In Print: Beauty is Resistance

November 19, 2025 0 Comment
Title Page Beauty is Resistance Catalog
Works by Abby Mackie and Randy Walker. Photo by Tom Grotta

If an exhibition takes place but there is no catalog to document it, did anyone see it? Certainly not enough people have seen it, as far as browngrotta arts is concerned.  That’s why we produce a catalog for nearly every exhibition we host.

Nnenna Okore spread

We had hundreds of people visit our Fall 2025 exhibition,  Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote. But we also cowry to share the remarkable works in Beauty with even more people through our installation video and Zoom talkthrough, both on our YouTube channel, and through the print version of the show, a catalog (our 61st), available on our website.

Yong Joo Kim Spread

The 132-page catalog contains 125 full-color images. There are full view and detail images of each of the featured works in the exhibition. There are statements about each work in the catalog. The works in the exhibition fell loosely into four subthemes: Reading Between the Lines, Threads of Memory, Radical Ornament, and Ritual and Reverence, and the catalog identifies the category that each work falls into.

Gizella Warburton Spread

Elizabeth Essner, Windgate Associate Curator at the Museum of Art, Houston contributed an insightful essay to the catalog, “Looking at Beauty.” Essner writes about the role of nature in many of the artists’ work — for materials, lessons, and poetic inspiration. She examines varying historic conceptions of beauty, subjective, objective, and embodied, and discusses the significance of prevailing cultural aesthetics. in summarizing beauty’s pivotal place in art, Essner quotes late art critic Peter Schjeldahl (1942 – 2022) who predicted that in the future, “beauty will be what it always has been and, despite everything, is now in furtive and inarticulate ways: an irrepressible, anarchic, healing human response without which life is a mistake.”

Lia Cook Spread

Order your copy on our website. If it’s a gift, let us know at art@browngrotta.com before December 15th and we will gift wrap your copy before we send it.

Kay Sekimachi Spread

Exploring the Dimensions of Display

November 12, 2025 0 Comment
Clytemnestra wire sculptures by Deborah Valomae on and off the wall
20dv Clytemnestra (Undone), copper wire, woven, patinated, unwoven, wound, series of 5 balls, 6″ x 6″ to 12″ x 12,” 2001. Photos by Tom Grotta

The way we experience an artwork is deeply influenced by its setting. Context—whether physical, spatial, or digital—acts as a lens that shapes how we interpret and emotionally respond to a piece. We experienced the impact of context quite graphically in the early days of browngrotta arts. Our first space had a room with a brown linoleum floor. We displayed three red-and-black canvas paintings in there — they attracted absolutely no interest. We finally sprung for a black floor. Suddenly the paintings popped, we sold the paintings within weeks to a client who’d actually seen them before, but not noticed them. 

Arezzo Katagami-style handcarved by Jennifer Falck Linssen on and off the wall
9jl Arezzo, Jennifer Falck Linssen, Katagami-style handcarved archival cotton paper, aluminum, waxed linen, paint, and varnish, 6.5” x 30” x 9”, 2011. Photos by Tom Grotta

We’ve since learned more about the difference a well-thought out framing solution can make. We’ve learn to consider varying display options — on a surface and or a wall. And of course, as a hallmark of browngrotta arts, we’ve become proponents of off-the-wall installation for nearly everything. In this post we’ll talk about what a difference a display can make and we’ll illustrate that discussion with examples of works that display well — but often quite differently — when shown flat versus elevated. 

Large interlaced Keiji Nio Sculpture on and off the wall
14kn Interlacing Red, Keiji Nio, Large nylon fiber wall sculpture, 52″ x 52″ x 15.5”, 2004-2016. Photos by Tom Grotta

In a museum or gallery, the environment invites quiet reflection. Controlled lighting, open space, and minimal distractions encourage focused engagement. In contrast, a public space transforms viewing into a more spontaneous and social act. A mural on a busy street or a sculpture in a park becomes part of everyday movement and conversation. The artwork interacts with architecture, weather, and passersby, taking on new meanings shaped by its surroundings. browngrotta arts adopted the concept of “art in use” nearly 40 years ago. We intentionally eschew the “white cube” approach, choosing instead to show artworks in a residential setting with backgrounds of brick, wood, window, steel, and dry wall. We photograph art in the same way — including a bit of window frame or furniture for scale and for context.

Federica Luzzi Red Shell on and off the wall
16fl Macrame’ Red Shell 1, Federica Luzzi, knotted linen cord, hematite powder, 12” x 11” x 10”, 2021. Photos by Tom Grotta

The digital versus physical context offers another layer of contrast. Seeing an artwork online or in a book provides accessibility but lacks the scale, texture, and material presence of the original. Standing before a large painting or a textured sculpture can evoke a visceral reaction that a screen cannot replicate. The digital experience flattens, while the physical presence immerses. We’d go a step further and say that viewing a fiber sculpture hung away from the wall, lit to enhance its dimension and capacity for  shadow, offers an even more captivating experience. 

Venus Trapped, Norma Minkowitz ON AND OFF THE WALL
123nm Venus Trapped, Norma Minkowitz, mixed media fiber, 19.25″ x 50″ x 38″, 1997. Photos by Tom Grotta

Within physical spaces, display choices significantly alter perception. An artwork displayed on a wall—such as a painting, photograph, or relief—often encourages a frontal, visual engagement. Wall art draws the eye upward and outward, transforming flat surfaces into expressions of color, movement, and meaning.The viewer remains slightly distanced, observing the work as an image or window into another world. In contrast, an artwork placed on a pedestal invites a more three-dimensional, sculptural interaction. The pedestal elevates the object, granting it importance and encouraging viewers to move around it, to see it from multiple perspectives. This spatial relationship emphasizes the artwork’s physicality and objecthood.

