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

August 20, 2025 0 Comment

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

August 13, 2025 0 Comment
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

August 1, 2025 3 Comments
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.

Art Assembled: Highlights from July

July 30, 2025 0 Comment

Last month we highlighted a series of engaging works by artists from across the globe — Latvia, America, the Netherlands, and Japan.

February 2025 II, Lija Rage
9lr February 2025 II, Lija Rage, painted wooden sticks, wire, glue and fabric
23.5” x 23.5”, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

First up was February 2025 II, by the late Lija Rage (LV). “I create my fiber works by painting little sticks and wrapping them in copper wire, by gluing and sowing, putting layer upon layer until the work seems finished,” Rage once explained.  “Textile and fiber art are modern arts. I believe that modern world culture cannot be closed. Each of us grows up from the culture we live in, through centuries, which further on is subjected to other impacts and becomes interwoven with the world culture influences.” Rage aimed to create “a mystique where each thread, metal shard, or sliver of wood discovers its unique place, contributing to an emotionally charged entirety.” 

206L Heartwood, Gyöngy Laky, ash branches, acrylic paint, screws, 48″ x 48″ x 3″, 2025.  Photo by Tom Grotta

Heartwood by Gyöngy Laky (US) was next. Laky explained the origins of the work and its name: “In 2005, I paused in awe before a majestic Ash Tree in front of Customwood Furniture in San Francisco—founded in 1946 by the renowned designer Arthur Hanna. I met Arthur and a delightful friendship ensued. Whenever the Ash was pruned, his trimmer would deliver a great pile of beautiful Ash cuttings. The Tree is still there though Arthur is not. While working with Ash on a recent piece, I found myself continually sensing the nodes and branches as suggestive of human anatomy. One day, my friend and neighbor, architect Teri Behm, walked into my studio and anticipated my title, Heartwood, when she remarked, “Those pieces look like parts of a heart.”

Floating Upstream, Marianne Kemp
13mke Floating Upstream, Marianne Kemp, cotton, horsehair, wood, 47.25” x 55” x 4”, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

In Floating Upstream, Marianne Kemp (NL) explores how horizontal and vertical reference lines fade into the background, when coupled with random knotting of horsehair, which shifts the viewer’s focus. The interplay of overlapping textures and translucency is key to softening the otherwise bold composition. The single, straight, horizontal line, formed by the wooden dowel, brings balance to the piece. Kemp’s work is deeply influenced by her travels. Her explorations across Europe, and to places such as Mexico, Japan, Africa, and Mongolia, have further enriched her artistic vocabulary. 

Rooted 4, Naoko Serino
27ns Rooted 4, Naoko Serino, jute, 5.5″ x 8″ x 8″, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Last but not at all least, we focused on Naoko Serino’s Rooted 4. “I have been creating artworks using only jute for 28 years,” Serino (JP) says. She is grateful to be able to convey the charm of jute, which she does in three-dimensional expressions that incorporate light and air. “Life and nature are constantly changing, and every moment holds its own significance. An invisible force stimulates me, and the memories it awakens inspire my artworks. I pour my feelings into my artworks, allowing them to speak through the material.”

Enjoy the recap!

Gone Fishing!

July 23, 2025 0 Comment
John McQueen willow billfish
John McQueen, Just Under the Record, willow sticks and waxed string, 30″ x 72″ x 12″, 1998. Photo by Tom Grotta

We are off to spend some of August in Maine. 

Judy Mulford Fish gord
Judy Mulford, A Day at the Beach, mixed media, 6″ x 9.5″ x 9.5″, 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta

We are using this week’s arttextstyle to share some images of art that reflects some of our favorite things about the place.

Ed Rossbachs Fish Trap basket
Ed Rossbach, Fish Trap, 14″ x 11″ x 11″, 1988. Photo by Tom Grotta

Fish would be one. Watching, catching, and eating them.

Chris Drury Kayaks
Chris Drury, Kayak Bundles, willow bark and cloth sea charts from Greenland and Outer Hebrides, 79″ x 55″ x 12″, 1994. Photo by Tom Grotta

Water travel is another. We love to watch boats and kayak.

