Monthly archives: August, 2025

Save the Date: Beauty is Resistance Opens at browngrotta arts on October 11th

We’ll be exploring Beauty as Resistance: art as antidote in our 2025 Fall “Art in the Barn” exhibition at browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut. The exhibition will explore how aesthetic creation—particularly within textile, fiber, and material-based practices—serves as a form of defiance, cultural preservation, and political voice. In an age of political polarization, ecological crisis, and rampant commodification, beauty might seem like a luxury—or a distraction. But the artists in this exhibition harness the power of beauty not as escape but as agency: to mourn, to protest, to remember, to heal, and to imagine

Beauty is Resistance by Norma Minkowitz
Frozen in Time by Norma Minkowitz. Photo by Tom Grotta

Beauty is Resistance will bring together more than two dozen artists, spanning generations, mediums, and geographies. The works fall loosely into four subthemes. Norma Minkowitz’s Frozen in Time reflects Threads of Memory, artworks in which fiber as a tool to archive personal, cultural, and collective memory and experience. Minkowitz’s work is about once-used personal items, perhaps ancient relics, in ominous black, showing every detail in time. A diary, combined with combs, various brushes, documenting a persons lived life, hidden messages inside a book that can’t be opened, are all frozen in time. These tell a story or trigger a question for the viewer.  

Reading Between the Lines
Fragments Of A Life Lived 3 by Aby Mackie. Photo courtesy of Aby Mackie

Reading Between the Lines includes works that subtly or explicitly engage with, politics, ecology, and resistance. Aby Mackie, an artist located in Spain, works with discarded historic textiles, deconstructing and reconfiguring them. “In reworking with what was cast aside,” Mackie says, “my practice becomes a form of quiet resistance—honoring forgotten stories and reasserting the enduring significance of craft in the face of environmental and cultural neglect.” In the 80s, Ed Rossbach created aseries of assemblages, titled El Salvador. In the series, Rossbach used camouflage cloth and sticks to protest US covert activity in that South American country. More personal is Yong Joo Kim’s Weight of Commitment: 4 Years Old. For Kim, making art is less a means of expression and more a residue of her efforts to sustain her life under pressure and weight. She creates art works she hopes are seen as symbols of resilience, beauty, and the transformation of struggle into creation. Weight of Commitment illustrates that approach. “As light and shadow played across the work,” Kim says, “the silhouette of a child appeared—seemingly around four years old—floating in mid-air. This moment was meaningful, because it was completely unintended, and I made it while I was going through IVF.”

Collider by Randy Walker
Collider by Randy Walker. Photo by Tom Grotta

Randy Walker’s Collider reflects another of Beauty’s subthemes, Radical Ornament, in which art reclaims ornamentation, surface and structure as valid forms of protest and joy. Trained as an architect, Walker’s work straddles several boundaries of craft, sculpture, and installation.His works create dialogues — solidity and transparency; structural stability and collapse; visibility and invisibility.

Donald and his Habsburg Empire by James Bassler
Donald and his Habsburg Empire by James Bassler. Photo by Tom Grotta

Finally, for Ritual and Reverence, the fourth subtheme, we’ll exhibit work grounded in indigenous craft and sacred traditions reimagined. James Bassler’s Donald and his Habsburg Empire, is a comment on both the historical and the contemporary attitude of arrogance and entitlement that has existed throughout history. Bassler references the Habsburgs, the ruling family of Austria, 1276-1918 and of Spain,1516-1700, that gave the world elitism through birthright, with no regard to proven achievement, noting that today in the US, the Kardashian and the Donald Trump model has made the acquisition of vast sums of money and profit an alarming societal objective, an elitism that values profits over people. In 2016, Bassler was invited to an exhibition at the Museo Textile de Oaxaca in Mexico that utilized feathered yarn, created of Canadian feathers, by spinners in Mexico who based the yarns on ones created in the 17th century. “After reviewing all of the material, I couldn’t help but notice that on many of the ancient textiles in which the feathers were used promoted the double-headed eagle of the Habsburg Empire, a reminder to those subjugated as to who was in charge,” Bassler says. “With that in mind and knowing that the feathers came from Canadian ducks, it was a logical step to create the double-headed ducks. The Donald Trump arrogance factor developed as the presidential debates materialized.”

