Well, not under the microscope precisely, but in this week’s arttextstyle, we take an up-close-and-personal look at some of the materials highlighted in browngrotta arts’ current exhibition, Transformations: dialogues in art and materials (May 9 – 17, 2026).
In the catalogs we produce for most exhibitions we curate (63 to date) we often include detail shots. In the volume for Transformations, however, we’ve highlighted installations — specifically, groupings of works made of the same materials, executed by different artists in strikingly different ways. We’ll take up the details here instead.
Feathers in art symbolize flight, spirituality and transformation. In Transformations, we’ve combined works that incorporate feathers by Chris Drury, Lewis Knauss, and Dominic Di Mare. Di Mare’s Mourning Station #4 is one of a series of altars, rune, and letter bundles. They remind of ancient ritual objects, of religious mysteries from vanished civilizations. An egg is concealed beneath the feathers. Di Mare suggests a spiritual path and also conjures memory and rebirth.
Another material we have explored in Transformations is metal, which offers unlimited options for expression. Stainless steel filaments are molded and woven by Kyoko Kumai while colored titanium is woven.
Lead becomes cryptic calligraphy in Sue Lawty’s hands and copper wire becomes figures in Mary Giles’ work and three-dimensional sculpture when layered by Tsuroko Tanikawa.
Elemental fibers are often the choice of artists at browngrotta arts. In Transformations, cotton, ramie, linen, jute are among the traditional fibers featured. Flax gets a wall of its own. Susie Gillespie and Irina Kolesnikova create fiber paintings of flax, with images of a cottage and a curious character, who Kolesnikova calls her alter ego. Also paired are a walnut bark box by Masako Yoshida stitched with flax thread and Stéphanie Jacques’ humanoid flax sculpture mounted on a copper plate.
And there are more — seaweed (Jeannet Leendertse), clay (Toshiko Takaezu, Yasuhisa Kohyama, Valerie Pragnell, Stéphanie Jacques), stones (Christine Joy, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Stéphanie Jacques), and willow (Dail Behennah, Esmé Hofman, John McQueen, Stéphanie Jacques) just to name a few.
Join us at Transformations through May 17th — many more images on our website: https://browngrotta.com/.