Carol Shaw-Sutton willow Canoe
Carol Shaw-Sutton, Spirit Canoe, willow construction with waxed linen, 56″ x 60″ x 28″, 1999. Photo by Tom Grotta

We love to watch boats and kayak.

Bamboo boat by Dona Anderson
Dona Anderson, Crossing Over, bamboo kendo (martial art sticks), patterened paper, thread, 15″ x 94″ x 30″, 2008. Photo by tom grotta

We’ll be back next week with Art Assembled.

Annette Bellamy floating boats
Annette Bellamy Floating Installation, Fuller Craft Museum Installation. Photo by Tom Grotta

Happy Summer!!

Art Out and About

July 16, 2025 0 Comment

This year continues to deliver when it comes to exciting and immersive exhibitions of fiber art. Artists that work with browngrotta arts are included in exhibitions in Montana, Boston, Trondberg, Norway, and San Diego, California. Elsewhere are monumental tapestries and imaginative presentations from Berkeley, California to Tilburg, the Netherlands, to Miami, Florida to North Jyland, Denmark and parts in between.

moon landing at Canterbury Cathedral
Moon Landing at Canterbury Cathedral © Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral | Photographer: Jon Barlow

Moon Landing: an immersive textile and musical collaboration
Through August 31, 2025
Canterbury Cathedral
Cathedral House 
11 The Precincts
Canterbury, CT1 2EH
United Kingdom
https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/whats-on/events/moon-landing

This summer, the medieval splendour of Canterbury Cathedral will complement a stunning free-to-view modern art installation inspired by the little-known story of the women who wove the integrated computer circuits and memory cores which enabled the 1969 moon landing. The breathtaking installation moon landing – a duo work created by British textile artist and designer of woven textiles, Margo Selby, and award-winning composer, Helen Caddick – comprises a vibrant 16-meter hand-woven textile suspended from the ceiling near the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel, created in response to the moon landing score, an original musical piece scored for strings. It is a celebration of the mathematical and technical possibilities of weaving and the crossovers of pattern, tone and rhythm found in both music and woven textiles.

Lia Cook Digital Weaving
Detail: Maze Gaze, Lia Cook, cotton, rayon, 72″ x 52″, 2007

Digital Weaving Norway
From August 12 – 15, 2025
Solgaard Skog 132, 1599 
Moss, Norway
https://digitalweaving.no

Lia Cook’s work will be featured in the exhibition of Digital Weaving – Innovation Through Pixels in Norway — a conference and exhibition celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the TC-Looms with Digital Weaving Norway (August 12–15). 

American Flag
Photo supplied by Museum of the American Revolution

Banners of History: An Exhibition of Original Revolutionary War Flags
Through August 10, 2025
Museum of American Revolution
101 South Third Street
Philadelphia, PA
https://www.amrevmuseum.org/exhibits/banners-of-liberty-an-exhibition-of-original-revolutionary-war-flag

A significant use of fiber throughout the world is in the creation of flags. In preparation for the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States, the Museum of the American Revolutionary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has mounted an expansive exhibition of flags from the early part of the Nation’s history. The exhibition, dispalyed in the Museum’s first-floor Patriots Gallery, features the largest gathering of rare and significant Revolutionary War flags in more than two centuries. This one you see online!

Christine Joy
Christine Joy. Photo by Tom Grotta

Willow Woven
Through August 6, 2025
Studio Gallery
Hennebery Eddy Architects’
109 N Rouse 
Bozeman, MT
https://downtownbozeman.org/summer-art-walks

Willow Woven, by Christine Joy, part of Bozeman, Montana’s Art Walk is on view in the window of Hennebery Eddy Architects’ Studio Gallery until August 6th, 2025.

On public display in the studio’s storefront window, the gallery is about making connections — with neighbors, friends, clients, and colleagues. The alternating exhibits at the Studio Gallery feature curated staff and visiting artist displays that spark new ideas and promote a shared sense of place.