Organic 2 Wlodimierz Cygan on and off the wall
21wc Organic 2, Wlodimierz Cygan, viscose, polyester, linen, plastic tube, weaving, 34″ x 86″, 2019. Photos by Tom Grotta

Finally, the adjacent works and curatorial decisions surrounding an artwork shape how it is read. A piece displayed among others with shared themes or contrasts can create narratives, tensions, or dialogues. The context of display becomes part of the artwork’s meaning.

Ultimately, no artwork exists in isolation. Whether encountered in a hushed gallery, a bustling street, a digital space, as part of curated residential collection, or elevated on a pedestal, its setting transforms not only how we see it—but also how we understand its place in the world.

Last Call: We Visit Autumn Exhibits in NY and CT

November 5, 2025 0 Comment

Between exhibitions and catalog production we — Tom and Rhonda at browngrotta arts — try to get out and take in some art and entertainment. This October and November are no exception. We’ve been able to visit five exhibitions over the last few weeks. Three of them close shortly — on Sunday, the fourth in December.  A sixth that we recommend is open until next May. We urge you to get out to see them while you can.

John McQueen, Caught Out
John McQueen, Caught Out, 2009/2020. Photo by Tom Grotta

John McQueen Memorial Exhibition 
The Tang Museum
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY
Through November 9th

In honor of John McQueen (1943-2025), the Tang presents the John McQueen Memorial Exhibition from November 2–9. McQueen was a conceptual fiber artist whose work was featured in the Tang exhibitions Affinity Atlas (2015) and The World According to the Newest and Most Exact Observations: Mapping Art and Science (2001). The works selected for the Memorial exhibition include McQueen’s first basket from 1975, Caught Out, a self portrait completed 35 years later, and, A Tree and its Skin. a reflective diptych sculpture that was among the artist’s favorites.

works by Margo Mensing
Works by Margo Mensing including you had better do this, canvas with machine embroidered text, 60″ x 84″, 2000. Photo by J. Shermeta

Crux of the Matter: Work by Margo Mensing and Sayward Schoonmaker
The Schick Art Gallery
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY
Through November 9th

Crux of the Matter presents work by Margo Mensing, (1941 – 2024), Skidmore College Fiber Arts professor, interdisciplinary artist and poet and Sayward Schoonmaker, Skidmore ’06, interdisciplinary artist, writer, and former student of Mensing. “Both artists play with language,” the Art Gallery notes, “using subtle humor as underpinning, and both approach their work through a conceptual lens, starting with an idea and then finding the physical form to best serve it.” Mensing’s works range from weavings and quilts to her sculptural response to Ghiberti’s 15th Century Gates of Paradise, monumental bronze doors that feature ten Old Testament scenes in square panels. Mensing’s wooden doors, also monumental, feature ten household tips (such as, “Tenderize tough meat in 1 Tbsp vinegar and 1 pint water”) each incised in a square linoleum panel.

As Mensing’s son, J. Shermeta notes, her magnum opus was her “Dead at” series. Each year beginning on her birthday, October 4th, Mensing created a presentation, or a performance centered on the life and accomplishments of a famous person who died at her current age. Starting with J Robert Oppenheimer at age 63 in 2004, Margo created artwork, poetry, and organized group performances about the lives and work of Joan Mitchell, Elizabeth Bishop, Denise Levertov, Walt Disney, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Donald Judd ,and Louis Armstrong. To celebrate the life and magic of Louis Armstrong, for example, Mensing choreographed STOPTIME: Louis Armstrong Festival, bringing together musicians, artists, and performers to create over a dozen events from 4 to midnight on July 6, 2011. The Horns of Hudson band played, art teachers hosted a “Rhythm! Color! Collage!” workshop for kids, tap dancers performed and joy–inspired by the music of Louis Armstrong–was shared by all.

The Schick exhibition includes a wide range of thought-provoking works, early abstract weavings, the lovely lyrical machine-embroidered poem, you had better do this, items from the Dead at series and from other of Mensing’s projects including a group of glass pipes created as part of A Very Liquid Heaven, a multimedia installation and performance event that examined science and the universe.  Also included in Crux of the Matter, are intriguing works by Sayward Schoonmaker. As the Art Center describes the collection, “from poems written in letters formed by pencil shavings, to Slice, a table with a glittering black surface interrupted by slivers of white substructure, she employs exquisite craftsmanship throughout. Her works feel like unadorned truths, simultaneously urgent and familiar, plainly-stated and enigmatic.”

Vietnam: Tradition Upended
Vietnam: Tradition Upended, Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Vietnam: Tradition Upended
Flinn Gallery
Greenwich, CT
Through November 9th

In collaboration with the Art Vietnam Gallery in Hanoi, the Flinn Gallery has organized Vietnam: Tradition Upended. The exhibition was curated by Debra Fram and Barbara Richards, who have worked with browngrotta arts on previous exhibitions at the Flinn, and Suzanne Lecht from Art Vietnam Gallery. The exhibition’s origins are several years old.  Fram and Richards had travelled to Vietnam in 2019 and in Hanoi met Lecht, who it turned out, had lived in Greenwich on the 80s. The three remained in contact and over the next four years, Vietnam: Tradition Upended  took shape. The exhibition features nine interdisciplinary artists who work in a variety of mediums and styles. We were excited by the diversity on display and particularly taken by the mixed media works of Nguyen Cam (b.1944, Haiphong, Vietnam) and the calligraphic statements of Pham Van Tuan (b.1979, Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam), 35 years his junior.

As The Flinn notes, the artists in Vietnam: Tradition Upended all take time-honored traditions and materials and rework them in a modern context, acknowledging the past while simultaneously breaking away. With 2025 marking exactly half a century since the end of the Vietnam War, and 30 years since the normalization of relations between Vietnam and the U.S., this is an opportune time to acquaint ourselves with the art and culture of a country that has undergone extraordinary change; a country with one of the most interesting and vibrant art scenes in Southeast Asia.

