We have been delighted to host a good group of artists from the US and abroad at the gallery during our Spring exhibition, FIeld Notes: an art survey.
The exhibition continues through Sunday May 11, at 6 p.m. Blair Tate, Kari Lønning, Christine Joy, Norma Minkowitz, Shoko Fukuda, Wendy Wahl, and Włodzimierz Cygan were all here for the Artists Reception and Opening on Saturday, May 3rd.
Clients were excited to meet the artists in person and learn more about about their work. We at browngrotta arts enjoyed learning about their influences and exhibitions in which they have participated. Shoko Fukuda, for example, has exhibits annually with a group of talented basketmakers and sculptors in Japan. The group was first organized by Hisako Sekijima, who Fukuda admires. The group has since developed a life of its own. When we asked Sekijima to suggest artists we should be watching, she named Fukuda, so their admiration is mutual. Fukuda cites Sekijima’s books as an influence. Sekijima’s book Basketry’s Formula, from the 1970s, has just been republished in Japan
Christine Joy came from Montana, US and stayed in New York City. The contrast in population, noise levels, concrete versus sky is quite stark, but she enjoyed speaking with colleagues and collectors. She’s showing new work in FIeld Notes — baskets that surround rocks. She thinks of them as landform sketches with a rock as the center point. “New Moon is a totemic object for me.” she says. “Noting the phases of the moon and being able to see the moon and where it is in the sky is a daily lifetime habit.
The rock is unusual because of its pockmarked surface and round shape it made me think of the moon.” She was a bit hesitant to send it off to us. “I like the feel of it,” she wrote. “It is a piece I like to just sit and hold in two hands and close my eyes. I find it very soothing. It was hard to part with but soon I will start on Full Moon and that makes it easier.”
Competing in the Senior Olympics is in Norma Minkowitz’s future. She’ll head to Iowa in July to compete in several running events. She holds several records, including a world record won in the 2023 USATF Masters Indoor Championship. Minkowitz is a limits pusher. “… I fight for what I want in my running,” she told an interviewer. “I don’t know where this came from with my sedentary background, but I’ve always pushed myself to the limits. It wasn’t enough to have my work in a craft magazine, I wanted it in a museum.” She achieved that handily — her work is in 35 museum collections and has been the subject of 20 solo exhibitions.
Blair Tate is on her way to the UK and Italy, where she finds inspiration. Tom Grotta recently found hardware from abroad that is effective at setting Tate’s works like Mixed Signals, off the wall and he’s hoping she can find it while she is on the road. In Italy, Tate finds artistic inspiration. “Since my first visits to Italy,” Tate told us previously, “I have been interested in the visual layering that occurs when frescoes are interrupted by superimposed paintings or incised niches. Throughout Bologna, there are buildings with palimpsests of older fenestration patterns and newer window additions that are perpetually in marvelous conflict.” In some of her works, she plays with these concepts, rearranging and reconnecting separately woven strips off the loom. The whole can be intentionally splintered, fragmented, unsettled — “a reflection of our times, and perhaps all times,” she says.
On her way to the garden, with cuttings she had brought back a trip to Washington, DC, Kari Lønning made a short stop at the opening. She and Christine Joy enjoyed meeting after many years in parallel basketmaking circles. Wendy Wahl drove to Connecticut from Rhode Island and faced serious rain on her trip back. Wahl provided insight on her work Morse Code to viewers at the opening. It’s a piece where the different scrolls of map, index, and top text paper are laid in the pattern of her mantra, “W… T.. F…,” through Morse code disguising the message. The overall effect of the surface is a textural blending of colors into an abstract landscape. A warm gold edge on the ivory scrolls makes it sparkle in the right light. Between the domestic political and economic situation and the fires in Palisades, California, where Wahl is originally from, the mantra has continued resonance.
Włodzimierz Cygan joined us from Poland. He has an exciting work made with optical fiber in Field Notes. He’d also sent us Organic 3, a work that was featured in Beyond: Tapestry Expanded an American Tapestry Alliance-sponsored exhibition in 2024. The work has also been honored at the Textile Triennial in Szombathely, Hungary and featured on the cover of Arte Morbida. In creating Organic 3, Cygan worked with a warp whose strands were not parallel and flat but convergent, curved or three dimensional. The strands converge from a single point, enabling the weaving of circles or arcs, a means the artist uses to evoke a variety of associations. The work is fluid in nature and can be arranged differently each time it is installed. While visiting us in Connecticut, Cygan adjusted it to establish yet another way to install the work — this time to hang it on the wall.
There are four more days to visit Field Notes: an art survey at browngrotta arts. You can learn more at our Zoom presentation, Art on the Rocks: an art talkthough with spirits, on June 10, 7 pm EST.