Lee ShinJa: Image of City
Lee ShinJa: Image of City, 1961. Cotton, linen, and wool thread on cotton cloth; coiling, free technique. Courtesy of the artist and Tina Kim Gallery.

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread
Through February 1, 2026
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives (BAMPFA)
215 Center Street 
Berkeley, CA
https://bampfa.org/program/lee-shinja-drawing-thread

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread at BAMPFA in Berkeley, California is the first North American survey of the captivating work of the under-recognized Korean artist Lee ShinJa (b. 1930, Uljin, South Korea; lives and works in Seoul). Lee ShinJa worked throughout the five decades of contemporary fiber arts’ history, from the 1950s to the early 2000s, the exhibition showcases the artist’s bold innovations in fiber through 40 monumental textile works, woven maquettes, and preparatory sketches. Like artists from other Eastern Europe, her artworks from the 1950s incorporate everyday objects and found materials, such as grain sacks, mosquito nets, and domestic wallpaper; notably, she used yarn salvaged from secondhand sweaters and bedding to make her earliest tapestries

Jane Balsgaard Relief
Jane Balsgaard, Relief 320 x 180 cm, for the exhibition in Vrå (Nordth Jylland). Photo courtesy of Jane Balsgaard

Kunstbygningen/Vrå Udstillingen
Museum for Contemporary Art in North-Jylland
Højskolevej 3A
9760 Vrå, Denmark
Through July 27 – August 31, 2026
https://www.kunstbygningenvraa.dk/vraa-udstillingen]

Jane Balsgaard will hang a several-part relief in an exhibition at the Vrå-Udstilligen in North Jylland, Denmark through August 31st. The opening party is July 26 at 2:00 pm. The exhibition is supported by the Danish State Art Foundation.

Liz Collins, Power Portal
Liz Collins, Power Portal, 2023–2024. Courtesy of the Artist and Candice Madey, New York. RISD Museum, Providence, RI. 

Liz Collins: Motherlode
Through January 11, 2026
RISD Museum
20 North Main Street
Providence, RI
https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/liz-collins

On July 19, the RISD Museum will open the first U.S. survey of artist Liz Collins’ genre-defying work. As the Museum explains, “For more than three decades, Collins has moved fluidly among the realms of fine art, fashion, and design, pushing material and technical boundaries to create works that evoke a depth of emotion, energy, and individual expression. The exhibition, titled Liz Collins: Motherlode, will feature more than 80 objects, capturing for the first time the full arc of Collins’ career from the 1980s to the present day. Motherlode includes important examples of her immersive textile installations and wallworks, intricate and monumental woven hangings, fashion, needlework, drawings, performance documentation, and ephemera. In keeping with the RISD Museum’s commitment to centering makers and broadening perspectives, the exhibition vividly showcases the trailblazing nature of Collins’ work as well as the artist’s deep commitment to illuminating Queer feminist creative practice and environmental activism.” Liz Collins: Motherlode will remain on view at RISD Museum through January 11, 2026. The exhibition is curated by Kate Irvin, RISD Museum’s department head and curator of costume and textiles.

Polly Sutton Facing the Unexpected
1ps Facing the Unexpected, Polly Adams Sutton, western red cedar bark, ash, spruce root, coated copper wire, 11.5” x 18” x 32”, 2013. Photo by Tom Grotta

State Fair: Growing American Craft
August 22 – September 7, 2026
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC
https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/state-fairs

Polly Adams Sutton‘s work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and will be featured in the Smithsonian’s upcoming exhibition, State Fair: Growing American Craft, which includes exceptional examples of American craft, highlighting personal stories and regional and cultural traditions.