Making Tracks, 2016 quilt
Kenya Baleech Alkebu (quilt design), Maureen Kelleher (quilting), Harriet Tubman, Making Tracks, 2016 at Stitching Time. Photo by Tom Grotta

Stitching Time: The Social Justice Collaboration Quilts Project
Fairfield Gallery Art Museum/Walsh Gallery
Fairfield, CT
Through December 13, 2025

Stitching Time features 12 quilts created by men who are incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison. We listed the exhibition here a few weeks ago, but having the chance to see the creativity and careful creation of these works in person was a treat. These works of art, and accompanying recorded interviews, tell the story of a unique inside-outside quilt collaboration. The exhibition focuses our attention on the quilt creators, people often forgotten by society when discussing the history of the U.S. criminal justice system. Also on view in the gallery is Give Me Life, a curated selection of strong works from women artists presently or formerly incarcerated at York Correctional Institution, a maximum security state prison in Niantic, Conn., courtesy of Community Partners in Action (CPA). The CPA’s Prison Arts Program was initiated in 1978 and, operating since 1875, it is one of the longest-running projects of its kind in the United States. The quilts and CPA artworks are poignant, hopeful, and often aesthetically impressive. If you can’t visit by December, check out the exhibition’s website where you’ll find images, videos, and a flip-through catalog.

Jeremy Frey baskets
Jeremy Frey baskets at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta

Jeremy Frey: Woven
The Bruce Museum
Greenwich, CT
Closed

We visited Jermey Frey: Woven at the Bruce Museum just before it closed at the end of October. Frey’s virtuosity as a seventh-generation basketmaker, steeped in the Passamaquoddy tradition, was clearly evident in this remarkable retrospective. However, we were also excited and surprised to see Frey’s prints, which were striking. The exhibition had traveled from the Portland Museum of Art and if you missed it in Maine or Greenwich, there are many resources you can access to see the works that were included and learn about Frey’s meticulous process. There are images of 18 works and links to several articles from ArtDaily to The New York Times on the PAM website. There are also links to videos about the artist.

Uman: After all the things…(installation view, I’m staying inside, 2025), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, October 19, 2025, to May 10, 2026. Courtesy of the artist, Nicola Vassell Gallery, and Hauser & Wirth. ©Uman. Photo: Olympia Shannon

Uman: After all the things
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Ridgefield, CT
Through May 10, 2026

We have not had a chance to visit Uman: After all the things at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut but we will. As the Museum observes, “Uman’s practice, which spans painting, works on paper, murals, sculpture, and glass, is about color that is felt and content that is experienced. Under the influence of memories, dreams, and change, her visual language is intuitive, multilayered, adaptable, and free; neither exclusively abstract nor metaphorical, it proliferates in the indeterminate and transcendent.” Uman says that her work “offers an escape …. [m]y work is its own activism.” She wants her work to “feel good for the audience.” This is an approach also taken by some of the artists in browngrotta arts’ recent exhibition, Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote.  We look forward to being engaged, uplifted, and inspired.

Hope you’ll get a chance to view one or more of the exhibitions, in-person or online.

Art Assembled: October

October 29, 2025 0 Comment

October was another month of intriguing artworks.; we featured four works from our recent exhibition, Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote. In Beauty, we celebrated artists for whom aesthetic creation serves as a form of radical defiance, cultural preservation, and political voice. In the exhibition, international artists spanning generations and geographies, challenged the notion of beauty as mere indulgence and reframed it as a tool for protest, remembrance, and imagination. 

Aby Mackie Gold wall hanging
Aby Mackie, We Can All Be Saved 19, repurposed textile, gold and copper leaf, shellac
79″ x 35″, 2024. Photo by Tom Grotta

First up was Aby Mackie’s Fragments of a Life Lived 3  made in 2025. Mackie’s textile-based artwork engages with themes of ecology, history, and resistance through a process of reclamation and transformation. Working with discarded historic textiles, she deconstructs and reconfigures them—disrupting their original function to create new meaning. In Fragments of a Life Lived 3 she used antique-ticking fabric as both material and metaphor. Once utilitarian, worn by time and use, the fabric is reconstructed through stitching and further manipulated with paint and gold leaf. These interventions reimagine its surface to form layered, disrupted visual narratives—echoing stories of erosion, endurance, and renewal. The use of gold leaf requires viewers to stop and consider what should be valued and what should be discarded.

Blue/Green Cooper Nancy Koenigsberg Wall sculpture
Nancy Koenigsberg, Ocean, coated copper wire, 32″ x 32″ x 3″, 2025, Photo by Tom Grotta

Next we focused on Ocean by Nancy Koenigsberg. The work is a meditation on movement and endurance, rendered in wire—an industrial material shaped into an evocation of tides, currents, and undertow. The piece positions material practice as a form of quiet defiance—an insistence on remembering, marking, and enduring. “The work is concerned with ecology,” Koenigsberg says, “as I’ve been very perturbed by the recent flooding and storms across the country.”

Mary Giles Waxed linen figurative sculpture
Mary Giles, 25mg Grey Shadow, waxed linen with iron base, 24.75” x 10.625” x 5”, 2001. Photo by Tom Grotta

In Grey Shadow, by Mary Giles, the human figure is used both as a formal reference and as an element of commentary. Throughout her career, Giles investigated various media including waxed linen, porcupine quills, and a number of metals like copper and iron. Giles often used coiling—a process associated with Native American basket traditions—to move between two and three dimensions in her sculpture. Giles said of her work, “I interpret and express explored communication and intimacy in relationships. The results are reflected in my figural work. I admire the directness and honesty I see in tribal art and I try to incorporate those qualities in my own.”