Other artists whose work will be exhibited in Beauty is Resistance include: Kay Sekimachi (US), Neha Puri Dhir (IN), Karyl Sisson (US), Naoko Serino (JP), Laura Foster Nicholson (US), Jin-Sook So (KR), Irina Kolesnikova (DE), James Bassler (US), Gyöngy Laky (US), Lia Cook (US), and Eduardo Portillo and María Dávila (VE). 

Reserve a time to visit Beauty as Resistance: art as antidote : HERE

Beauty as Resistance: art as antidote
October 11 – 19, 2025

Location: 
browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 06897 

Times:
Saturday, October 11th: 11AM to 6PM [Opening & Artist Reception] 
Sunday,  October 12th: 11AM to 6PM
Monday, October 13th through  Saturday, October 18th: 10AM to 5PM
Sunday, October 19th: 11AM to 6PM [Final Day]

Safety Protocol:
No narrow heels please — barn floors.


Retreat and Regenerate: the appeal of an artist’s residency

Paul Furneax residency in  Sweden
Paul Furneaux images of Norway. Photo courtesy of the artist

Residencies are prized by artists — they offer dedicated time, space, and resources for artists to focus on their creative work, often in a novel and inspiring environment.  “[B]y inserting artists into a different environment, a residency lifts them out of their ordinary routines and obligations, conferring new perspectives as a result, and potentially fostering new creative works.” (Katy Wellesley Wesley, “Sweet retreats: everything you need to know about artist residencies,” The Art Newspaper, May 27, 2022.)  Specifically, they offer time and space — dedicated periods free from daily distractions, allowing artists to immerse themselves in their work, experiment with new ideas, and develop their practice; new environments — Living and working in a new place can spark creativity and offer fresh perspectives. financial support — Residencies can provide financial assistance making it easier for artists to focus on their work without financial strain; professional development — Some residencies offer opportunities for mentorship, workshops, and networking; and opportunities to experiment and innovate — the freedom and resources of a residency can encourage artists to take creative risks, explore new mediums, and push the boundaries of their artistic practice.

Sue Lawty Residency in Sweden
Sue Lawty’s image of Sweden. Photo courtesy of the artist

Many of the artists who work with browngrotta arts have used residencies for just these purposes — to explore, experiment and engage in a new environment. Sue Lawty of the UK took part in the highly selective International Artists Studio Programme In Sweden (IASPIS). Occupying nine visual art studios + a dance studio in an old tobacco factory in Södermalm, Stockholm, a 50/50 bunch of diverse Swedish and International practitioners met, lived and worked alongside each other for three wonderful creative months. “I approached the opportunity with a completely open mind –– no agenda –– simply to be available to what Sweden had to offer and to my response to that,” Lawty says. “I found myself standing back from my work, an observer, assessing.” The north northern hemisphere had its effect, “SO good and now lodged deep in my soul …” In the west she found inspiration in: “keen winds and the intense low sunglow of the winter solstice across icy slabs of rock – visceral experiences of living within feet of the ocean on the tiny outcrop island of Rörö at the north of the Gothenburg archipelago.” In the east: “bright/ low/north light/ greys and blues, textures of snow/ ice/ water/snörök and the crumpled frozen Baltic Sea stretching towards the horizon.”

Neha Puri Dhir at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia
Neha Puri Dhir at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia. Photo courtesy of the artist

Location impacted Neha Puri Dhir, too, who travelled from India to Latvia for a residency at the Mark Rothko Art Centre. In her case it was aesthetic proximity and contact with the natural environment. What Dhir realized studying in the environs of the legendary artist was that Rothko was expressing essential human emotions that are invariably layered and multifaceted like his work. “The layering of colors and mixing of oil and egg-based paints for expression — have all left an indelible mark on my art,” she says. Dhir’s resist-dyeing based art practice also involves extensive interplay of colors brought in by layering and multiple levels of dyeing, but in her case the genesis is one thought or emotion, which has been triggered by some experience or conversance.  “The works that I created at the Mark Rothko Art Centre were solely influenced by the environment, the emotions which were triggered by the abundance of maple leaves in the glorious fall.”