Salts Mill roof We Will Sing
Installation in Salts Mill, Bradford, UK from We Will Sing. Photo by Ann Hamilton

We Will Sing
Through November 2, 2025
1A Aldermanbury
Bradford, UK
https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/we-will-sing

We Will Sing is a work of memory and imagining. Drawing on the origins of the textile processes that once filled the huge Salts Mill textile works built in 1853, a site-responsive installation by Ann Hamilton weaves together voice, song and printed word in a material surround made from raw and woven wool sourced from local textile companies H Dawson, based at Salts Mill, and William Halstead, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025. We Will Sing is the first major work created by Hamilton in the UK for more than 30 years, and the first time all three spaces on the vast top floor of Salts Mill have been combined to present a single artwork. (We’ve been big fans of Hamilton’s immersive installations since she transformed our neighborhood museum, the Aldrich, in the 1990s.)

Laura Foster Nicholson

Human Affects
Through October 4, 2025
Visions Museum of Textile Art
2825 Dewey Road
Suite 100
San Diego, CA
https://vmota.org/human-affects

Human Affects is a one-person exhibition at the Visions Museum of Textile Art featuring work by 
Laura Foster Nicholson. From 2020-2023, Nicholson made three related bodies of work about climate change: flooding in Venice, container ships, and the landscape and architecture of industrial agriculture and energy. A selected grouping of these themes comprises the exhibition at VMOTA, plus a few that focus more on the hope of renewable energy, careful farming, and a less destructive way of life.

And continuing:

Olga de Amaral
Olga de Amaral exhibition has moved from Paris (above) to Miami. Photo by Tom Grotta

Olga de Amaral
Through October 12, 2026
Institute of Contemporary Art
61 NE 41st Street
Miami, FL
https://icamiami.org/exhibition/olga-de-amaral

ICA Miami, in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, presents a major retrospective of the work of Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, bringing together more than 50 works from six decades, and featuring recent and historical examples, some of which have never been presented outside of her home country.

Ruth Asawa
Artist Ruth Asawa making wire sculptures, California, United States, November 1954;  image: Nat Farbman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; artwork: © 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., courtesy David Zwirner

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
Through September 2, 2025
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
San Francisco, CA 
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/ruth-asawa-retrospective

This first posthumous retrospective presents the full range of Ruth Asawa’s work and its inspirations over six decades of her career. As an artist, Asawa forged a groundbreaking practice through her ceaseless exploration of materials and forms.

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
September 13, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
https://press.moma.org/exhibition/woven-histories

Shan Goshen Baskets from the Woven Histories exhibition at the National Gallery, DC. Photo by Tom Grotta

An in-depth exhibition featuring 150 works that delves into the dynamic intersections between weaving and abstraction.

Magdalena Abakanowicz – Everything is made of fiber
Through August 23, 2025
TextielMuseum
Goirkestraat 96
5046 GN Tilburg, the Netherlands
https://textielmuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz
Detail: Montana del Fuego, Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1986. Photo by Tom Grotta

The complete story of Abakanowicz’s work, life and legacy will be told at three locations in Brabant this spring. Abakanowicz was fascinated by the texture of textiles and the structure of natural fibres. She used this fascination as a basis for her weavings, but also to depict the human body.

Almost too many to choose from — fiber art continues its time in the spotlight!

In Situ: A Look Book of Acquired Art

July 10, 2025 0 Comment

Below are some works that left browngrotta arts for new homes in the last few months.We are always pleased when art works we promote capture the imagination of a client or collector or someone who found us on the internet.

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
Work by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (Canada) in California. Client photo.
Katherine Westphal
A Katherine Westphal (US) collage in New York. Client Photo.

We then have the chance to tell them more about the remarkable artist whose work we admire.

Naomi Kobayashi
Work by Naomi Kobayashi (Japan) in Massachusetts.
Warren Seelig
A stonefield work by Warren Seelig (US), commissioned for a client in Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta

We share the impetus behind the work when we have that information.

Gudrun Pagter
A tapestry by Gudrun Pagter (Sweden) at home in Massachusetts.
Pat Campbell
A multi-layered paper work by Pat Campbell (US) in Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta

And, in an ideal world, they work is acquired and finds a new location.

Dorothy Gill Barnes
A grouping of innovative objects by Dorothy Gill Barnes (US) displayed in New York City. Client photo.
Keiji Nio
Cat’s Eyes by Keiji Nio (Japan) in Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta

A location where it inspires and delights.

