Search Results for "pioneers"

Artsy’s Take on Textile Pioneers and Ours

January 24, 2018 0 Comment
Bobbin Lace with Openings, Ed Rossbach, plastic tubing, bobbin lace 20.5" x 44.5", 1970

Bobbin Lace with Openings, Ed Rossbach, plastic tubing, bobbin lace 20.5″ x 44.5″, 1970

Last fall, Artsy compiled information and slide shows on 10 artists the author, Sarah Gottesman, viewed as pioneers. Click HERE to read Artsy’s article. We have our own nominees for such a list, including Ed Rossbach who experimented with materials and techniques in the 60s, creating bobbin lace from plastic tubing and vessels of cereal boxes and tubing, and Lia Cook, who has combined weaving, painting, photography and digital technology, focusing on the history and meaning of textiles, shattering restrictive theories about craft, art, science and technology in the process. Gyöngy Laky has experimented in sculpture of twigs and wood, hardware and wire — creating vessels, forms, wall work and typography. Kay Sekimachi created ethereal monofilament weavings in the 70s and 80s, bowls and towers of paper after that, and continues, at age 90, to create elegant weavings of lines and grid that are reminiscent of the paintings of Agnes Martin.
Intensity Tera Data woven cotton and rayon 50.5” x 332”, 2014 23lc Neural Networks woven cotton and rayon 81” x 51”, 2011 27lc Intensity Su Data Encore woven cotton and rayon 52” x 40”, 2014

Intensity Tera Data, woven cotton and rayon, 50.5” x 332”, 2014
Neural Networks, woven cotton and rayon, 81” x 51”, 2011
 Intensity Su Data Encore, woven cotton and rayon, 52” x 40”, 2014

You can learn more about these and other artists through our catalog, Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now , which profiles 15 pioneering fiber artists who took textiles off the wall in the 60s and 70s to create three-dimensional fiber sculpture and 15 artists born in 1960 or after, who have continued that innovative approach.
Gyöngy Laky Currency Art

Gyöngy Laky Currency Art

Homage to Paul Klee, Kay Sekimachi, linen, painted warp & weft with dye, permament marker, modified plain weave, 13.25” x 12”, 2013

Homage to Paul Klee, Kay Sekimachi, linen, painted warp & weft with dye, permament marker, modified plain weave, 13.25” x 12”, 2013

Don’t Miss: Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers at the Japan Society in New York

October 19, 2011 0 Comment

Naomi Kobayashi, Kyoko Kumai and Takaaki Tanaka installation

We had the chance to attend the opening of Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition last month (which coincided with the addition of the Japan Society’s headquarters to the Landmark Preservation Commission’s roster of buildings in New York) http://www.japansociety.org/page/
programs/gallery. The exhibition is significant in scale — 15 artists, some with room-size installations — and in the comprehensive portrait it provides of the practice of textile art in Japan today. The materials, techniques and sensibility of the pieces varies widely. “During the past decade,” writes in her essay for the exhibition catalog,  Hiroko Watanabe, a professor at Tama Art University and one of the participants in the exhibition, “the unique softness and flexibility of fabric — qualities shared by no other material — have inspired these artists to move beyond mere mastery to create daring, original works that hold the promise of still more impressive advances in the years to come.” There are five related lectures and workshops coming up in November and December:

LECTURE
Mastermind in Textile: An Evening with Dai Fujiwara
Wednesday, November 16, 6:30 PM;
WORKSHOP
Free-Form Saori Weaving Workshop
Sunday, November 20, 10 AM
Sunday, November 20, 1 PM
WORKSHOP
Irresistible Colors: Shibori-Dyeing Workshop
Saturday, December 3, 1 PM
WORKSHOP
Nature’s Inspiration: Embroidery Workshop
Saturday, December 10, 1 PM
WORKSHOP
Nature’s Inspiration: Embroidery Workshop
Saturday, December 10, 1 PM
All at the   Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, New York (212) 832-1155.

If you cannot get to New York, or you just want to learn more, there is a catalog, Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers, produced by Yale University and available from browngrotta arts http://www.browngrotta.com/
Pages/b45.php. There’s also a free Fiber Futures app with images and artist statements  http://itunes.apple.com/kz/app/fiber-futures-japans-textile/id464150856?mt=8, and a video tour by Nihon NY,  on the exhibition, Episode 18,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE1X279oDVo.

Books Make Great Gifts 2023, Part 1

December 13, 2023 0 Comment

This year we have a rash of suggestions for books, from artists and from browngrotta. It’s such a bumper crop that this post will be the first of two. In no particular order here are reviews and recommendations:

Gyöngy Laky(US) recommends a tiny book about a big idea: Poetry as Insurgent Art (New Directions, 2007) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In the early 2000s, Laky joined the Board of the non-profit, North Beach Citizens (NBC) in her neighborhood in San Francisco, addressing the needs of our homeless and low-income citizens.  “Founded by Francis Ford Coppola,” she writes, “he invited his friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, to join him – both having been longtime residents and businessmen in North Beach.  The 4” x 6.3” book I am writing about is by Ferlinghetti, poet, painter, art critic, activist, and co-founder of the famed City Lights Book Sellers and Publishers.  I got to know him a little in the years I was on the Board.  He was a lively participant in NBC’s spring Galas sometimes contributing a stirring and inspiring poem.

