At browngrotta arts we promote artists from more than two dozen countries and 15 of the United States. California artists are our largest US artist group with 10 artists, but New York is a close second — including artists who lived and worked in New York like Ethel Stein, Blair Tate, Nancy Koenigsberg, Lenore Tawney, and John McQueen, artists originally from New York, like Karyl Sisson, and those, like Jin-Sook So, Grethe Sørensen, and Toshio Sekiji who were mightily impressed by time spent there.
Here, we share works from this talented and diverse group of artists, works that reflect the ways in which this dynamic place influenced their art.
Jin-Sook So, 49-50jss New York Skyline I + II,, steel mesh, electroplated silver, patinated, gold leaf, thread, 33″ x 39.5″ 2.25″, 2006. Photo by Tom Grotta
Visiting New York from abroad can be eye opening. Jin-Sook So who lives in Sweden and Korea, came to New York on an O visa, for individuals of extraordinary ability and achievement. She expressed New York’s impact in the luminous New York Skyline series. The works are made of steel mesh that has been electroplated in silver, patinated wirh gold leaf and hand stitched with steel thread.
Toshio Sekiji, 15ts NY Street Map Collage, lacquered New York street maps, 29″ x 40″, 1997 and 19ts NYT Collage, lacquered NYT, 31″ x 41″, 1997. Photos by Tom Grotta
Japanese artist Toshio Sekiji was known for creating collages of newspaper torn in strips and lacquered. A visit to New York led him to create NYT Collage made from strips of The New York Times and also inspired him to transform maps of New York streets into a wall work, new York Street Map Collage.
Grethe Sørensen, 18gs Movement, cotton, 89.5″ x 64″ x 1.875″, 2016, tapestry from the arist’s video of a protesting the death of Eric Garner in NYC. Photo by Tom Grotta
Grethe Sørensen of Denmark was on Broadway in New York City while on a visit when she saw people protesting about police brutality toward a black man, Eric Garner, who died while being arrested. A photo of the scene became the tapestry Movement. Sørensen described the process, “A camera’s light-sensitive lens, held open for several seconds, recorded the protest march on the street – a stream of people with banners, placards, and signs. Their motion creates stripes which almost resemble light brushstrokes. Trash bins, newspaper vending boxes, a couple of onlookers, and a photographer stand still in the picture – a little unclear and diffuse. Meanwhile, the road’s arrows, words, and lanes appear as sharp white markings on the black asphalt. The weaving expresses motion in diverse ways: a mental, emotional, political, as well as physical movement.”
Lenore Tawney,3t Shrouded River, linen, wood, 154″ x 22″, ca. 1966-67. Photo by Tom Grotta
Adopted sons and daughters of New York are not untouched. Moving to New York from Chicago, Lenore Tawney was immediately taken by the East River, which she could see from the window of her loft in Coenties Slip in Manhattan. According to the Lenore Tawney Foundation, [The river] “became a motif in the ambitious woven forms that flowed out of her loom and puddled on the floor, where she would finish them by hand with sailor’s knots. She ordered ‘a great deal of black and white linen thread’ and described this as a thrilling time when her work ‘poured out like a fountain or a river…. The river was right out my window, and I looked at it every day.’ Even a sketch in her journal, of the Staten Island Ferry’s wake, looking back to the Manhattan skyline, evokes the delicate threads of her weaving.”
John McQueen, 47jm Site Reading (framed work of previous homes), willow, waxed string, recycled plastic, 58.75″ x 51″ x 4″, 2018. Photo by Tom Grotta
John McQueen had lived in Florida, New Mexico, and Philadelphia before moving to western New York state which he described as “far from the hubbub.” New York willow that he harvested from his yard was his material of choice. And NewYork homes he lived in — including one he built and another that began as a converted auto-repair garage — appear in Site Reading, a wall work he made of willow, waxed string, and recycled plastic.
Ethel Stein, No to Indian Point, cotton damask, 27.75” x 29.5”, 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta
New York Natives were not immune to its charms.The late Ethel Stein was born and educated in art at a progressive school outside of New York. In No to Indian Point, Stein wove an emphatic statement against the continuing operation of Indian Point, a nuclear energy facility in Buchanan, New York, not far from Stein’s home. No to Indian Point is exceptional among Stein’s weavings in its forthright political stance.
Nancy Koenigsberg arrived in New York more than 50 years ago. In the late 70s, she and five other artists formed the Textile Study Group of New York, which now has members worldwide. The works she makes of wire in black and various colors are inspired by varied topics — weather and climate change, geometry, emotions. New York is among those topics, in works like Barbican Towers and Broadway Trio.