Włodzimierz Cygan
Włodzimierz Cygan’s work in New York City. Client Photo.
Åse Ljones
An embroidery by Åse Ljones (Norway) in Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Agneta Hobin
Fans of stainless steel mesh and mica by Agneta Hobin (Finland) in Pennsylvania. Client Photo.
Lilla Kulka
A sculptural tapestry by Lilla Kulka (Poland) in Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta
Baiba Osite
A work of driftwood by Baiba Osite (Latvia) in Connecticut. Photo by Tom Grotta
Caroline Bartlett
A dyed, pleated and stitched work by Caroline Bartlett(UK) installed in CT. Photo by Tom Grotta.
Works by Dorothy Gill Barnes(US) and Gyöngy Laky(US). Photo by Tom Grotta.

To find something for your location, visit our website: browngrotta.com.

Art Assembled

July 2, 2025 0 Comment
Hisako Sekijima wall basket
691-703hs 32 Selvages with 16 Ends, Hisako Sekijima, ramie, 15” x 17” x 1.5”, 2024. Photo by Tom Grotta

In our New this Week feature this past month, we shared works from our Spring exhibition, Field Notes: an art survey. First up was Hisako Sekijima’s 32 Selvages with 16 Ends. Always experimenting, this work resulting from Sekijima’s exploration of coarse Mexican dishcloths that were a kind of a four-selvage cloth made from one continuous thread. When she fully understood the unusual movement that made it, economizing repetition of passing a warp, she was “excited to have discovered a new rule hidden in such an ordinary-looking fabric.” She created her own weaving board with 18 rows of lines in two directions. She used a lightly processed fiber in varied sizes, peeled from ramie raised in her garden. She connected lengths each time she needed more, creating a stack of squares this way. “This very primitive weaving method reversed my pre-fixed judgments about weaving, she says, “and made me reconsider the relation of fabrication method and form of material.”

Misako Nakahira striped tapestry
2mn Towels O, Misako Nakahira, wool, ramie, 41” x 35.5” x .125”, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Misako Nakahira is an artist who exhibited with browngrotta arts for the first time in Field Notes. Her exploration of stripes began five years ago, inspired by reading Michel Pastoureau’s The Devil’s Cloth, which explores stripes in Western culture from the Middle Ages to the present. Originally, identifying individuals affected by plagues or those ostracized by society, such as prisoners and prostitutes, Pastoreau concludes that “stripes are patterns that establish order between people and space.” Nakahira uses stripes to explore social phenomena, including the “echo chamber” in which people encounter only opinions that agree with theirs, creating the illusion of intersecting orders among individuals who have never met in person. Towels O incorporates the colors yellow and orange, which, like stripes, signify “caution.” The layers created by the two-stripe patterns may appear to clash or harmonize depending on perspective, yet neither pattern dominates the other. Nakahira believes that using stripes as a motif—a universally understood and versatile form of expression—provides a way to view society from a broader perspective and interpret the times.

Red Rachel Max basket
14rm Rift, Rachel Max, plaited and twined, dyed cane,12” x 14” x 12”, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

“My work is heavily rooted in ideas of time and space,”says Rachel Max. “For several years I have been exploring notions and forms that symbolize infinity. The Möbius loop and figure 8, both steeped in metaphorical associations, have become my starting point. Each new piece becomes a variation on previous works, an amalgamation of different ideas set to challenge when the infinite becomes finite.” Rift explores the relationship between interior and exterior space. Edges that are almost touching suddenly split apart.The crack that emerges, interrupts the surface and casts doubt on whether this is a never-ending form.

Pat Campbell paper wall sculpture
42pc Play of Black and White, Pat Campbell, rice paper, wood, reed, 34″ x 26″ x 4″, 2019. Photo by Tom Grotta.