City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, San Francisco, Photographed by user Coolcaesar on August 6, 2023

“I began to read his modest, little book and heard his, now-silent, voice echoing in my head.  I found every line as if written directly to me, entreating me to greater boldness in my art even though his words were meant for poets.  I am not a poet though I often have said that I want my artwork to create a conversation with the viewer.  My sculptures, more and more over the years, led me to express my responses to the issues I find in the world around me. I sometimes refer to myself as an artist participant, an artist activist, a feminist, an environmentalist and, lately, even, an anti-militarist.  The translation for me as I read, became ‘Art as Insurgent Art’ urging and inspiring me to greater activism through the artworks I create. I found 15 examples in just the first 13 pages particularly and personally poignant!” Here are a few of them:

Be subversive, constantly questioning reality, and the status quo.

If you would be a poet [artist], discover a new way for mortals to inhabit the Earth.

Through art, create order out of the chaos of living.

Reinvent, America and the world.

Climb the Statue of Liberty.*

“Thank you, Ferlinghetti,” Laky writes, “for persuading me to never flinch, shrink or wince when an idea appears unexpectedly in my studio.”

* As a 5-year-old refugee arriving in New York Harbor I did dream of climbing the Statue of Liberty!

Patchwork: A Life Amongst Clothes by Claire Wilcox

Jo Barker( UK) recommends “a beautiful, sensitive, thought-provoking book,” Patch Work: A life amongst clothes by Claire Wilcox. Wilcox is the senior curator of fashion at the V&A Museum in London. Her book won the 2021 Pen Ackerley Prize. “In Patch Work,” the publisher writes, “Wilcox deftly stitches together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother’s black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear: their stories, their secrets, their power to transform and disguise and acts as portals to our pasts; the ways in which they measure out our lives, our gains and losses, and the ways we use them to write our stories.” Author Laura Cumming wrote that she was overwhelmed by this book: “It is an absolute masterpiece. A book of such beauty and profundity, of such poetry in its emotion and observation … I found my sense of life transformed by her writing as I often find it transformed after the exhibition of a great artist.”

The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa contours in the air

Like Laky, another Californian, who is always a thoughtful contributor to our annual book review post, is Nancy Moore Bess (US). She recommends The Sculptures of Ruth Asawa – contours in the air (Daniel Cornell, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press,

2007; the University of California has released an expanded edition, The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa, Second Edition: Contours in the Air, Paperback, 2020 by Timothy Anglin Burgard (Editor), Daniel Cornell (Editor)). “I’ve recently begun rereading this (I reread a lot, including favorite mysteries),” says Bess, “using Asawa’s New York Times obituary notice as a bookmark. Yesterday, I finished the third Zoom presentation from the Whitney Museum, inspired by its current exhibition devoted to her works on paper. (I hope one of your artists adds that catalogue to your list.) In rereading this book, I no longer focused entirely on her amazing wire work but moved more widely into all of her art. It’s a big book. I’ll be busy for awhile, but I’m in no hurry.”

Bess writes that “When we lived in San Francisco, not so long ago, it was clear how beloved Asana is – present tense! She continues to be an integral, enriching part of the city. Her continued presence reminded me of how people in Honolulu respected/revered/honored Toshiko Takaezu when we lived there a long time ago. These creative women continue to have impact on us. And I am immensely grateful. Ruth cooked, carved, gardened, bent wire, designed installations, molded masks from friends, mothered, loved and drew, drew, drew. 

See if you can find a copy of this amazing book,” Bess says. “It will so much be worth the effort.” 

From Germany, Heidrun Schimmel (DE) also recommends an exhibition catalog

Inside other spaces. Environments by Women Artists 1956-1976 (the exhibition is at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany through March 10, 2024). Many of the pioneers in environmental art were women, but their works were often ephemeral, destroyed once a show was over. The exhibition highlights women’s fundamental contributions to the history of environments and presents the work of 11 women artists across three generations from Asia, Europe as well as North and South America: Judy Chicago, Lygia Clark, Laura Grisi, Alexsanda Kasuba, Lea Lublin, Marta Minujin, Tania Mouraud, Martia Nordman, Nanda Vogo, Faith Wilding, Tsuruko Yamazaki. The curators have painstakingly recreated some of these artists’ works that were destroyed after being exhibited, bringing these artists back into the spotlight.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

Polly Sutton (US) shared a favorite book of hers with us, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor Garćia and Francesc Miralles (Penguin, 2017).  