88ks Straw Skyline, Karyl Sisson, vintage paper drinking straws and polymer, 14.375″ x 32.5″ x 3″ (linear layout), 2013. Photo by Tom Grotta
88KS For even those who left New York like Karyl Sisson, born in Brooklyn but a resident of California since the 1970s, New York leaves traces. Straw Skyline, made in 2011 of vintage paper straws and polymer looks remarkably familiar to those of us on the East Coast. A testament to the power of the New York state of mind.
This Fall, browngrotta arts will present Continental Drift: Encounters, North and South(October 17 – 25, 2026), an exhibition that will bring together more than 40 leading fiber and sculptural artists from North, Latin, and South America and a group of international artists shaped by encounters with the region. One of the artists we will feature in Continental Drift is Trine Ellitsgaard whose work melds the cultures of Denmark where she was born and that of Oaxaca, Mexico where she has lived since 1990.
Trine Ellitsgaard, photo by Regina-Mejia
“The ordered geometric designs, the muted colors, the soothing balance of forms and textures all seem to express a Scandinavian sensibility in direct contrast to a life spent in Mexico or to traditional Mexican weaving. But the influence is undeniably there,…Trine’s work takes hold of all that she has observed in Mexico, but the Scandinavian in her reconstitutes it into new patterns; out of the meeting of these two cultures emerges a new way of seeing both,” wrote Michael Sledge (“A Latin American Master Who Happens to be Danish,” Latin American Masters, 2010).
One of the primary ways in which the influence of Mexico appears in Ellitsgaard’s work is in her choice of materials. In one work, she melds black rubber into a woven white background of plastic and silk. In Silver Cross, which we’ll include in Continental Drift, she’s used half a dozen materials including, rayon, glass thread, and silver. In Chamila, she’s used wool from a Chamula, a traditional Mexican skirtscreated on a backstrap loom. Other materials with which Ellitsgaard works are gold thread, and nylon, paper and palm, sisal and seeds—as Sledge says, “…the organic is paired with inorganic, luxurious with pedestrian, rough with smooth, shiny with sensual.”
Detail: 1te Chamula, Trine Ellitsgaard, Chamula skirt with agave fiber and silk, nylon, paper with silver, 78″ x 34″ x 4″, 2026. photo Tom Grotta
Agave and espadin regularly appear in Ellitsgaard’s work. We were previously familiar with Ellitsgaard’s affinity for agave as an artistic element through American artist James Bassler. We exhibited Bassler’s piece, Things Past, made of agave fibers, inCrowd sourcing the Collective in 2022. The production of mezcal in Mexico has created excessive agave waste, he explained, but the material has other uses. Ellitsgaard worked with artisans in Oaxaca and the US to create fibers from agave, spin them to create rugs, bags, and artworks. With another friend, artist Kiff Slemmons, Ellitsgaard organized Agave! at the Epiphany Center in Chicago in 2021 which included prints and sculptures, carpets, furniture, apparel, and tapestries like Things Past. “The artists featured in Agave! responded to this environmental crisis by transforming these discarded leaves into fantastic pieces of design,” said Epiphany’s Director of Art & Programming Aaron Baker. “They are participating in a virtuous cycle of turning a problem into an opportunity, of turning waste into beautiful, timeless objects.”
1te Chamula, Trine Ellitsgaard, Chamula skirt with agave fiber and silk, nylon, paper with silver, 78″ x 34″ x 4″, 2026
We are excited to present Ellitsgaard’s unique artistic perspective in Continental Drift. The exhibition will also include work by Kate Hunt, who relocated to Mexico some years ago and now spends time between there and Montana. Hunt continues work on her series of flags made of newspaper — now, some of which now include San Miguel de Allende’s’s bilingual newspaper, Atencion, which includes both English and Spanish words.
Detail: 27kh Experimental #13, Kate Hunt, newspaper, baling twine, steel, 12.5″ x 12.5″ x 3.75″, 2023. photo by Tom Grotta
Summertime and the living is easy … We’ve always loved that song by DuBose Heyward and George Gershwin. It’s not quite easier at browngrotta arts as we have lots of preparation to do for our upcoming fall exhibition and next year’s 40th anniversary celebration, but the pace is a little slower. We spend more time with family and friends and fishing in Maine with art projects in between.
Even if leisurely, life goes on, and we still have plenty of news to share.
The Loewe Craft FoundationAwards for 2026 were presented. Through its Craft Prize, the Loewe Foundation seeks to acknowledge and support international artisans over 18, of any gender who demonstrate an exceptional ability to create objects of superior aesthetic value. By identifying work that “reinterprets existing knowledge to make it relevant today while reflecting its maker’s personal language and distinct hand,” the Foundation aims to “highlight the continuing contribution of craft to the culture of our time.” Two of the artists that work with browngrotta arts were on the short list — Gjertrud Hals of Norway and Misako Nakahira of Japan. They join several other artists that browngrotta arts promotes who have made the shortlist in years past— Mercedes Vincente, Polly Adams Sutton, Yeonsoon Chang, Ferne Jacobs, and Simone Pheulpin, who was also awarded an honor prize. Separately, Loewe has worked with Jiro Yonezawa and Kay Sekimachi to create designs for products for the legendary leather goods retailer.