ba Osite at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós
Baiba Osite at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, Iceland. Photo courtesy of the artist

“The time we spend in a residency always adds up to a new result,” Baiba Osite says. Osite travelled from Latvia to the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós. The Centre has extensive facilities: a weaving room with looms and a professional specialist who helps residents realize ideas, a large workshop space with tables and a beautiful view of the sea, another workshop space in a smaller building across the yard, with yarn-dyeing capabilities, where digital looms are located. Osite pursued her own projects, offered a workshop on silk painting to local artists, and traveled to northern Iceland and Reykjavik. “The Icelandic landscape has not directly influenced my work. But the harsh northern nature of Iceland with its open spaces, mountains, sea and strong winds left a deep impression.” It’s trite, but true, she concludes, travel broadens horizons.

ne Joy residency in Willow Creek, Montana
3 Circles, created by Christine Joy at a residency in Willow Creek, Montana. Photo courtesy of the artist

For Christine Joy, it was less a change of surroundings than the “quiet and uninterrupted time to think and work and weave” that she found at a solitary residency in Willow Creek, Montana. “I am still trying to capture the movement of nature,” she says. There were two pieces she worked on while there. “I think just getting out of my studio and looking at them in a new place and with new perspective helped me see the direction they needed to go. I really found the direction for 3 Circles at Willow Creek. I love the movement it developed. Now it is like weaving on a big knot and trying not to lose the looseness.”

Misako Nakahira-Australian Tapestry Workshop
Misako Nakahira-Australian Tapestry Workshop. Photo courtesy of the artist

Misako Nakahira found her residency an opportunity to learn new techniques. “Last year, I stayed in Melbourne, Australia, as an artist-in-residence at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. ATW is one of the leading tapestry studios in Australia, and I became deeply interested in their work,” she says. “I was particularly influenced by their high level of technique and use of color. Since returning to Japan, I have been incorporating the methods I learned from them into my own work.” 

María Dávila and Eduardo Portillo at Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art.
María Dávila and Eduardo Portillo at Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art.

During  the month of February, María Dávila and Eduardo Portillo were Artists in Residence at the Glass Pavilion of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. The Museum invites artists who work in other mediums to experiment in glass. “We had an extraordinary time getting to know a fascinating material and amazing process,” the artists wrote. “We had the support from great artists and specialists of the Glass Pavilion team and we were able to make some pieces that link our textile practice and glass.”

Paul Furneax residency in  Sweden
Paul Furneaux image from Norway. Photo courtesy of the artist

Paul Furneaux’s experience underscores how impactful a residency can be. He ventured north from Scotland to Norway, near Stavanger and the work that resulted transformed his art practice. In Norway, he had a pivotal day. “I was surrounded by huge fjords, full of magic, with colors that were intensified by rich sunlight. I observed the immense powerful nature that surrounded me, looking from one side of an enormous fjord to the other and down towards the sea,” he says. “That evening, I worked on a small series of prints, simple prints about that physical, yet abstract step of land into sea; I worked and worked, slightly frantic and frustrated.  It was two o’clock in the morning and I decided to wrap and paste one of the small prints around the oval date box from which I had been snacking. I went to bed exhausted but early in the morning I ate more dates for breakfast so that I could wrap another print around another box. There I found a conceptual shift in my work.” Furneaux returned to Scotland and decided to try to work full time as an artist and began to wrap other objects in mokuhanga (Japanese wood block prints) in earnest. “The immense overpowering fjords, the shadow casting and echoing of one side of the fjord to the other, was what I was trying to reflect in this new artistic dialogue,” Furneaux says.

“A new beginning, a unique voice, an undiscovered method,” what Paul Furneaux found in his residency aptly summarizes the appealing potential of an artist’s residency.