The fourth work for June was Play of Opposites, by Pat Campbell. Campbell’s work is influenced by the Japanese shoji screen, traditionally made of rice paper. “Paper is a natural choice of material for my work. It provides the translucency I am seeking in constructions. It also provides a thin plane of material that is easily shaped and accepts the reed, wood and paper cord that I apply to it,” Campbell says. “Paper is exciting to work with. It is a fragile material that can be easily ripped or torn.” Play of Black and White is constructed of modules that form a configuration hanging on two levels. “I usually work in all white gampi paper,” says. “I experimented here by adding black lines to the rice paper. In future work, I may continue adding color to the modules.” 

Hope you enjoy these engaging works!

In Print — Field Notes: an art survey

June 25, 2025 0 Comment
Field Notes Catalog Cover
Field Notes: catalog

If you weren’t able to visit browngrotta arts in person in May, there are four other ways to experience our Spring exhibition, Field Notes: an art survey, three online and one in print.  We’ve created a Video; Viewing Rooms; and a Zoom talkthrough, Art on the Rocks-Field Notes Edition. You can also see more images and learn more about Field Notes in the Catalog of the same name — our 60th — on our website.

Gudrun Pagter
Gudrun Pagter catalog spread

In the catalog, you’ll find more than 140 images of each of the works we “observed” in our state-of-the-art survey of the fiber medium in 2025. You’ll find detail shots and abbreviated cv information for each of the 52 artists included. 

Sung Rim Park catalog Spread
Sung Rim Park catalog spread

You’ll also find artists’ insights on their work and comments on working in challenging times.  Polly Barton talks about her work, No Strings Attached,  which began as a small watercolor sketch — “a memory of petroglyphs — field notes from the past carved into basalt stones found while hiking paths in canyons. My sketch, like a voice from the past, beckoned to be woven as a fluid path forward into our spinning world.”  Norma Minkowitz writes about Golden Moon,  a continuation of a series of vessel forms she began in the 1990s. “These vessels represent containers of different thoughts: some dark, some optimistic and ethereal,” she writes. “Golden Moon, has a large, intricate orb rising up from the center. It is a symbol of illumination, insight, and mystery. The moon is a metaphor for beauty in this world and a source of light in the darkness” And Sung Rim Park speaks about the knots she creates of paper for her paper structures: “I determine the shape and size of each knot based on the knot based on the meanings and symbolism it holds,” she writes. “Fiber begins as a line—the most

Sophie Rowley Catalog spread
Sophie Rowley Catalog spread

basic element in art—and knots, as extensions or intersections, become points or dots. While knots and fibers may appear delicate, they have the power to shape space. The works that result may be light in physical terms, but you cannot ignore their heavy aura, or the diverse stories about mankind that they contain.”

s Bassler-Field Notes
James Bassler-Field Notes. Photo Katie Bassler

There are also a few in-process shots to round out this special exploration volume. Get your copy at browngrotta.com. 

10 Artists to Watch if You Like Ruth Asawa

June 12, 2025 0 Comment

This year has seen the opening of a magical retrospective of Ruth Asawa’s ethereal work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, through September 2, 2025. Asawa(1926 -2013) has newly captivated art audiences since 2020, when the US Postal Service created a Forever Stamp in her honor. The stamps were elegant and popular and led to considerable attention for the artist. A National Medal of Arts and numerous solo exhibitions followed, including Ruth Asawa Through Line at the Whitney Museum of American Art followed. In 2022, her biomorphic wire forms were showcased in The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennial.

Acknowledging Asawa’s attraction, Artsy recently complied 6 Artists to Follow If You Like Ruth Asawa (Artsy, Tara Anne Dalbow, Apr 2, 2025). The list includes Chiaru Shiota, Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga, Gertrud Hals, Marci Chevali, Nnenna Okore, and Mari Andrews. Like Asawa’s, these artists’ work reflect natural forms like snail shells, insect wings, and spider webs, and is “characterized by a sense of levity that defies common perceptions of weight and gravity.”