Caste The Origins of our Discontents

We have an update on a previous recommendation from Gyöngy Laky and Jim Bassler, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2020): Caste has been made into a film by noted director Ava DuVernay. In the film, titled Origin, writer Isabel Wilkerson, grappling with tremendous personal tragedy, sets herself on a path of global investigation and discovery as she writes the book, Caste. Caste is also serving as inspiration for Jim Bassler’s work. “For months,” he writes, “I have been working out ideas mentioned in the book.  I am finally getting around to putting it together. It includes another flag hanging on a very dark brown background with suggestions of African mud cloth.”

More book notes to come in Part 2!

Then and Now … works across time

May 17, 2023 0 Comment

In compiling works for our Spring 2023 exhibition, Acclaim! Work by Award-Winning International Artists, we gathered works from several decades. Many of those included were artists with longstanding careers. They were pioneers, active in the early days of the fiber movement and still innovating today. At browngrotta arts, we have always sought to exhibit artists who are willing to experiment — push boundaries, reinvent themselves and the medium. Acclaim! offered many fascinating examples of artists whose work transformed throughout their careers.

Cherry Ys, Dorothy Gill Barnes, waxed linen, raffia, and cherry branches, 31.25″ x 15″ x 3.5″, 1970-1980.
Willow with Log, Dorothy Gill Barnes, willow, 40″ x 20″ x 15″, 1998. Photos by Tom Grotta.

In some cases, like Dorothy Gill Barnes’ work, a logical progression from earlier to current work is apparent. Cherry Ys is a study that Barnes had created when more traditional weaving was a larger part of her process. Some 30 years later she created Willow with Log — weaving again, but this time with a material she has mastered — tree bark. 

The Mourners, Dominic Di Mare, waxed linen, wood, (Back row from left to right: 48.5″ x 24″; 46″ x 24″; 50.5″ x 24″; 47″ x 24″) Front row from left to right: 49.5″ x 24″ ; 46.5″ x 24″; 48.5″ x 24″).
Mourning Station #4, Dominic Di Mare, hawthorn, handmade paper, silk, bone, bird’s egg, feathers, gold and wood beads, 13″ x 7″ x 7″, 1981. Photos by Tom Grotta.

Dominic Di Mare is widely known for captivating sculptures of simple materials like carved hawthorn branches with delicate feathers, beads, paper, eggs, and horsehair. In Di Mare’s hands, these were transformed into intensely poetic and spiritual works which he made in the 79s. For Acclaim!, however, we were able to show Di Mare’s intriguing assemblages and a series of elegant weavings, The Mourners, that he had made in the 1960s.

Five Panel #2, Warren Seelig, corduroy weave 48″ x 55″ x 1″, 1972. Small Double Ended, Warren Seelig, nylon, stainless steel, 63″ x 33″ x 16.375, 1996, Photos by Thomas Grotta.

The transition from early to later work was even more dramatic in the works included in Acclaim! by Warren Seelig. Five Panel #2 is a complex corduroy weaving from the 1970s. You’d be forgiven if you didn’t recognize, Small Double Ended, of metal and fiber, as a work by Seelig made nearly 25 years later.

Landform, Lia Cook, cotton, 14.25″ x 12″ x 2.25″, 1978; Legs, Lia Cook, cotton, 14.25″ x 12″ x 4.5″, 1977.Presence/Absence: In the Folds, Lia Cook, cotton, rayon; woven, 192” x 41”, 1997. Photos by Tom Grotta.

There are few artists who have mastered as many bodies of work as Lia Cook. Acclaim! included Landform and Legs, pop-art-like weavings that Cook made in the 70s, shortly after completing a Master’s degree in 1973. Also exhibited was Presence/Absence: In the Folds, created two decades later. By that time, Cook was creating works on a Jacquard loom based upon photographs. In between, she had worked with painted strips of cloth to create fabric mosaics of sorts and since, she has been integrated EEG reports into her weavings.

You can see all the works in Acclaim! in our online exhibition on Artsy. You can hear more about the works by joining us for Art on the Rocks, an art talkthrough with spirits! on Zoom on June 9, 2023.

Books Make Great Gifts, Part 1

December 7, 2022 0 Comment

Another year, another interesting and eclectic round up of reading recommendations. There are so many good choices from our artists this year that we are dividing them into two posts. This week, a plethora of art books. Next week, a mix of fiction, nonfiction and browngrotta arts’ suggestions.

Garden, by Derek Jarman, Art Forms in the Plant World by Karl Blossfeldt, and Champs D’Oeuvre by Frank Stella
Garden, by Derek Jarman, Art Forms in the Plant World by Karl Blossfeldt, and  Champs d’Oeuvre by Frank Stella

Art books always make up a good portion of our list, and this year is no exception. Shoko Fukuda told us about three books: Garden, by Derek Jarman, Art Forms in the Plant World by Karl Blossfeldt, and  Champs d’Oeuvre by Frank Stella. Heidrun Schimmel says that “in spite of all the trouble and problems with the documenta fifteen exhibition in Kassel, Germany this year,  it was an important exhibition event with a good catalog: Documenta Fifteen: Handbook, (English ed., Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart, Germany, 2022). 