Neha Puri Dhir silk textile
Neha Puri Dhir, 11npd Luster of Time, pleating and stitch-resist dyeing on handwoven silk, 18.75″ x 18.25″ x 2.5″, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

The last work we looked at in October was Luster of Time, by Neha Puri Dhir. Dhir‘s textile study has been broad based, including time at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, studies in Italy, Latvia, the UK, and a workshop with Americans Yoshiko Wada and Jack Larsen. Dhir has intentionally explored a variety of textile techniques, developing a particular appreciation for shibori and stitch resist. The delicate lines and textures in Luster of Time, evoke the beauty of aging and the stories embedded in the passage of time. The deep circular form at the center suggests a meditative stillness, grounding the viewer amidst the rhythmic folds. This piece celebrates time as a collaborator, turning fabric into a canvas where aging itself becomes a mark of grace and resilience.

If you’d like to learn more about the works in Beauty in Resistance you can purchase a catalog on our website or join us at a talkthrough of images from the exhibition on Zoom, Art on the Rocks: an art talkthrough with spirits, on November 11, 7 pm EST. 

Art Out and About — US

October 22, 2025 0 Comment

It’s an exciting art autumn in the US. Below, the 411 on several exhibitions worth visiting., coast to coast

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective on view
Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective on view at The Museum of Modern Art from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Digital Image © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Jonathan Dorado.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
Through February 7, 2026
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, New York
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5768

An expansive retrospective of the eloquent work of Ruth Asawa has traveled to New York from San Francisco MoMA. The exhibition coincides with the artist’s 100 birthday, the exhibition includes some 300 objects that highlight the core values of experimentation and interconnectedness pervading all dimensions of Asawa’s practice. The retrospective spans 60 years of Asawa’s ambitious career, presenting a range of her work across mediums, including wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, paintings, and a comprehensive body of works on paper. The artworks are accompanied by a rich array of archival materials—photographs, documents, and ephemera—that illuminate her public commissions, art advocacy, and meaningful, lasting relationships with members of her community.

Sheila Hicks, Rempart
Sheila Hicks, Rempart, 2016. Photo: Oliver Roura

New Work: Sheila Hicks
Through August 9, 2026
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 3rd Street
San Francisco, California
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/new-work-sheila-hicks/

Still at SFMoMA is Sheila Hicks’s first solo exhibition there, a site-specific installation in the museum’s New Work gallery. According to the museum, the works are inspired by objects, textures, and patterns observed in her adopted city or in her migratory life. Each draws from places with personal significance, from the cobblestones of her courtyard to the towering lighthouses of the rocky island of Ouessant, France and its treacherous and rugged landscape.

Carina Yepez
Carina Yepez. Made in collaboration with Maricela Herrera (auntie) and Lula Yepez (mom) and in gratitude to Amalia Martínez from La Haciendita, Guanajuato, Mexico. Mujeres (Women), 2023. Collection of the artist.

On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival
Through March 15, 2026
Art Institute of Chicago
159 East Monroe Street
Chicago, Illinois
https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9772/on-loss-and-absence-textiles-of-mourning-and-survival

In the center of the country is a themed exhibition at the Art Institute in Chicago. Drawn primarily from the museum’s collection, On Loss and Absence brings together over 100 objects from diverse cultures dating from antiquity to today to reveal the ways people use textiles to sustain spiritual beliefs, understand death, cope with grief, remember those who have passed, and heal from trauma, both personally and collectively.

Back on the East Coast, there are five exhibitions of interest — two in Connecticut, two in New York and one in New Jersey. 

Red, White and Baldwin
Red, White and Baldwin, 2016, Kenya Baleech Alkebu (quilt design), Maureen Kelleher (quilting)
from Stitching Time. Photo Maureen Kelleher. Fairfield University Art Musuem.

Stitching Time: The Social Justice Collaboration Quilts Project 
Through December 13, 2025
Fairfield University Art Museum
1073 Benson Road
Fairfield, Connecticut
https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/exhibitions/current-exhibitions

At the Fairfield University Art Museum, Stitching Time features 12 quilts created by men who are incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison. These works of art, and accompanying recorded interviews, tell the story of a unique inside-outside quilt collaboration. The exhibition focuses our attention on the quilt creators, people often forgotten by society when discussing the history of the US. criminal justice system. Also on view in the gallery will be Give Me Life, a selection of works from women artists presently or formerly incarcerated at York Correctional Institution, a maximum security state prison in Niantic, CT, courtesy of Community Partners in Action (CPA). 

Jeremy Frey
Jeremy Frey, Basket Within A Basket, 2012. Courtesy of the Bruce Museum

Jeremy Frey: Woven
Through October 26, 2025
The Bruce Museum
1 Museum Drive
Greenwich, Connecticut
https://brucemuseum.org/exhibitions/jeremy-frey-woven/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19816342960&gbraid=0AAAAADFvx1CiuOUzWvTKKQPD8aRSirAut

You have just a few days to see the first major retrospective of Jeremy Frey’s work. Jeremy Frey: Woven presents a comprehensive survey — 50 baskets — from 20 years of Frey’s prolific career. A seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket maker and one of the most celebrated Indigenous weavers in the country, Frey learned traditional Wabanaki weaving techniques from his mother and through apprenticeships at the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. While Frey builds on these cultural foundations in his work, he also pushes the creative limits of his medium, producing conceptually ambitious and meticulously crafted baskets that reflect not only his technical skill as a weaver but also his profound ecological knowledge of and connection to the Passamaquoddy ancestral territory of the Northeastern Woodlands.

In New York City there are two opportunities to celebrate the work of remarkable artist Kay Sekimachi, who turned 99 last month. 