Works by James Bassler, Dail Behennah, Lia Cook and Neha Puri Dhir. Photo by Tom Grotta.
The fourth edition of the Homo Faber Biennial is titled An Island of Light and runs from September 1 – 30, 2026 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on San Giorgio Maggiore Island in Venice, Italy. Curated by the Michelangelo Foundation with artistic direction by Es Devlin, the event explores the relationship between light, materials, and the human hand. A number of artists who work with browngrotta arts will be part of the Biennial including Jiro Yonezawa, Christine Joy, Jennifer Zurick, Nancy Moore Bess, Simone Pheulpin, Polly Adams Sutton, and Gyöngy Laky. Homo Faber also maintains an online platform dedicated to craftsmanship that provides profiles of artisans worldwide.
Make/Shift exhibition, through September 19th.
In June, we served as Jurors for Make/Shift, an exhibition at the Crown Gallery, Metro Art Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Artists were asked to submit work that “explores the space where material, process, and intention converge — grounded in techniques and materials traditionally associated with functional craft—ceramics, fiber, glass, wood, basketry, and other hand-based practices—reimagined through a fine art lens.” We reviewed more than 150 entries and selected over two dozen intriguing works — of glass, ceramics, jewelry, metal — but a preponderance of the entries were works of fiber. The exhibition will run from August 9th to September 19th.
Work by Ferne Jacobs. Photo by Tom Grotta
Much of our summer has been spent on October Exhibition Planning. In Continental Drift: Encounters, North and South (October 17 – 25), we will explore art from North and South America from two different vantage points. First, we are gathering works by significant artists from the US, Canada, Chile, Venezuela, and Colombia, including Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Carolina Yrarrázaval) many of whom are not just representative of their own countries but have a connection to other regions as well. Second, we will include work by artists from in and outside North and South America who cite art, artists, or experiences from these continents as an influence. We’ve been receiving deliveries from new artists from Argentina and Mexico, and viewed compelling works that artists created after a pilgrimage to another country or a study of an artist from elsewhere. And we’ve been in correspondence with Sarah Parrish, Associate Professor of Art History at Plymouth University, who’ll be writing the catalog essay for Continental Drift.
584mr Carter’s Color Lesson, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool and silk, 7′ x 2′ and 7′ x 4′ x 3″, 1993. Photo by Tom Grotta
Color is a constant in art, while its potential for new and unique applications is limitless. Artists at browngrotta arts have taken the challenge to heart — finding inspiration in the teachings of Josef Albers, the art of Color Fields painter Mark Rothko, and systems of their own design.
Detail: 37sl Dictionary – Light Indigo, Sue Lawtyindigo-dyed, natural hemp, linen, 21.5 x 13, 2026. Photo by Tom GrottaDetail: 1mkes Rhythm of Colors, Merja Keskinen, 80% linen, 20% cotton, 56″ x 62″, 2022. Photo by Tom GrottaDetail: 22jbas The Yarns I Have Carried # 2, James Bassler, four selvaged weaving: left over warp and weft yarns from the past 65 years, including handspun and manufactured material, natural and synthetic dyed wool, silk, linen, cotton and ramie, 30″ x 31″ x 2.5″, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta
In Bauhaus artist and teacher Josef Albers’s universe, color seduced and beguiled (The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation: https://www.albersfoundation.org/alberses/teaching/interaction-of-color). “These characteristics made color the most fascinating of art’s formal elements. Albers’s passion for color prompted his decision to launch what was possibly the first full-blown course in color ever given anywhere, and certainly the first based exclusively on direct observation of color’s behavior. . . . Color behaved. Color was magic.”
At Black Mountain College in the 1930s he introduced a color course unique at the time, followed by courses at Yale University and the publication of Albers’s landmark Interaction of Color in 1963, which crowned 30 years of effort. His exercises focused on color in specific contexts, showing that if you put color A next to color B, or these colors next to those, you could anticipate certain results. Moving from simple to complex, with many exercises exploring the ramifications of a previous one, the course awakened the students to the quirks and variables of color behavior. The course was not a fixed body of color wisdom, but rather an ongoing inquiry in which solutions were not conclusions, but steps on an endless path.