Documenta Fifteen: Handbook, Lee Bontecou
Documenta Fifteen: Handbook and Lee Bontecou

Stéphanie Jacques discovered an artist that she did not know this year and a catalog about her, Lee Bontecou, that was “a good door to go inside her world.” Jacques says she was “overwhelmed by her sculptures and her engravings, her drawings. And how she always continued to invent and manufacture her unusual materials.”

Conversations Avec Denise René and Was ist ein Künstler? by Verena Kreiger
Conversations Avec Denise René and Was ist ein Künstler? by Verena Kreiger

From Korea, Young-ok Shin read the following book “with great interest” this year: 5000 Years of Korean Textiles: An Illustrated History and Technical Survey by Yeon-ok Sim (available in libraries). She also recommends Conversations Avec Denise René (in French). Denise René was a gallerist in France who specialized in kinetic and op art. And, another look at art (in German), Was ist ein Künstler? by Verena Kreiger.

Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72, by Molly Peacock and Last Light, How 6 great artists made old age a time of triumph by Richard Lacayo
The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, by Molly Peacock and Last Light, How 6 great artists made old age a time of triumph by Richard Lacayo

This year, Polly Barton “loved” The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, by Molly Peacock. “Mary Delaney’s work with color, dyes and flowers through collage, as well as her life story was deeply inspiring to me,” Barton writes. “In the contemplation of each flower as a product of a period in the artist’s life, I found myself reflecting on my own forty years of work in woven ikat. It is a quiet, absorbing, book. The images a treat for the eyes.” She highly recommends it. Polly Sutton found the stories of older artists of interest, too. She has been reading Last Light, How 6 Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph by Richard Lacayo. “The book is heavy in more ways than one, while reading myself to sleep!” she writes. “But it is compelling to understand these artists’ productive later years.” Gertrud Hals also recommended 

Simone Pheulpin: Cercle d’art and  Kiki Smith, Camille Morineau, SilvanaEditoriale
Simone Pheulpin: Cercle d’art and  Kiki Smith, Camille Morineau, Silvana Editoriale

Simone Pheulpin: Cercle d’art (available from browngrotta arts) about the 81-year old French artists’ unique works of cotton tapes and stainless steel pins and the monograph from Kiki Smith’s major exhibition in France in 2019 and 2020, Kiki Smith, Camille Morineau, Silvana Editoriale.

Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel and What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter
Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel and What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter
How Art Can Be Thought by Allan deSouza and Cy Twombly: The Sculpture by Hatje Kantz
How Art Can Be Thought by Allan deSouza and Cy Twombly: The Sculpture by Hatje Kantz

Aby Mackie tells us that her “all-time favorite art book” is Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel. The publisher describes the book as, “Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of 20th-century abstract painting — not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.” Aby has been reading this year, and recommends, an additional group of art books: What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter and How Art Can Be Thought by Allan deSouza; and Cy Twombly: The Sculpture by Hatje Kantz. 

Teresa Lanceta Weaving as Open Source by MACBA and Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child by Hatje Kantz
Teresa Lanceta Weaving as Open Source by MACBA and Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child by Hatje Kantz

Two of the recommended books reference weaving:  Teresa Lanceta Weaving as Open Source by MACBA and Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child by Hatje Kantz, which documents that artist’s fiber works from the last two decades of her life.

The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel

Her last recommendation is a book that redresses an historic imbalance: The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel which promises you will have “your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed,” through 300 works of art from the Renaissance to the present day.

Chunghi Choo and Her Students: Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal and Magdalena Abakanowicz, Writings and Conversations
Chunghi Choo and Her Students: Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal and Magdalena Abakanowicz, Writings and Conversations

Just out this past fall, Chunghi Choo and Her Students: Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal, a large-sized book of lush photographs of Choo’s work in fiber and metal, is recommended by Mary Merkel-Hess (and browngrotta arts). “Jane C. Milosch, the editor, has written a fascinating biography of Choo’s life from her childhood in South Korea through her study at Cranbrook, her teaching at the University of Iowa and her rise as a world-famous artist,” she writes. The book also includes short sections and photographs of work by 30 of her students, including Mary Merkel-Hess, Sun-Kyung Sun, Jocelyn Chateauvert and Sam Gassman. The students’ works show how techniques learnt in a metal program are impressively transferred to other fields of art.

Last, but certainly not least, Rachel Max calls out a “amazing” book: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Writings and Conversations, which she is reading after seeing the brilliant Abakanowicz show at the Tate in London. “It’s an incredible compendium of archival material and a fascinating insight into Abakanowicz’s creative mind,” Rachel says. “She talks of her necessity to create and of soft materials and weaving as something which enabled her to realize her ideas. She also talks of her pieces as compositions in space, of their scale and sense of movement and ours as we walk through her installations. Her Abakans, she says, are ‘shelters’, objects of protection, a second skin and even to some extent mobile homes, giant pockets of interior and exterior spaces. Hardly surprising given that Abakanowicz’s whole life was in her own words, ‘formed and deformed by wars and revolutions of various kinds’.  Art, she says, tells about reality because it springs from the reality from which it develops.” Rachel wishes to some extent that she’d started reading this book before visiting the exhibition, that artist’s “voice feels so present and strong and her words and thoughts so insightful.”

