Monthly archives: March, 2025

Lives Well-Lived: Lija Rage

Portrait of Lija Rage
Lija Rage in London in 2019. Photo by Baiba Osite

Sadly, this week we lost another artist, Lija Rage (1948 – 2025), who has worked with browngrotta arts for more than 10 years. Rage was a talented designer and fiber artist. Her creative life has spanned important periods in Latvian art. 

Orange tapestry by Lija Rage
2lr Animal, Lija Rage, silk, metal thread, and flax, 46″ x 65″, 2006. Photo by Tom Grotta

While studying at the Art Academy of Latvia, from 1968 to 1976, Lija Rage worked as a costume designer. Rage graduated from the Textile Art Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1973. After working for the theatre for 15 years and realizing costumes and stage design for about 60 performances, Rage wanted to create individual works. Her artistic influences were many. “I am influenced by different cultures,” she wrote. “I plunge into them with the help of literature. I am particularly interested in ancient cultures — drawing on the walls of caves in different parts of world, Eastern culture with its mysterious magic, drawings of runes in Scandinavia, Tibet and the mandala, Egyptian pyramid drawings. World culture seems close and colorful to me due to its diversity.”

Home, mixed media tapestry by Lija Rage
5lr Home, Lija Rage, mixed media, wooden sticks, linen and copper, 75″ x 71″. Photo by Tom Grotta

Nature played a role in determining Rage’s color palette. For her exhibition, Colours, at the prestigious Mark Rothko Museum, she wrote, “Green – the woods outside my window; blue – the endless variety of the sea; orange – the sun in a summer sky; brown, grey and black – fresh furrows and the road beneath the melting snow; red – the roses in our gardens. The colors in my work are drawn from the splendor of Latvian nature.” For her work Home, she turned to her immediate environs, “My home, which inspired this work,” she wrote, “is a fishing village with wooden houses and boats painted in the sun and the salty sea, their special gray.”

Lija Rage detail
7lr Home-IIdetail, Lija Rage, mixed media, wooden sticks, linen and copper, 53″ x 38″, 2020. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Throughout her creative life, Lija Rage found the dynamics of Latvia’s cultural environment and art centers were insufficient for the creative ambitions of her nation’s artists and the breadth of their creativity. As a solution, Rage actively participated in art events around the world, drawing inspiration from exhibitions held abroad. She regularly participated in Latvian, Baltic, and international competitions and exhibitions.  Her work was featured in several exhibitions at browngrotta arts including, Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related Countries; Stimulus: art and its inceptionart + identity: an international view, and Field Notes: an art survey. “I believe that modern world culture cannot be closed,” she said. “Each of us grows up from the culture we live in, through centuries, and are further subjected to other impacts and become interwoven with the world culture influences.”

Lija Rage received a number of awards including the Grand Prix of the Baltic Applied Arts Triennial in Tallinn, Estonia (1985), Special Award of the Korean Biennial (2007), the Valparaiso Foundation Grant (2009); the Nordic Culture Point Grant (2010); Excellence Award of the 7th International Fiber Art Biennial in China (2012); and the Excellence Award of the Applied Arts Biennial in China (2014). Rage’s work is held in museum and private collections in the USA, Australia, France, Japan, Russia, Latvia, Germany, and Sweden.

Crossroads award winning tapestry
Crossroads, for which Lija Rage received an Excellence Award in 2020 at a solo exhibition at the Zana Lipkes Memorial Museum, in Riga Latvia.

In a 2020 exhibition at the Zana Lipkes Memorial Museum, in Riga, Latvia, which memorializes a family that hid Jews during World War II, Rage received an Excellence award. She offered uplifting words on that occasion, a fitting memory: “With our works and our choices, we all leave traces and footprints. Human paths intersect, and the choices we make have consequences and affect others. To life! Spread goodness.”


Lives Well Lived: Sylvia Seventy

Sylvia Seventy Portrait
Sylvia Seventy in her home/studio, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

We were so sorry to learn of the passing of artist Sylvia Seventy who began her exploration of innovative techniques in papermaking in the 70s. She was a member of Northern California’s prestigious Fiberworks community, then moved to Healdsburg, California in 1973, where she taught at Becoming Independent in Berkeley and worked as a professor in the Fine Arts Department at Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa.

Bound Vessel IX by Sylvia Seventy
13ss Bound Vessel IX, Sylvia Seventy, molded recyled paper, wax, sisal cord, graphite, 11″ x 20.25″ x 20.25″, 1983. Photo by Tom Grotta

For browngrotta arts’ catalog, Stimulus: art and its inceptionSeventy wrote in 2011 about her relationship to papermaking. “Paper has long been an inspiration for me,” she wrote. “Paper dolls, paper Christmas tree ornaments, scrap books, pen pal letters, stamp collecting, jigsaw puzzles, photo albums, paper snowflakes,forts made of cardboard boxes and rolling head-over-toes in giant cardboard cylindrical containers down the length of the 40-foot driveway slope to crash-stop into the garage door, are all early memories of paper becoming an essence in my life.”