Not surprisingly. browngrotta arts has its own list — four more artists to follow if you admire Asawa:

Kay Sekimachi monofilament
79k Ogawa II, Kay Sekimachi, monofilament, 76″(h) x 11″ x 11″, 1969. Photos by Tom Grotta

First, Asawa’s contemporary, Kay Sekimachi (b. 1926). Kay Sekimachi is best known for her ethereal monofilament sculptures. The series began in 1963 as an experiment to weave a wall hanging in multiple, translucent layers. After weaving a linen sample, Sekimachi realized she could produce three-dimensional forms using Dupont’s recently introduced nylon monofilament material. Sekimachi wove her monofilament sculptures as flat, interlocking layers that when suspended, folded-out into organic forms that she named after natural phenomena. Ogawa II, on display here, translates from Japanese to “little river” or “stream.”

Shoko Fukuda
9sf Connected Contours VII, Shoko Fukuda, ramie thread, synthetic resin, 10.25” x 10” x 15.75”, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Similarly evocative, though differently executed, are Shoko Fukuda’s undulating sculptures of white ramie. Shoko Fukuda is a basketmaker and Japanese artist who has exhibited her work internationally for the past 10 years. Fukuda currently works as an instructor at Kobe Design University in the Fashion Design department. Fukuda is interested in “distortion” as a characteristic of basket weaving. “As I coil the thread around the core and shape it while holding the layers together, I look for the cause of distortion in the nature of the material, the direction of work and the angle of layers to effectively incorporate these elements into my work. The elasticity and shape of the core significantly affect the weaving process, as the thread constantly holds back the force of the core trying to bounce back outward.” By selecting materials and methods for weaving with the natural distortion in mind, Fukuda saw the possibility of developing twists and turns. “I find it interesting to see my intentions and the laws of nature influencing each other to create forms.”  Connected Contours VII evokes forms from nature. Fukuda imagined a structure resembling a bird spreading its wings and constructed the form based on this concept. By connecting parts of the contours, she says, “the individual shapes retain their inherent twisted forms and natural movement, while the overall structure is designed to achieve harmony.”

Kyoko Kumai
Kyoko Kumai, Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition installation at the Japan Society. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Working in metal, like Asawa, is Kyoko Kumai. She weaves thin metal wires together to make a textile which she uses as a means of expression to explore various aspects of wind, air, and light. The walls, or carpets, or rooms of shimmery filaments she creates are revelatory. Kumai has had 67 solo exhibitions since 1983, including exhibiting Air at the Museum of Modern Art’s Project Space in 1991. Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times that the stainless steel Kumai used in Air “is eminently industrial” … “Yet the same qualities that make Miss Kumai’s work seem contemporary and Western are also quintessentially Japanese: foremost is its obvious faith in the power of beautiful materials handled simply but creatively and in unexpected ways.” Smith concluded that Kumai’s work was one of the strongest works of Japanese art to be shown in New York in some time.”  (Roberta Smith, “Review/Art; A Weaving of Stainless-Steel Thread,” The New York Times, May 10, 1991.)

Detail: 1ypb Cosmic Series, Yvonne
Detail: 1ypb Cosmic Series, Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz, knotted monofilament, gold leaf, 25″ x 20″ x 7″ Photo by Tom Grotta

Working in monofilament, like Kay Sekimachi, but with differing results, was Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz (1928 – 2022).  An awarding-winning artist, Bobrowicz was known for her cascading, light-transmitting sculptures made of synthetic monofilament. Bobrowicz was concerned with interconnections — interconnectedness and continuum. The artist told the Senior Artists Initiative in Philadelphia in 2003, “My work has been combining natural materials with synthetics, relating opposites, randomness and order — dark, light, reflective, opaque, and light absorbent, incorporating gold leaf, reflecting sculptures of monofilament, reflective and alchemically symbolic — unifying them in a variety of densities, scale, and configurations.” Bobrowicz studied with Marianne Strengell at the Cranbook Academy of Art and with Anni Albers at the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art, now University of the Arts. In the 1980s, she collaborated with renowned architect Louis Kahn. Like Sekimachi, Bobrowicz’s mesmerizing work captivated audiences with its light-transmitting qualities. Images of several of her works can be found online at the Sapir Contemporary Gallery website.