So many books, so little time!

Good gifting and great reading.

Lives Well Lived: Ritzi Jacobi (1941 – 2022)

July 13, 2022 0 Comment
Ritzi Jacobi working on Exotica Series, Ritzi and Peter Jacobi, cotton, goat hair and sisal, 114″ x 60″ x 6″, 1975. Photo provided by the artist.

We write with sadness about the loss of prominent fiber sculptor, Ritzi Jacobi this past June. Along with artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz and Jagoda Buic, Ritzi Jacobi was one of the European pioneers of textile art, who has established work with textile fibers in expansive, gestural, impulsive installations internationally since the 1960s. Jacobi was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1941, and studied at the arts academy there. The reliefs and objects she created together with her husband Peter Jacobi caused a sensation as early as the 1969  International Tapestry Biennal in Lausanne, Switzerland (the first of 11 in which she participated) and the 1970 Venice Biennial. The works were densely woven from vibrant fibers, and their “shaggy” mass and monumental size convey a rough physicality and are reminiscent of the mountains of their Transylvanian homeland. They represented nature and the archaic and at the same time dealt with conscious and unconscious elemental experiences.  Much of the freshness of the “new tapestry” movement resulted from this juxtaposition of layers, and focus on materials, Giselle Eberhard Cotton observed (“The Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials (1962-1995) The Pivotal Role of a Swiss City in the ‘New Tapestry’ Movement in Eastern Europe After World War II,” Giselle Eberhard Cotton, Textile Society of America, Symposium, September 2012).

Detail of Breeze, Ritzi Jacobi coconut fiber, sisal, cotton 49” x 49” x 8”, 2000. Photo by Tom Grotta

After moving to Germany in 1970, Ritzi and Peter Jacobi initially continued their work together with the various textile fibers and layers of fragile paper and then turned to other fields of work separately. In her own work, Ritzi Jacobi continued to create large reliefs that underscored the sculptural possibilities of fiber, drawing in three dimensions, creating light and shadow with fiber cables and bundles of wrapped fibers. Ritzi Jacobi also worked with large, untreated cardboard elements, that conquered the surrounding space in a succinct and determined manner. Since the 1990s, she had been expanding her material repertoire to include metal and here, too, she showed abstract hatching and layers between surface and space, concentration and dissolution. Solo exhibitions and some together with Peter Jacobi, have taken place at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Cleveland Institute of Arts in Ohio. Works by the artist can be found in major museums around the world. In recent years, Ritzi Jacobi has mainly worked on large-format tapestries, partly as commissioned works, and has been in demand internationally as an expert in juries and committees.  Her last solo exhibition took place at Galerie Diehl in Berlin in 2019. She died in Düsseldorf, where she has lived since 2000, after a long, serious illness. 

Ritzi Jacobi Blue Zone, coconut-fibre, acrylic paint, 57″ x 57″ x 3″, 2007; and Floating Matter, coconut fiber, cotton, acrylic paint, 53.5″ x 53.5″ x 6″, 2007. Photo by Tom Grotta

Adapted from an obituary by Thomas Hirsch.

Exhibitions of Interest — here and abroad

June 8, 2022 0 Comment

A list of engaging exhibitions in the East, South, the Midwest and abroad. Add them to your summer must-see list.

New York, New York 
Ernesto Neto: Between Earth and Sky
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Through June 
521 West 21st Street New York, NY 10011
t: 212 414 4144

https://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/exhibitions/639-ernesto-neto-between-earth-and-sky-tanya-bonakdar-gallery-new-york/

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery Ernesto Neto's Earth Tree Life Love
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery Ernesto Neto’s Earth Tree Life Love, courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Ernesto Neto has become known for his immersive environments of vibrant color, fragrance and sound, and for his use of natural materials. This expansive exhibition features major installations. In the downstairs gallery is the culmination of Ernesto Neto’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between humans and the environment as inseparable entities. The cotton crochet carpet is made with spiral formations that represent the earth and the ocean, and the top of the sculpture represents the sky and leaves falling from a tree nd the ocean, and the top of the sculpture represents the sky and leaves falling from a tree, highlighting the cycle of nature. Viewers are able to take off their shoes, lie down on the carpet and gaze up to experience a moment of meditation and contemplate their connection with the natural world. On the second floor, Ernesto Neto has created a sculptural garden beneath the skylight that is comprised of spices, mulch, pebbles, soil, and plants. Neto will invite the public to plant the garden in a special presentation, where visitors can connect with the natural environment and one another.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Fiberarts International 2022

Various locations
Through August 20, 2022
5645 Butler Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201
412-261-7003

Fiberart International
At the End of My Rope, Adrienne Sloane
At the End of My Rope, Adrienne Sloane, 2019, knit cotton, rope, 57″ (top of the noose) x 14.5″
Photo by the artist.