Sylvia seventy portrait
Sylvia Seventy in her home/studio, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

In 1973, when she moved north from southern California to Healdsburg, she discovered the Pomo Indian culture. She wrote of that discovery in 2012, “In my first basketry class at the local ‘Indian School,’ Mabel McKay, instructor and tribal leader, asked me if I had an awl. She showed me hers, passed down for generations. I returned to the next class with an altered antique screwdriver I turned on a grinder and then finely sanded into a very authentic awl. She was impressed, and I saw my artistic path continuing ahead of me. I still use my awl as I assemble my vessels.”

17ss Thrums, Sylvia Seventy, molded recycled paper, wax, foil, wire, beads, plastic tubing, stickers and threads, 2.5″ x 8″ x 9.75″, 2007. Photo by Tom Grotta

Seventy’s vessels were created over molds, earthy bowl shapes, embedded with bamboo, cotton cord and sisal. “When I started making my vessels, it soon became evident to me that the universal shape of what appeared to be an ancient pottery bowl was an approachable path for the viewer. With or without an art background, my bowls allowed people to let their guard down and be drawn into the complexity of the art vessel, its intricate interior and conceptual allusion.” 

Sylvia Seventy Portrait
Sylvia Seventy in her home/studio, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

From a distance, Seventy’s works look like ceramic or stoneware. On closer inspection, their fragility is evident. Her vessels feature an accretion of items: compositions of beads, feathers, fishhooks, googly eyes, hand prints, and buttons. The walls of Seventy’s vessels contain a record number of processes, that not only mark change, but tracings of time. Her work is found in major museum collections including the Musuem of Arts and Design in New York, Erie Art Museum, Pennsylvania, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin, Oakland Museum, California, Arkansas Decorative Arts Center, Little Rock, and the Redding Art Museum, California.

Sylvia Seventy baskets
Sylvia Seventy: 21ss Looking at the Back, molded recycled paper, vintage cotton embroidered fabric, wax, wire, beads, waxed carpet thread, 3.5” x 8.5” x 8.5”, 2016; 22ss How Wild Does Your Garden Grow, molded recycled paper, wax, woven vintage wallpaper, wire, beads, brads, colored pencil, dove tail feathers. 2.75″ x 9″ x 9″, 2018; 22ss Primary Windows at 22 with Blue Spill on the Sill, molded recycled paper, wax, button drawings, buttons, beads, feathers, cotton thread, staples. 4.5″ x 13.5″ x 13.5″. 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Seventy’s home/studio was a fascinating collection of cultures and curiosities. It reflected her interests and held items that influenced her work. Tom and Carter Grotta were delighted to visit her and document her surroundings in 2017.


Dispatches: Paris

Paris at night. Photo by Tom Grotta

Tom and Carter Grotta and I (Rhonda Brown) had the opportunity to travel to Paris last week for art-related activities. We were on a mission — we wanted to restart our project photographing artists in their studios. We had traveled to visit several artists in the US, and several more in Great Britain, Scotland, Belgium, and the Netherlands when the project was derailed by the pandemic. 

Rhonda defers to art creation at the Tuileries. Photo by Carter Grotta

This year, we thought we’d start slow — we’d meet Florence and Paul Bernard, Simone Pheulpin’s remarkable gallery representatives in Paris, visit Simone in her studio just outside the city, take in the Olga d’Amaral exhibition at the Cartier Foundation before it closes on March 16th, and experience the endless visual and epicurean delights of the city.

Visiting Olga de Amaral at the Cartier Foundation. Photos by Carter and Tom Grotta.

The Olga de Amaral exhibition was as glorious as advertised.

Visiting the Maison Parisienne annex; meeting Florence and Paul Bernard. Photo by Carter Grotta.

We were graciously feted by Florence and Paul Bernard at the annex of Maison Parisienne, Simone Pheulpin’s Paris gallery and at a memorable dinner with Florence, Paul, Simone and François Bernard, and at Simone’s home/studio the next day. 

Carter Grotta and Simone Pheulpin at our photo shoot. Photo by Rhonda Brown.

In between, we enjoyed traveling again and the charms of Paris. 

We took in the sites — the Louvre, Montmarte, Marais, Musée des Decoratifs, the Seine, and the delights of endless exceptional architecture and design at every turn

The Pyramid at the Louvre, outside the Maison Parisienne annex in the 17th arrondissement, Lion de Belfort by Auguste Bartholdi (sculptor of the Statue of Liberty; Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel, salon wall at Le Clef Louvre Hotel, Saint Pierre de Montmartre. Photos by Tom Grotta and Rhonda Brown.