Kay Sekimachi: a personal archive
Kay Sekimachi: a personal archive installation, Andrew Kreps Gallery. Photo Tom Grotta

Kay Sekimachi: a personal archive
Through November 1, 2025
Andrew Kreps Gallery
394 Broadway
New York, New York
https://www.andrewkreps.com/exhibitions/kay-sekimachi2

This exhibition of works by the Berkeley-based artist Kay Sekimachi, was organized in collaboration with browngrotta arts. It includes rare, early works from Sekimachi’s personal archive — weavings and assemblages.  The exhibition is the first of the artist’s work in New York since 1970.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Giggling Machine
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Giggling Machine, Self Portrait as Blonde, 1968. wax, wig, feathers, Plexiglass, wood, sensor, and sound, 16 1/2 × 16 1/2 × 13 in. (41.9 × 41.9 × 33 cm). Promised gift to Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH. © Lynn Hershman Leeson

Sixties Surreal
Through January 19, 2026
Whitney Museum of Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, New York 
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/sixties-surreal

One of Kay Sekimachi’s innovative and celebrated monofilament weavings is included in Sixties Surreal at the Whitney. Sixties Surreal  is an ambitious, scholarly reappraisal of American art from 1958 to 1972, encompassing the work of more than 100 artists. This revisionist survey looks beyond now canonical movements to focus instead on the era’s most fundamental, if underrecognized, aesthetic current—an efflorescence of psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary tendencies, undergirded by the imprint of historical Surrealism and its broad dissemination. The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalog and a playlist.

And in New Jersey …

Lenore Tawney Tapestry
Lenore Tawney, Morning Redness, 1974. Photo by Tom Grotta courtesy of the Grotta Collection.

Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay
October 31, 2025 – July 5, 2026
Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton University Campus
Princeton, NJ
https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/toshiko-takaezu-dialogues-clay

The groundbreaking ceramic artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011), who taught at Princeton University for almost three decades will be celebrated in Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay beginning October 31st. Drawing from the Museum’s deep holdings of Takaezu’s ceramics, Dialogues in Clay explores the artist’s experimental practice, including her signature “closed” forms and painterly glazing. Placing Takaezu’s sculptures in conversation with the work of teachers and contemporaries who embarked on parallel pathways of innovation—including Helen Frankenthaler, Maija Grotell, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Lenore Tawney, and Peter Voulkos,— alongside reflections by her students, the exhibition positions Takaezu as one of the most important ceramic artists of the twentieth century.

Much to Enjoy!

Kisetsukan – Pursuing Seasonal Sense in Art

October 15, 2025 0 Comment

The weather’s changing here in Connecticut. Sweaters come out of storage, and sandals and sleeveless shirts are packed away. Light-colored duvets give way to warmer quilts and flannels. Pumpkins appear on porches and shelves, paving the way for twinkling lights in December.

What if we gave our art collections the same seasonal revisit?

The Japanese embrace this idea through a practice called kisetsukan, or “seasonal sense” — an aesthetic and cultural principle deeply rooted in their appreciation of nature and the home. This approach doesn’t just apply to art but extends to festivals, food, clothing, and everyday life. Kisetsukan reflects an awareness of the seasons and their emotional impact — something echoed in many cultures.

Sara Brennan, Gali Cnaani, Mary Merkel-Hess Details
Sara Brennan, Gali Cnaani, Mary Merkel-Hess, Lia Cook: Trees, woods and greenery in varying views.

Substituting artwork throughout the year can shift one’s emotional response and renew our connection with both the art and the environment around us. A single piece viewed in spring might evoke freshness and renewal; that same piece in the depths of winter could feel nostalgic or even melancholy.

One beautiful example is Paul Furneaux’s City Trees II, City Lights II, a memory of a hidden park in Tokyo where luminous white and pale pink cherry blossoms contrasted against dark-barked pines and the brutalist concrete and glass of the surrounding buildings — a moment of heightened beauty and tension. Works like this could be rotated in and out as the days lengthen or shorten, responding to the mood of the season.

Katherine Westphal, Merja Winqvist, Nancy Koenigsberg, Paul Furneaux details
Katherine Westphal (Fall Leaves); Merja Winqvist (Long Hot Summer); Nancy Koenigsberg (Winter Field), Paul Furneaux (City Trees II and City Lights II). Seasons highlighted in disparate media.

The Benefits of Seasonal Rotation

Rotating your artwork seasonally can:

  • Deepen your connection to nature by aligning your interior space with what’s happening outside.
  • Enhance appreciation for individual works by seeing them with fresh eyes each time they return.
  • Spark reflection on the passage of time and the impermanence of beauty — what the Japanese call mono no aware, a bittersweet awareness of life’s fleeting nature.
  • Expand your collection by giving you reason to collect more works and experiment with pairings, contrasts, and themes.

You don’t need to collect four new works for each season to begin. Start small. Instead of grouping similarly sized pieces, try alternating light and dark palettes, or switching black and white for bold color.

Grethe Sorensen diptych
Grethe Sorensen’s Interferens-7 and Blue-Color-Gradation can be hung together or rotated.
Cynthia Schira weavings
Cynthia Schira’s Nightfall and Spring-Lyric can be hung together or rotated.

Some pieces even offer built-in versatility:

Gyöngy Laky's Deviation displayed two ways
Gyöngy Laky’s Deviation installed two ways
  • Gyöngy Laky’s Deviation — OY can be displayed as “OY” for half the year and flipped to read “YO” for the other. Is it an existential “Oh, Why?” or a cheerful “Yo!” greeting? Let the season decide.
Laura Foster Nicholson's Shed displayed two ways
Laura Foster Nicholson’s Shed installed two ways

Laura Foster Nicholson’s work Shed can be hung vertically or horizontally, allowing a shift in visual weight and direction.

Sung Rim Parks sculpture on and off the wall
Sung Rim Park’s Beyond 220723. Displayed on the floor and floating in space.

Sung Rim Park’s Beyond series can be installed on or off the wall, offering new perspectives and levels of engagement.

Tall Lia Cook positive/negative image weaving
Lia Cook’s Big Richard front and back.

Lia Cook’s banners, like Big Richard, are impactful whether viewed from the front or reversed — another way to surprise the eye.