The 24th juried exhibition at Fiberart International 2022 seeks to exhibit the best of contemporary art and invites submissions that ­­­reflect a wide range of works related to the fiber medium. Previous Fiberart Internationals have featured Yeonsoon Chang, Heidrun Schimmel and Simone Pheulpin. The jurors for this year’s exhibition are Jessica Hemmings, Argentinian artists Chiachio & Giannone and artist Nnenna Okore, who works the US and Nigeria. Among the works selected for this are At the End of My Rope, by Adrienne Sloane a fav of browngrotta arts.

New York, New York
Japan Society
Kazoko Miyamoto: To perform a line
Through July 10, 2022
333 47th Street
New York, NY 10017

Kazuko Miyamoto_Press_image_credits.docx Yoshiko Chuma in Kazuko Miyamoto: A Girl on Trail Dinosaur, 1979. © Kazuko Miyamoto. Courtesy of the artist and EXILE, Vienna

The Japan Society presents a solo exhibition Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line between through July 10, 2022. The exhibition is the first institutional survey of Miyamoto (b.1942, Tokyo), a relatively little-known but significant artist. The exhibition provides an overview of the artist’s work, moving from her contributions to the Minimalism movement through early paintings and drawings from the 1960s, and her increasingly spatial string constructions in the 1970s, to her conceptual experiments in performance, culminating in her kimono series from 1987 through the 1990s. There is a 3D tour on the Japan Society website that features more images of Miyamoto’s work: https://www.japansociety.org/arts-and-culture/exhibitions/kazuko-miyamoto

Tarrytown, New York
The Woman’s Work Exhibition
Lyndhurst Museum
Through September 26, 2022
635 South Broadway
Tarrytown, New York 10591

Sabrina Gschwandtner Quilt
Sabrina Gschwandtner Quilt, Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Women’s Work Exhibition catalog cover

This groundbreaking exhibition tracks the deep, pervasive, and continuing influence of the historic female domestic craft tradition in the practice of contemporary women artists and invites new investigations into the position of women in the contemporary art world. Historic works and contemporary pieces displaying their influence are placed side-by-side throughout the Lyndhurst mansion in the domestic setting and the exhibition gallery. This allows the Museum to establish the pervasiveness of the traditional influence among contemporary artists and show the broad diversity of traditional handcraft mediums employed. The exhibition is also a mini-retrospective of the emergence of women artists in the 1960s and 1970s including important early examples of works by some of the feminist pioneers of the time. These include objects and works by Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Yoko Ono, Miriam Schapiro, Harmony Hammond, Sheila Hicks, Idelle Weber, Louise Bourgeois, Valerie Hammond, Kiki Smith, Elaine Reichek, and Jenny Holzer.

Jyväskyla, Finland
Artapestry 6
Central Museum of Finland
Through September
Alvar Aallon katu 7, 40600 
Jyväskylä, Finland

https://www.jyvaskyla.fi/en/museum-central-finland/current-exhibitions

hat’s it, Gudrun Pagter
That’s it, Gudrun Pagter, 2020, 228 x 252, cm, Photo: Atelier Egtved 

After stops in Sweden and Denmark, Artapestry 6 has arrived in Finland. The exhibition showcases works by 40 artists from 16 different countries., including Gudrun Pagter, Wlodmiericz Cygan, Nancy Koenigsberg and Helena Hernmarck. The exhibition is produced by the European Tapestry Forum (ETF). 

Durham, North Carolina
Beyond the Surface: Collage, Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
From June 16 – February 23, 2023
2001 Campus Drive
Durham, North Carolina 27705
https://nasher.duke.edu

Silvia Heyden, Hurricane, 20th century. Silk and linen, 80 3/4 × 94 1/4 inches (205.1 × 239.4 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Gift of Mary D.B.T. Semans and James H. Semans, M.D.; 1976.101.1. © Silvia Heyden Estate. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

Since opening in 2005, the Nasher Museum has been dedicated to building a groundbreaking collection of contemporary art centered on diversity and inclusion. The museum’s emphasis is on artists historically underrepresented, overlooked or excluded from art institutions, with a particular focus on artists of African descent. In this effort, the museum supports global artists of extraordinary vision, whose works spark opportunities for thoughtful engagement. Beyond the Surface includes approximately 40 works, primarily from the Nasher Museum’s collection. With a focus on collage, mixed media and textile works, Beyond the Surface explores how artists bring together disparate materials and ideas to create artworks that engage with all audiences.

Enjoy — in person or online!