1mkes Rhythm of Colors, Merja Keskinen, 80% linen, 20% cotton, 56″ x 62″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta
Merja Keskinen engages in color experiments of her own navigating between following a system, as Albers did, and making room for discovery. Keskinen describes this generative uncertainty: “I work to see. The joy of discovery and the delight of experiencing colors are essential to me. The unpredictability and always-surprising color tones captivate me. I interpret life and the surrounding world with colors and explore the factors that influence color perception.” In works like, Rhythm of Colors, Keskinen works with a self-developed weaving technique, combining different-colored threads according to her preselected system, creating geometric square and rectangular shapes in various sizes whose surfaces produce a pixel-like optical blending — distinguishable as individual threads up close, but merging into wholly unexpected color combinations from a distance. Her work demonstrates that even the most rigorously systematic approach — mathematics applied to thread — contains inevitable surprise. The material collaborates, producing results the artist could not fully predict.
22jbas The Yarns I Have Carried # 2, James Bassler, four selvaged weaving: left over warp and weft yarns from the past 65 years, including handspun and manufactured material, natural and synthetic dyed wool, silk, linen, cotton and ramie, 30″ x 31″ x 2.5″, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta
In his Threads I’ve Carried series James Bassler takes Albers’s Color Theory as a literal influence. The works reflect what the artist learned in his first “Color” class at UCLA in1953 once he realized that there was an “Art Department.” The head counselor at Santa Monica HighSchool had refused to allow him to take a Ceramics class because his GPA was too high. He pursued art, despite that first obstacle, and later Bassler would teach Josef Albers’s Color Theory at UCLA for some 25 years. This work is made of left-over warp and weft yarns from the past 65 years, including handspun and manufactured material, natural and synthetic dyed wool, silk, linen, cotton, and ramie. The result, is a four-selvaged weaving, a color study using complementary colors, In works from the series, Bassler explored a new bag of saved yarns, which presented new thoughts. “How bright or dark can I go before it upsets the whole idea,” he asks. “In this piece I pushed the subtle to almost disappear and the bright to almost overwhelm.”
Chroma, Nancy Koenigsberg, coated copper wire 26 .5″ x 26.5″ x 2″, 2024. Photo courtesy of Nancy Koenigsberg
Nancy Koenigsberg’s Chroma is the artist’s version of a painter’s palette which took her more than six months. to complete. The sculptural artwork of coated, colored copper wire is comprised of four horizontal rows of small squares and four vertical rows, occupying an area 26 inches square. Each individual square is created by sewing and weaving coated copper wire and building layers of the color to a depth of 2.5 inches. The color combinations and contrasts challenge and engage the viewer both visually and conceptually.
37sl Dictionary – Light Indigo, Sue Lawtyindigo-dyed, natural hemp, linen, 21.5 x 13, 2026. Photo by Tom Grotta
In her Indigo Cloth series, Sue Lawty explores the innumerable variations of blue. In one series, Notes on Blue, Lawty commissioned a range of linen and hemp hreads to be hand dyed with indigo by Jeanette Orrell in Wales. Lawty purposely requested a range of unevenly dyed shades across the tonal spectrum and then worked intuitively, reading the weaving line by line as it progressed. In Dictionary – Light IndigoWoven Tapestry, she explores more gradations of blue. Lawty pursues the inherent qualities of any material with which she works, seeking “an understated restraint, balance, tension, rhythm: an essential stillness.” In Lawty’s practice, color feels less applied than absorbed — as though the fiber had always held it within.
613mr Si Rothko Métait Conté, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 94” x 80”, 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta
Experiments in color were the hallmark of members of the Color Fields movement of the 1950s and 60s. Color Fields artists, among them Mark Rothko, created abstract paintings featuring large areas of solid color, flat surfaces, and a unified single-image field. Rothko’s work with color was a potent influence for fiber artist Mariette Rousseau-Vermette. The Canadian artist saw an exhibition of the Rothko’s works in Italy in 1958. It was pivotal in inspiring her “to produce strictly artistic works in weaving,” Anne Newlands wrote in Weaving Modernist Art: The Life and Times of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, Ontario, 2023, p. 32). Throughout Rousseau-Vermette’s life, Newlands says, Rothko triggered “compositions with floating blocks of color, soft edges and her signature brushed wool technique to create a blending of colors and a sense of inner light.” Her interest in Rothko “marked her as a colorfield artist-weaver, fueling her ambition to create large-scale tapestries that would engulf the viewer and employ powerful chromatic contrasts of light and dark to evoke an emotional response.”
26sr Untitled Red #71, Scott Rothsteinhand stitched silk thread on silk ground, black frame with denglass 12.75″ x 14.75″, 2002
Scott Rothstein also works in fields of color in vivid embroideries of silk like Untitled #71. “I have felt compelled to explore the subtleties of basic visual elements for 20 years,” he explains. “I find the simplest elements to be the most profound. A line, created by twisting threads, can have infinite possibilities. Two areas of color, in equal amounts, placed consecutively, might suggest harmony or contradiction.”
However articulated, these explorations of color and its potential intrigue and engage the viewer just as they the artist.