The more flexible the installation options, the more enjoyment you may find in your collection. Changing your art throughout the year brings new energy into a space, reawakens your senses, and reminds you of the beauty in change itself.

Beauty is Resistance – Artists in the House

October 9, 2025 0 Comment

The opening of Beauty is Resistance: art is antidote (October 11 – 19) is right around the corner. This Saturday afternoon October 11, 2025 at the opening we’ll be joined on Saturday afternoon by five of the 36 artists in the exhibition.

Here’s a preview of works by these artists that will be included. if you can If you can attend the opening, be sure to ask them about their pieces. (If you can’t attend, you can order a catalog or attend our Zoom talkthough on November 11th — more on that below.

Fragment by Blair Tate
21bt Fragment, Blair Tate, woven and knotted: linen, hemp cords, aluminum rods, 34 x 44”, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Blair Tate’s Fragment (Reading Between the Lines) is a weaving made of elements — broad strips, larger and smaller blocks, and connecting cords. The elements are constructed and coordinated to suggest balance and imbalance. “I want the whole to feel tenuous, unsettled,” Tate says, “and in this way allude to the ubiquitous condition of change that defines our current times.”

Construction by Jin-Sook So
2jss Konstruction II, Jin-Sook So, electroplated steel mesh, 2004. Photo by Tom Grotta

On Saturday, we’ll also be joined by Jin-Sook So, via Sweden (and sometimes Korea). So’s work, Konstruction (Ritual and Renovation), is an innovative painted and electroplated textile made of steel mesh. The work is informed by bojagi,  a traditional Korean wrapping and layering technique. So has sought to reinterpret bojagi’s cultural and aesthetic essence through a contemporary lens, creating a dialogue between tradition and modernity.

Curiosity Under Fire by Wendy Wahl
46ww Curiosity Under Fire, Wendy Wahl, Inked 1987 Academic American Encyclopedia pages, elm, stainless steel, rusted steel, 69″ x 51″ x 18″, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

At the turn of the 21st century Wendy Wahl began to view printed paper, particularly encyclopedias, from an elemental standpoint and as a material for expressing the ephemeral and the everlasting. Encyclopedia pages are used as a material  in works like Curiosity Under Fire (Reading Between the Lines)in part because the medium can be the message. The purpose of paper has changed, yet for over two millennia it has played a significant role in the identity of cultures and the relationship to their environments. “Each time I deconstruct a discarded encyclopedia book,” Wahl says, “I revisit that which has come before, bound in stillness, yet part of the present moment, asking me to re-see in ways that engage my mind, body and spirit.”

Frozen in Time by Norma Minlkowitz
120nm Frozen in Time, Norma Minkowitz, black crocheted book and personal items, 21.5″ x 15.625″ x 3″, 2023-2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Works by Norma Minkowitz are often emotionally evocative. Frozen in Time (Threads of Memory), her work in Beauty is Resistance, is an example. The work is centered on remembrance, memory becomes tangible. Minkowitz wraps once-used personal items—combs, brushes, a diary—in dark threads as though there is a secret or story hiding between the pages of the book that is sealed and therefore can never be revealed. “Memories are a snapshot of the past that hasn’t been affected by the present,” Minkowitz says. “However, the act of remembering can also change the memory itself. I ask the viewer to be a participant in interpreting my work.“

Ocean by Nancy Koenigsberg
84nak Ocean, Nancy Koenigsberg, coated copper wire, 32″ x 32″ x 3″, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Ocean (Radical Ornament) by Nancy Koenigsberg is a meditation on movement and endurance, rendered in blue, green, and black wire—an industrial material shaped into an evocation of tides, currents, and undertow. Its layered blue surface suggests water through reef or net. The work offers a vision of the sea as an archive of transformation. In Ocean, wire becomes wave, and pattern becomes persistence. 

Join us to see these and many more artworks. 

Exhibition Details:
Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote
October 11 – 19

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 protocols: No narrow heels — we’ve got barn floors.

Can’t make the exhibition? You can get a copy of the exhibition catalog on our website or sign in to our Zoom presentation,  Art on the Rocks: an art talkthrough with a twist — Beauty is Resistance Edition.

Art Assembled: September Highlights

October 1, 2025 0 Comment
John McQueen spanish moss basket
77jm Untitled #152, John McQueen, Spanish moss, black ash, 5.5″ x 16.5″ x 16″, 1978. Photo by Tom Grotta

September had five Mondays, so we provided a full complement of artworks for New This Week. First up was John McQueen‘s 1970s basket, Untitled #152, made of black ash and Spanish moss. In his lifetime, McQueen created more than 500 sculptural baskets from willow, bark, moss, cardboard, and recycled plastic — nearly all of materials that he gathered from his yard or his trash. His influence on other artists and participants in his workshops was immeasurable (See rembrances by Hisako Sekijima and Hideko Numata on arttextstyle.)

Semiotic by Rebecca Medel
12rme.1 Semiotic, Rebecca Medel, knotted & braided resist linen, plexiglas, 35.75″ x 7.25″ x 3.25″, 1992-1994. Photo by Tom Grotta

Our next New This Week artwork was Rebecca Medel’s Semiotic. Semiotics is the study of how meaning is created and communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning. It’s a parallel for Medel’s work in which she explores ideas involving time and space metaphysics, and symbolism. During her graduate education, Medel developed a personal off-loom technique to knot large structural multi-planed square grid nets with ikat and braid resist threads. These resist processes separated color and created ambiguous or floating values of color. Medel singled out the use of linen and cotton thread because they are intrinsically structural and can be both bleached and dyed. The elemental characteristic of the work was an exploration of light through the grid structure, without mass and weight, on the edge of being physically supportable, and creating transparent weightlessness. Structure was achieved through the use of lines that became planes, at times parallel and layered, at other times connecting and intersecting perpendiculars; against the wall or coming out in relief.