Hot off the Press: the Crowdsourcing the Collective: survey of textiles and mixed media art (our 53rd volume)

May 25, 2022 0 Comment
Crowdsourcing the Collective Catalog

We’ve made our reputation on documentation and photography of art at browngrotta arts (“Beyond Measure,” Glenn Adamson, Volume 50: Chronicling fiber art for three decades (browngrotta arts, Wilton, CT 2020)). Crowdsourcing the Collective: survey of textiles and mixed media art, our 53rd volume, is the latest of our efforts. 

Lia Cook Spread

In an essay titled “State of the Art: where we are/how we got here” the catalog takes a look at fiber and art textiles today, as these art forms bask in renewed popularity. It also sheds some light on where fiber art has come from — featuring work that ranges from 1982 to 2022. The 42 artists featured in the exhibition (from 13 countries), are both a part of that legacy and a reflection of fiber’s current state.  In the 1960s, Adela Akers was creating large-scale weavings; by the 1970s, her works were noted for their spare designs and darker colors — brown, black and maroon. Gyöngy Laky has been a force since founding Fiberworks in the 1970s, a prestigious textile gallery and academic program in Berkeley, California. Lia Cook and Naomi Kobayashi participated in the prestigious Lausanne Biennials of International Tapestry in the 1970s; Laky in the 1980s. Artists in the exhibition who began exhibiting in the 2000s continue this legacy. Stéphanie Jacques, Rachel Max and Neha Puri Dhir all claim textile artist pioneers as an influence — Ed Rossbach and Claire Zeisler for Jacques;  Anni Albers and Ruth Asawa for Dhir and Max.

Adela Akers Spread
Shuko Fukuda Spread

The catalog also includes the artists’ perspectives in their own words in “State of the Artist: how we are working/what’s front of mind?” and in the comments on their individual works. Not surprisingly, their preoccupations vary. For some, like Lewis Knauss and Laura Foster Nicholson, it’s the environment in the large sense — fires and climate change and the impacts of over consumption. For Lia Cook, and her garden, it’s more immediate. For still others, like Caroline Bartlett and Polly Barton, an abstract consideration is underway on the power of thread as a medium to reflect the fragility and connectivity of our world, and the cross fertilization of the senses as expressed in fiber. 

Laura Foster Nicholson spread

Crowdsourcing the Collective: survey of textiles and mixed media art is in full color, 148 photographs, 42 artists from 13 countries. You can obtain your copy at browngrotta.com. Learn more about the exhibition by joining our Zoom presentation on June 3rd at 5 pm EST, Art of the Rocks: an exhibition walkthrough with spirits. We will talk about the works in Crowdsourcing the Collective and toast the artists with a curated cocktail by our own mixologist, Max Fanwick @DudeWhoCooks.

Marianne Kemp Spread

Artist Focus: Hideho Tanaka

February 16, 2022 0 Comment
Hideho Tanaka portrait
Hideho Tanaka at the opening of Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers in New York, 2011. Photo by Tom Grotta

Japanese artist Hideho Tanaka, now in his 80s, explores contradictory elements in his work, using time, which he sees as an agent of change, as one guide to his aesthetic choices.

Tanaka studied industrial art and design at the Musashino Art University, in Tokyo. Beginning in 1972, Tanaka taught art, while participating in solo and group exhibitions As a teacher, Tanaka explained, he worked to nurture younger generations, as artists, to think not only of soft cloth, but also less-used materials such as wood, paper pulp and stainless steel thread.

Vanishing and Emerging Rocks
22ht Vanishing & Emerging P32-A, Hideho Tanaka, paper and burnt steel wire, 8″ x 11.5″ x 10″, 1995; 23ht Vanishing & Emerging P32-B, Hideho Tanaka, paper and burnt steel wire, 8″ x 11″ x 11″, 1995; 25ht Vanishing & Emerging P32-D, Hideho Tanaka, paper and burnt steel wire, 8″ x 8.5″ x 7.5″, 1995; 26ht Vanishing & Emerging P32-E, Hideho Tanaka, paper and burnt steel wire, 8″ x 8″ x 8.25″, 1995. Photo by Tom Grotta

In the 1980s, Tanaka expanded the scale of his activities and began large-scale outdoor performances and installations in which he covered dunes with cloth which he burned. In subsequent years, under the theme of Vanishing & Emerging (disappearance and transformation), he continued these explorations — burning metal fibers and other aspects of his works. “He uses fire to suggest destructive force or benign transformation .… He often creates simple solids, opposing the specificity of the materials to the generality of the forms and burning holes in the cloth or singeing the edges of the solids to invade their geometric austerity.” Janet Koplos, Contemporary Japanese Sculpture (Abbeville Press, New York, NY, 1991).

Vanishing and Emerging Wall detail
16ht Vanishing and Emerging Wall, Hideho Tanaka, paper, 87” x 102” x 11”, 2009. Photo by Tom Grotta

Tanaka also expanded his art practice in the 80’s to include the creation of art textiles using paper — Tanaka also expanded his art practice in the 80’s to textiles using paper — creating dynamic works by virtue of the material used in the works and their sense of scale. The artist explained his interest in fiber in the catalog for Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers (Japan Society, New York, distributed Yale University Press 2011) an exhibition that travelled internationally in Europe, the US and Europe. “Why did I start thinking about fiber art as a medium? It was partly because I was attracted to the idea of expressing myself in a subtle yet intractable material, but I was also intrigued by the challenge of turning something accidental into a deliberate work of art,” he said. “I’m acutely aware of accidents that actually help me achieve the expression I was striving for and other accidents that take my work in a completely different direction.”

