthrough with spiritsWe will talk about the works in Crowdsourcing the Collective and toast the artists with a curated cocktail by our own mixologist, Max Fanwick @DudeWhoCooks.

Marianne Kemp Spread

Exhibition Updates – Venice, DC, LA, and Yorkshire

We’ve got updates — and images — from exhibitions that include browngrotta artists and friends. 

Toshiko Takaezu and Ruth Asawa at the Venice Biennial
Venice Biennial – Toshiko Takaezu and Ruth Asawa at the Venice Biennial. Photos courtesy Darlene Fukuji, Victor Wang, Carla Romeo, and Donald Fletcher.

Toshiko Takaezu has received pride of place at the Venice Biennial in Italy. Eight of Takaezu’s works are featured in a gallery space that she shares with an dramatic selection of works by Ruth Asawa. Asawa is one of a group fiber artists (Ruth Asawa, Sonya Delaunay, Mrinalini Mukherjee and Rosemary Trockel) included in the Biennial this year. 

La Biennale di Venezia
59th International Art Exhibition
The Milk of Dreams
through November 27, 2022
BUY YOUR TICKETS

works by Toshiko Takaezu; portrait of Toshiko Takaezu by Tom Grotta
Works by Toshiko Takaezu; portrait of Toshiko Takaezu by Tom Grotta at This Present Moment, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Photo by Ted Rowland.

Takaezu’s work is also highlighted in a gallery space in This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, aside a large portrait taken by Tom Grotta. Also well displayed in This Present Moment are works by Christine Joy, Polly Sutton and Joanne Segal Brandford. You can learn more about this ambitious exhibition in this brief video: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/this-present-moment.

Works by Joanne Segal Brandford, Christine Joy and Polly Sutton
Works by Joanne Segal Brandford, Christine Joy and Polly Sutton. Photo by Mary Savig, Curator, This Present Moment, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World 
Renwick Gallery
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20006

Ferne Jacobs: Installation
Installation Photo of Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs. Photo: Madison Metro, Craft in America

Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs at the Craft in America Gallery Los Angeles, California is a long-overdue retrospective for the California artist. Throughout her 50-year career, Jacobs has revolutionized the fiber arts and pushed the boundaries of sculpture, while exploring expressions of gender through her artworks. Learn more about this remarkable exhibition in Christopher Knight’s insightful review from the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-05-11/review-backlog-pandemic-postponed-art-shows?_amp=true. You still have until June 18th to see the exhibition. Can’t get there in person? The website has numerous images and videos.

Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs
Craft in America Gallery
8415 West Third Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048

Garnering deserved international attention — The Guardian, W, Wallpaper, The New York Times, Aesthetica — as “ravishing,” “delicious,” a “thrill of color” is Sheila Hicks‘ exhibition Off Grid in the UK. In progress for two years, she first visited the museum in person this spring before the opening. “It was fascinating to watch her enter the space, mapping and reading it in ways that I hadn’t seen other artists do, looking at the light sources, thinking of the angles,” the museum’s chief curator Andrew Bonacina told Wallpaper (“Riotous color, terrific textiles: Sheila Hicks: ‘Off Grid’ at The Hepworth Wakefield,” Jessica Klingelfuss, Wallpaper, April 9, 2022). “Across the exhibition, you’ll see an artist who has really explored the endless possibilities of fibre and thread as a sculptural material.” The exhibition features work that expands her 70-year career and includes photographs from her many travels. The museum is an ideal venue for such an ambitious display. ““I think it’s one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever shown in,” Hicks told inews.co.uk. If the UK is not in your travel plans, visit the museum’s site to view additional images: https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/sheila-hicks/.

Sheila Hicks: Off Grid
Installation of Sheila Hicks: Off Grid at The Hepworth Wakefield, 2022. Art works L-R: Peace Barrier, 2018; Ripe Rip, 2019; Nowhere To Go, 2022. Photo: Tom Bird / Courtesy: The Hepworth Wakefield

Sheila Hicks: Off Grid
through September 25, 2022
The Hepworth Wakefield
Gallery Walk
Wakefield
West Yorkshire
WF1 5AW
01924 247360

hello@hepworthwakefield.org


Scenes from an Exhibition: Crowdsourcing the Collective this Week

Photo by Juan Pabon/Ezco Production

Despite some Covid cancellations, we’re enjoying good attendance to our Spring Art in the Barn exhibition, Crowdsourcing the Collective; a survey of textile and mixed media art this week. We had visitors in line on Sunday morning. We have had artists stop by, including Dawn MacNutt, Norma Minkowitz, Wendy Wahl, Nancy Koenigsberg, Jeannet Lennderste and Kari Lønning. We are hoping to see Blair Tate and Christine Joy later in the week.