Prayer Field by Lewis Knauss
29lk Prayer Field, Lewis Knauss woven, knotted, linen, hemp, raffia 23” x 23” x 5” each, 2011. Photo by Tom Grotta

After receiving his BFA in Art Education at Kutztown University, Lewis Knauss completed an MFA at Tyler School of Art. He taught for 30 years at Moore College of Art, in Pennsylvania. Knauss’s art is inspired by landcape — Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Colorado, New Mexico, Israel, and, Egypt. Another influence in works like Prayer Field, is meditation. “When my mother died,” he has said, “I decided to look into mindfulness-based stress reduction. My art is a form of mediation because you have given yourself a focus. I do a lot of knotting in my work. When a friend was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t know what to say, so I made a long piece with knots and said each knot is a prayer.”

Red Pleated Mia Olsson
14mo Pleated, Red, Mia Olsson, sisal fibers, 30.625”” x 27.125” x 2.55”, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Pleated by Mia Olsson is made of sisal fibers, dyed and formed in a technique unique to the artist. The sisal fibers used by the Swedish artist are shiny and reflect the light, even more when formed in relief. The colors are richly saturated — engaging the viewer on each viewing. Olsson manipulates the prickly sisal into airy, semi-transparent wall sculptures, dyed in richly saturated warm tones. “I am interested in exploring textile fibers, how they are, their properties and characteristics, and what I can do with them,” says Olsson. Olsson describes sisal as “so interesting to work with, especially when forming three-dimensional pieces. My work is experimental and I never know on which journeys the fibers will take me.”

Landscape Transformed by Adela Akers
Adela Akers, 50aa Landscape Transformed, linen, horsehair, paint & metal foil, 73″ x 32″ x 2″, 2011. Photo by Tom Grotta

Adela Akers was born in Spain, educated at the University of Havana in Cuba and inspired by her extensive travels, Akers grounded her practice in a diverse and geographically disparate range of influences. Landscape Interrupted, our last New This Week entry for September,reflects her visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she observed the painting process of the Mbuti women of the Ituri Forest. Akers’ work was also informed by the abstract expressionism movement in the 1950’s. A work by Adela Akers that resulted from Akers’s study of the marks made by Mbuti women will be features in Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote at browngrotta arts this month (October 11 – 19).

Sneak Peek – Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote Opens in Less than a Month

September 24, 2025 0 Comment

The opening of our Fall 2025 “Art in the Barn” exhibition, on October 11, is just a few weeks away.

Despite headwinds from tariff confusion and new shipper policies, we have compiled an expansive group of works from Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The few examples below illustrate the breadth of ways that the artists in Beauty is Resistance have made aesthetic attractiveness a purposeful mode of expression. 

Wendy Wahl Rebound Overlap
Wendy Wahl, Rebound Overlap 2025, Photo by Tom Grotta

Twenty years ago, Wendy Wahl noticed that the printed and bound versions of encyclopedias were being disposed of at an alarming rate, and soon after, most encyclopedias were no longer obtainable in that format. Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years. From the specific to the general, the encyclopaedia can be described as a summation of knowledge from a particular worldview. Wahl uses these discarded volumes to make art — such as the three pieces in this exhibition, Book Matched, Curiosity Under Fire, and Rebound Overlap — that brings awareness to what can happen when access to information is denied and discarded.

Nnenna Okore, Vogue
Nnenna Okore, Vogue, 2009. Photo by Tom Grotta

Artist, educator, and environmentalist Nnenna Okore who studied in Nigeria uses ordinary materials, repetitive processes, and varying textures to make references to everyday Nigerian practices and cultural objects. “ I am invested in changing the function, meaning, and historical or social context of my materials,” she says. “By transforming them from their original state of being and employing deconstructive and reconstructive techniques, these materials inevitably assume new lives, different personalities, and cultural significance.” 

Neha Puri Dhir, Detail of Luster of Time
Neha Puri Dhir, Detail of Luster of Time, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

Neha Puri Dhir’s Luster of Time reflects on the beauty of aging and the stories embedded in the passage of time. The work, which involves pleating and stitch-resist dyeing on silk, reveals delicate lines and textures that evoke the growth rings of a tree or the patina formed on weathered metal. The deep circular form at the center suggests a meditative stillness, grounding the viewer amidst the rhythmic folds. Each stitch and crease becomes a quiet testimony to memory, impermanence, and transformation. “This piece celebrates time as a collaborator,” Dhir says, “turning fabric into a canvas where aging itself becomes a mark of grace and resilience.” 

Misako Nakahira, Triptych
Misako Nakahira, Unlayered #HPO, Y, B, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Masako Nakahira continues her exploration of stripes in these small but animated set of weavings. Inspired by “illusions,” a method of expression used in painting, these works are based on the theme of overlapping layers. Although this image appears to overlap visually, the layers do not actually exist in the structure. “This makes us wonder what human perception seeks between reality and illusion,” she says. “I would like to continue to question the boundary between the two through textiles.”

Join us in October to view work by these and 30+ other international artists who celebrate beauty as a form of defiance, cultural preservation, and political voice. 

Exhibition Details: Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote
October 11 – 19
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]

Schedule Your Visit

Safety Protocols: No narrow heels, please. We have barn floors.

In Memory: John McQueen

September 17, 2025 2 Comments

This week we share another testament to the profound influence that John McQueen has had within the art world. The recollection below is from Hideko Numata, the curator of the influential exhibitions Weaving the World: the Art of Linear Construction at the Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan in 1999.

Last month, I received the deeply saddening news from Hisako Sekijima that John McQueen had passed away. I was filled with a profound sense of sorrow and regret. Meeting John McQueen remains one of the most meaningful and unforgettable experiences of my career as a curator.