Lives Well-Lived: John McQueen

John McQueen Harvesting Willow
John McQueen harvesting willow. Photo by Tom Grotta

We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of John McQueen last week. He was a remarkable artist. We had long admired his work from afar and over the years had placed several works that he showed at other galleries. We got to know him personally when he began to exhibit with browngrotta arts more than 15 years ago. He visited us in Wilton on several occasions and we traveled to upstate New York to see him and photograph him at work.

Happenstance, John McQueen
Detail: 82jm Happenstance, John McQueen, willow, waxes string,22.5″ x 8.5″ x 8.75″, 2011. Photo by Tom Grotta

McQueen created three-dimensional items of twigs, branches, bark, and sometimes plastic and cardboard, all of material he harvested and collected. These objects included books, fish, birds, lions, and human figures, and vessels and structures, some basket like, others not.  McQueen insisted that he was not a sculptor, but a basketmaker. Containment was a consistent interest. “Baskets connect with the definition of a container — a very broad concept. This room is a container. I am a container. The earth is being contained by its atmosphere. This is so open. I don’t need to worry about reaching the end of it.” (Quoted on the relationship in the catalog for his solo exhibition at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Language of Containment, in 1992).

Untitled #88, John McQueen
64jm Untitled #88, John McQueen, elm bark and maple, 14” x 14” x 10.5”, 1979. Photo by Tom Grotta

McQueen pushed the boundaries of his art form of choice throughout his working life. He created forms of pieced bark, using forms made of cardboard, “paintings” of plastic contained within frames of twigs and branches, and integrated sly and subtle messages throughout his works. Words entered his works in 1979 in Untitled #88, in which a web of words creates the container in part and conveys an idea — “Always is always a ways away.” His subsequent works abounded with puns, rebuses, and messages to be deciphered.

Falling Fruit, John McQueen
20jm Falling Fruit, John McQueen, sticks and string on a wood grid, 40” x 48” x 12”, 2014. Photo by Tom Grotta

Man’s fruitless efforts to control nature were a frequent subject of McQueen’s art. As Vicki Halper observed in The Language of Containment, for McQueen “[t]he basket becomes an agent for investigating the fragile truce between humans and nature.” In Falling Fruit, for example, tiny stick figures are mounted beside sharks and palm trees made of twigs.  We may think we can control our world, but McQueen’s camouflage-like scene suggests otherwise. As Nature does, McQueen offers surprising combinations that remind us that life is not predictable. 

1000 Leaves, John McQueen
49jm 1000 Leaves, John McQueen, willow, waxed linen, 27″ x 48″ x 48″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

In 2022, McQueen decided to take on a project that would take him a year. This was an approach regularly taken by his life partner, artist Margo Mensing, who would choose a subject — generally a person — and spend a year creating artworks, poetry, performances, and multi-media installations in response. For McQueen, the result of his year’s work was 1000 Leaves, an assemblage of individually crafted structures that paid homage to trees, the source of the material that gave life to his work.

A Tree and Its Skin Again, John McQueen
78jm A Tree and Its Skin Again, John McQueen, mixed media, 30″ x 20.25″ x 8.25″, 2006. Photo by Tom Grotta

McQueen was born in Oakland, Illinois in 1943. He received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida (where Jim Morrison was his roommate). After college he went to New Mexico where his interest in basketmaking began. Courses in weaving were a logical entry point to basketry so he enrolled in the Master’s program at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, where he studied with Adela Akers among others. He received many awards in his career including an artist fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a United States/Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship, a Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, the Master of the Medium Award from the James Renwick Alliance, and the Gold Medal from the American Craft Council. His work is found in numerous permanent collections, including that of the Museum of Arts and Design, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kunstindustrimuseum, Trondheim, Norway, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Not Believable, John McQueen
59jm Not Believable, John McQueen, woven willow, plastic, 20.25″ x 41″ x 5″, 2005. Photo by Tom Grotta

McQueen’s art stirs powerful feelings in viewers, forcing them to think about construction and words, metaphysically and literally.  “McQueen’s genius lies in finding a simple declarative means of speaking about paradox, essences, and fundamental truth,” Elizabeth Broun, then-director of the National Museum of American Art observed. His genius will be greatly missed.