As we do on all trios, we looked for fiber art and fiber-related and fiber-inspired items. 

Loopy lights in the Louvre; baskets from Madagascar; great sculpture in a taco restaurant; three views from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs — a basket chair; an ode to Teddy Bears (Mon ours en pelouche) the “king of toys,” and a nest made of felt by Gianni Ruffi. Photos by Tom Grotta and Rhonda Brown

And we totally immersed ourselves in French cuisine.

We sampled endless epicurean delights of France, lemon soufflé, frogs’ legs, decroix, haricots vert salade, surprise sandwich, fried squid, Quiche Lorraine. Pictured: Crazy croissant with roasted mushrooms, carrots, eggs, pastrami, and fresh spinach; gelato topped with a macaron; oysters; more macarons; steak and frites; escargot; carpaccio; and crepes suzette. Photos by Tom and Carter Grotta.

Nous avons vécu aventure exceptionelle!


Olga de Amaral: Magic in Scale, Materials, Technique

Even those who are not followers of extraordinary South American artist Olga de Amaral (born 1932) are likely to be familiar with her mystical golden landscapes. These reference the gold of Catholic altars in Colombia and pre-Columbian goldworking and its spiritual connotations. Her use of gold was also influenced by the Japanese technique kintsugi, which consists of repairing objects by highlighting their cracks and areas of breakage using gold powder. From the 1980s, gold leaf became one of her preferred materials — applied directly to cotton or to surfaces stiffened with gesso.

Olga de Amaral golden landscapes
Olga de Amaral’s golden landscapes: Tabla 28; Montaña 23, 2005. Photos by Carter and Tom Grotta.

In fact, de Amaral’s oeuvre encompasses so much more — weavings and fiber sculptures monumental in size, vibrant in color, varied in technique — that push the boundaries of textile art. Last year, when we learned about the comprehensive exhibition of her work planned at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, we formulated a plan to visit. We made it this week — just before it ends on March 16, 2025. The exhibition contains a remarkable 80 works, dating from the 1960s to 2018, some of which have never been seen outside of Colombia. Our recommendation: if you can drive or fly or travel by train to see Olga de Amaral before it ends, you should do so.  

Olga de Amaral
Olga de Amaral weavings: Lineneas en lino (1968); Encalado en laca azul (1978); Naturaleza mora (1979). Photo by Tom Grotta.

Following a degree in architecture, de Amaral was a student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in the 1950s and then resettled in Colombia, opening a studio in 1955. There she she combined the techniques she had studied with her knowledge of her country’s traditional textiles, in a spontaneous, expressive style inspired by the history and landscapes of her native soil: the high plateaus of the Andes, valleys and vast tropical plains. In the 60s, the artist introduced horsehair into her works. This thick, stiff fiber enabled her to increase the scale of her early works, becoming  monumental, like Muro en Rojas (Wall in Red).

Olga de Amaral installation including Muro en Rojas
Olga de Amaral installation including Muro en Rojas. Photo by Tom Grotta.

In the 70s, de Amaral explored new materials and techniques —  linen, wool, horsehair, even plastic, were woven, braided, sometimes coiled or knotted. Encaldo en laca azul (Whitewashed in Lime and Blue Lacquer)  is made up of purple and orange rectangular strips sewn in a dense, irregular pattern, The tips are painted in vivid turquoise reminiscent of Pre-Columbian feather art.

Olga de Amaral Encaldo en laca azul detail
Olga de Amaral, Encaldo en laca azul, detail (1978). Photo by Tom Grotta.

In 2013, de Amaral began a new series titled Brumas, consisting of diaphanous three-dimensional textiles that move slightly and show simple geometric patterns painted directly on the cotton threads. They evoke a cloud, a misty rain of pure color that the artist invites us to walk through.

Olga de Amaral Brumas installation
Olga de Amaral Brumas installation. Photo by Carter Grotta.

The exhibition’s locale contributes enormously to the viewer experience. In designing the exhibition space, the French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh immersed herself in de Amaral’s sources of inspiration: on the ground floor of Jean Nouvel’s building, surrounded by the glass and gardens, Ghotmeh created a landscape of slate stones connecting the interior, exterior, and the works, as though they were set in a stony, rugged landscape. On the below-ground level, she created a spiral (a motif found in some of de Amaral’s works), to guide visitors through an enveloping space in which the artist’s explorations gradually emerge. She calls her approach, “archeology of the future.” She wants to immerse visitors in “a timeless moment, rich in emotions and sensations.” The artist, architect, and the Foundation have ably succeeded.

Olga de Amaral installation
Olga de Amaral installation. Llanas, 1983; Riscos en sombre, 1985. Photo by Tom Grotta

Olga de Amaral
Through March 16, 2025
Cartier Foundation
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
261, Boulevard Raspail – 75014 Paris