John McQueen's sketches
Twig sketches behind John McQueen’s Saratoga New York’s workbench. Photo by Tom Grotta

I first encountered John McQueen around 1997, while I was planning the 10th-anniversary exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art. I was responsible for the crafts section. At that time, I had the uncomfortable sense that there was a noticeable divide between fine art and crafts in the Japanese art world. Even in our museum, which focused on modern and contemporary art, the crafts section was often undervalued, and I frequently found myself frustrated by these limitations. I began to wonder whether it might be possible to curate an exhibition that transcended traditional art categories and explored the origins of artistic formation.

Hisako Sekijima’s book, The Formula of Basketry
Hisako Sekijima’s book, The Formula of Basketry

It was during this period that I came across Hisako Sekijima’s book, The Formula of Basketry. Although Japan has a longstanding tradition of bamboo craft, her book transformed my understanding of basketry—not simply as the weaving of plant materials into containers, but as a medium of dynamic expression with limitless potential. Basketry, I realized, could incorporate not only natural elements but also paper, wire, and other materials, to create both flat and sculptural forms from linear elements.

John Mcqueen Workshop Gakugei
John McQueen Workshop in Japan, courtesy of the Yokohama Museum of Art

Hisako Sekijima began making baskets in Japan, but her time in the United States from 1975 to 1979 exposed her to basketry as an art form. She was captivated by the spirit of freedom and experimentation she found there. Participating in John McQueen’s workshop during that period was a turning point for her. Her vivid recollections in the book sparked my own interest in both McQueen’s work and the artist himself.

When I first encountered his art, I was immediately struck by its originality. McQueen used a wide range of materials and weaving techniques to create abstract forms, alphabetic characters, and large-scale figures of people and animals. His works were not functional baskets but powerful sculptures—three-dimensional expressions of contemporary art. The materials and weaving methods themselves appeared to alter the forms and movements they expressed. They overturned my preconceived notions of sculpture.

The act of weaving — strands forming two- or three-dimensional shapes — is one of the most fundamental, universal methods of making. Practiced globally since ancient times, it holds an infinite capacity for expression. I felt it could offer a way to bridge the gap between fine art and craft. This realization led me to curate the exhibition Weaving the World, Contemporary Art of Linear Construction, which brought together works from both craft fields such as basketry and textiles, and contemporary art that used linear or woven elements.

Weaving the World, Contemporary Art of Linear Construction
Installation shot of Weaving the World, Contemporary Art of Linear Construction, courtesy of the Yokohama Museum of Art

For this exhibition, John McQueen contributed one bird’s nest-like piece and two human-shaped sculptures. The bird’s nest-like structure was constructed from short wooden branches inserted and layered to form a structure that, while sturdy, appeared almost fragile—like it might collapse at any moment. The human figures were created using branches and vines secured with plastic cable ties. One figure was made by weaving taut, slender vines into an airy yet resilient human shape. It maintained a strong presence, offering glimpses through its woven mesh to the inner space and the world beyond. The other was composed by densely interweaving branches to fill the interior form. Although it was structurally solid, it lacked the gravitas of stone or bronze, instead possessing a lighthearted, even humorous character. McQueen’s work effortlessly transcended the boundaries between sculpture and craft.

Weaving the World, Contemporary Art of Linear Construction
Installation shot of Weaving the World, Contemporary Art of Linear Construction, courtesy of the Yokohama Museum of Art

The exhibition featured artists from Europe, the United States, and Japan, spanning both the craft and contemporary art worlds. These included browngrotta arts gallery artists such as Norma Minkowitz, Markku Kosonen, Toshio Sekiji, and Hisako Sekijima; sculptors like Richard Deacon and Martin Puryear; installation artists working with natural materials, including Andy Goldsworthy and Ludwika Ogorzelec; Supports/Surfaces artists like François Rouan; and conceptual artists such as Rosemarie Trockel and Margo Mensing. Though diverse in practice, they were united in their exploration of “line” as a medium – unfolding into inner landscapes, social commentary, and artistic forms Viewers could deeply appreciate the richness of art created by weaving linear materials as they moved through the exhibition space.

workshop participants Weaving Yokohama
Workshop participants Weaving Yokohama, Crossing Paths, courtesy of the Yokohama Museum of Art

During the exhibition, we held a three-day public workshop titled “Weaving Yokohama, Crossing Paths” led by John McQueen and Margo Mensing. Takahiro Kinoshita, an educator of the Yokohama Museum of Art’s education group, organized this workshop. He spent an entire year coordinating the event with the two artists. Fifty participants and twenty-three volunteers took part. On the first day, there was an introduction to the workshop, consecutive lectures from McQueen, Mensing, and Sekijima. The following two days were dedicated to creation, taking place in the museum’s open-air portico, where the public could observe the process.

Weaving Yokohama, Crossing Paths
Weaving Yokohama Crossing Paths workshop, courtesy of the Yokohama Museum of Art

The workshop used bottom trawl nets previously employed by Yokohama’s fishermen. Working in pairs, participants traced human shapes onto the nets, cut them out, and wove various materials into the forms. On the first day, they completed the human-shaped silhouettes. The second day focused on filling the interior spaces by weaving in different materials. Though more challenging than expected, the collaborative process allowed each pair to create a unique piece through trial, connection, and creativity. Even beginners were able to experience the satisfaction of shaping and completing something with their own hands. Each work reflected its creators—different in material, method, and spirit—shining with individuality.

The exhibition and workshop were warmly received by the public, and the exhibition was honored with that year’s Ringa Award for the outstanding exhibition that year. I believe that by focusing on the elemental act of weaving, visitors were able to rediscover the joy of form-making and expression—beyond the confines of any genre.

I remain deeply grateful to John McQueen. He reminded me that even the most humble materials and methods can give rise to profound beauty and meaning. His inspiration continues to live on, not only in his works but in all of us who had the honor of working with him.

May he rest in peace.
Hideko Numata
Professor, Showa University of Music
Former Chief Curator of the Yokohama Museum of Art Curator,
Weaving the World: Contemporary Art of Linear Construction, 
Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan 1999