The sculptural sense of Tanaka’s art is exciting — the works are light and yet have enormous presence. In his smaller objects, several layers of thin wire have been loosely bound, sometimes with piles of light-colored fibers, sometimes coated with paper pulp. He creates a contrast between the stiff wire and the short pieces of malleable fiber, the uniform wire and pulp in freeform. The large elliptical wall hanging, Vanishing and Emerging, wall (2009), takes a different approach. “Intricately crafted from ink-lined squares of paper, it is a kind of ode to the natural weight, thickness and movement of the cotton, flax and paper fibers from which the panels are made, emphasizing the material’s natural flow so that the piece seems to have a life of its own. The result is a subtle trick of the eye: The textile is at once rippled and featherlight yet geometrically robust with parallel and perpendicular lines that appear to be woven together like a dense and tidy network of veins in a leaf,” wrote Alexandra Zagalsky, “Hideho Tanaka Carefully Stitched Together Pieces to Make this Sculptural Textile,” Introspective Magazine, September 22, 2021.

Emerging Wall Collage
29, 31ht Emerging, Hideho Tanaka, japanese carbon ink drawing, inkjet print, collage (cotton cloth which put a Japanese tissue paper.), 14.5” x 18.25” x 1”, 2016. Photo by Tom Grotta

Tanaka’s work “deals with both philosophical and metaphysical ideas, and he often endeavors to connect the realm of the physical world with unseen spiritual planes. He attempts to bridge this gap through forms that suggest the frailty and transience of the human experience,” writes the Minneapolis of Art which has acquired his work. “The medium of fiber is versatile and allows Tanaka creative freedom.” His work seamlessly spans the categories of fiber art and sculpture. 

Women Artists Get Their Due: Learning About Lia Cook

June 16, 2021 0 Comment

Women didn’t win the vote until 1920. It took another 100 more years, but in the last few, women artists have finally begun to win the comprehensive, worldwide recognition they long deserved. Exhibitions like Women Take the Floor, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Anni Albers and Dora Maar at the Tate Modern in London, Sheila Hicks at the Centre Pompidou and A Tale of Two Women Painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana at the Prado in Spain are just some of the ways female artists are getting their due. 

Bamian by Sheila Hicks (American (lives and works in Paris) 1968, Wool and acrylic yarns, wrapped. Charles Potter Kling Fund and partial gift of Sheila Hicks © Sheila Hicks * Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Bethany CT. © 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London. Photography: Tim Nighswander/Imaging4Art

Lia Cook is one of those artists. Receiving critical acclaim from the onset of her career, innovating, experimenting and creating art for nearly five decades, Cook’s recent work in neuroaesthetics in the last decade has gained her a broader audience.  Since the 70s, Cook’s work has promoted a reconsideration of weaving, long-considered women’s work and thus inferior to high or fine art. While pursuing a Master’s degree in Art at UC Berkeley, she joined a group of progressive women in forming Fiberworks Center for Textile Arts. Just out of graduate school, she was issued an invitation to the prestigious Lausanne Biennial in 1973, where she exhibited with fiber art pioneers Magdalena Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks. Viewers of Cook’s work find craft/fine art distinctions superfluous — a view that has finally taken hold in the art world at large.

space-continuum-1-portrait , Continuum I, exhibited at the 1973 International Biennial of Tapestry, Lausanne, Switzerland

Through July 31st, you have the chance to win an important work from Cook’s early explorations, Spatial Ikat III -2 (1976). The tapestry is a prize in a sweepstakes organized by UncommonGood, a B-corp that helps nonprofits of all sizes expand their reach and do even more good. The sweepstakes prize includes a $7500 prize, a 20-minute Zoom call with the artist and a copy of Lia Cook: In the Folds – Works from 1973 – 1997 (browngrotta arts, Wilton, CT 2007). The tapestry was donated by browngrotta arts as the latest of our Art for a Cause projects; the cash prize is from UncommonGood. The proceeds from the sweepstakes will go to the Breast Council Alliance https://breastcanceralliance.org which funds innovative research, breast surgery fellowships, regional education, dignified support and screening for the underserved. 

browngrotta arts is thrilled to partner with UncommonGood and Breast Cancer Alliance in this sweepstakes. UncommonGood provides comprehensive software solutions for nonprofit organizations. With these tools, groups like the Breast Cancer Alliance can engage more donors and amplify their reach.

This sweepstakes presents an opportunity to create a new fans for Lia Cook’s work while benefiting a worthy cause in the process. A winning combination!

To enter the sweepstakes: https://uncommongood.io