We’re just one month away from the opening of Continental Drift: Encounters, North and South (October 17–25) at browngrotta arts. The exhibition uses the concept of “continental drift”—the tectonic separation and reshaping of landmasses—as a metaphor for how artistic traditions migrate, collide, and transform across the Americas. The survey brings together museum-quality art textiles, three-dimensional sculptures, and fiber works from emblematic artists across the US, Canada, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, along with works by artists from outside the hemisphere whose encounters with North and South American land, art, and culture have shaped their practice.
Materiality is a central concern for many of the artists in Continental Drift. Rosana Escobar of Colombia explores the qualities of raw fique fiber and its affinity with horsehair. Trine Ellitsgaard, a Danish artist who has lived in Mexico since 1990; incorporates agave and espadín regularly in her work. The production of mezcal in Mexico generates significant agave waste, but the material has other uses—Ellitsgaard has worked with artisans in Oaxaca and the US to turn agave into fiber, spinning it into rugs, bags, and other artworks. Renowned Colombian artist, Olga de Amaral, studied architecture in Bogotá and then at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the US. She uses gesso, paint, and plaster to create sculptural surfaces and gold leaf to achieve resonant reflective effects — blurring the line between textiles and architecture.
Technical exchange is another way art practice moves among continents and artists. Andean weaving traditions influenced the iconic style of American artist Sheila Hicks. During a Fulbright scholarship in Chile in the 1950s, Hicks studied and photographed indigenous weavers and archaeological sites in the Andes, learning native techniques like the four-selvage panel and discontinuous warp. American James Bassler lived full-time in Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1970s, an experience that gave him direct exposure to indigenous weaving traditions and profoundly shaped his practice. In Chile, Carolina Yrarrázaval has studied textiles across diverse cultures, with particular attention to pre-Columbian techniques.
A third form of influence among the artists in Continental Drift is a mentorship of sorts. Gyöngy Laky, Lia Cook, and Tim Johnson are among the many artists working across mediums who point to the teachings, writings, and work of American artist Ed Rossbach as revelatory. Rossbach’s research in the 1960s into historical textiles and baskets, including Pre-columbian textiles, opened up areas of innovation and experimentation in the work and teaching of UK artist Tim Johnson. In his current basketwork, Johnson pursues interests similar to Rossbach’s, drawing on the study of ancient techniques and artifacts as inspiration for contemporary making and innovation. For Federica Luzzi of Italy, Lenore Tawney provided that inspiration. Ferne Jacobs took workshops with Tawney and Olga de Amaral in the course of establishing her uniquely personal sculptural approach to textiles. Leon Niehues admired the sculptural work of Dorothy Gill Barnes and John McQueen, who used natural materials from their respective environments—Ohio and New York—to sculpt objects using basket techniques, an approach that left its mark on Niehues’s own work.
The geography and culture of North and South America offer another source of artistic impact. After the destruction of his kiln in Japan, Yasuhisa Kohyama found a guidepost in the American Southwest, which led him to create nontraditional, asymmetric forms suggesting windswept canyons and rock towers. Eduardo Portillo and María Dávila have traveled throughout Venezuela, encountering materials and a diversity of people, customs, and ways of life; back in the studio, they translate this cultural and material richness into textile qualities that merge traditional processes with contemporary perspectives. Polly Sutton and Mary Giles sought basketmaking knowledge from Native Americans—the Salish tribes in Sutton’s case, and the Apache and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in Giles’s. Joe Feddersen, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, and Dawn Walden, an Ojibwe descendant and member of the Mackinac Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, continue Native American traditions while bringing a contemporary and distinctly personal perspective to the objects they create.
Whether the influence is material, cultural, geographical, or some combination of all three, the artists in Continental Drifthave each brushed against something from North or South America, and their work has been transformed as a result. The exhibition reveals these transformations in intriguing ways—well worth seeing and comparing in person, online, or in print in the Continental Drift catalog.
Make an appointment here: https://browngrotta.com/exhibitions/continental-drift-encounters-north-and-south. Order a catalog on our website after October 15, 2026.