We’ve had visits from groups from the Wilton Encore Club and Westport MoCA and a curator from the Flinn Gallery at the Greenwich Public Library. We are expecting more curators yet this week. 

The inspiration for the works in Crowdsourcing is of great interest to those attending. Lia Cook’s tapestries incorporate images of ferns from her California garden. Blair Tate experiments in visual layering based on frescoes interrupted by superimposed paintings and incised niches that she saw throughout Bologna. She rearranged separately woven strips to create windows on the wall — intentionally splintered, fragmented, unsettled as a reflection of our times. Dawn MacNutt’s works of seagrass and copper wire, The Last One Standing and Interconnected, are the last two works remaining from her earlier series, Kindred Spirits.

Dawn MacNutt and Norma Minkowitz
Dawn MacNutt and Norma Minkowitz. Photo by Tom Grotta

There are five days remaining — hope you can join us.

Schedule Your Visit Here: 

Remainder of the exhibition
Thru – 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)

Art for a Cause: A portion of browngrotta arts’ profits for the months of May and June will benefit Sunflower of Peace, a non-profit group that provides medical and humanitarian aid for paramedics and doctors in areas that are affected by the violence in Ukraine. browngrotta arts will also match donations collected during the exhibition as part of browngrotta arts’ 2022 “Art for a Cause” initiative. A portion of the artists’ proceeds for certain works will also go to Sunflower of Peace: https://www.sunflowerofpeace.com/


Art Assembled: New This Week in April

Although launching our spring exhibition, Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textiles and mixed media art, has kept us busy, we still had no shortage of new art to introduce you to in April. We presented art from many talented artists, including work from: Masako Yoshida, Ethel Stein, Polly Barton, and John McQueen. Just in case you missed out, we’re covering all the details about these artists and their art! Read on for more.

Masako Yoshida
14my Air Hole #838, Masako Yoshida, walnut and flax, 8″ x 8″ x 7″, 2017

This artwork comes from Japanese basketmaker, Masako Yoshida. Yoshida created this piece by interlacing sheets of walnut bark with string made of nettle. When asked about her work, Yoshida said:

“My work provides a means of release, allowing the truth to emerge and open the mind. In the process, I ask myself, ‘what is my connection to society?'”

Ethel Stein
56es Touch of Green, Ethel Stein, mercerized cotton, 31.5” x 36” x 1/4”, 2008. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Touch of Green comes from the late Ethel Stein, who was an exceptional American textile artist. Within her career, Stein created countless intricate textile pieces, and browngrotta arts has had the honor of representing her work for nearly 15 years.

Within Stein’s work, she has been known for using reproposed items that have been discarded as a medium and creating something miraculous with them. Often, her artwork is distinguished by its rhythmic simplicity, although it’s created with extraordinary technical complexity.

Polly Barton
8pb Thistledown, Polly Barton, handwoven double ikat with Japanese silk warp and Japanese silk wrapped around a metal core, 41” x 31” x 1.125”, 2016. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Thistledown was created by nationally recognized American fiber artist, Polly Barton. Trained in Japan, Barton is known for working with traditional methods of binding and dyeing bundles of fiber to weave contemporary imagery. More specifically, Barton is known for her talent in adapting the ancient weaving technique of ikat into contemporary woven imagery.

Barton has been charting the way for fiber art over the past 40 years. In fact, early in here career in 1981, Barton moved to Kameoka, Japan to study with master weaver, Tomohiko Inoue.

John McQueen
John McQueen, 32jm Out From Under, wood, willow, bark, and held together with tiny spikes of bamboo 20.75” x 25.25” x 16”, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta.

This artwork was created by American artist, John McQueen. Within his work, viewers can often find themes of prominent world associations. Often, his three-dimensional works are created with natural materials like twigs, bark, cardboard – he prides himself on being able to create with found objects.

McQueen has discussed how plastic and metal are ubiquitous in landfills and our own trash and he hopes to draw attention to this waste problem with his art, as we are burying ourselves in waste without seeing it.

If you like the art you see – keep your eye out for even more in May! You’ll even have the opportunity to see art in person at our spring exhibition launching this weekend. Visit: https://bit.ly/38QiXCe to join us.