Category: artist

A Lasting Legacy – Dorothy Liebes and artists at browngrotta

May 22, 2024 0 Comment

Rhonda Brown

Hommage á Dorothy Liebes: Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
Hommage á Dorothy Liebes I & 2, 1948-49 I, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, silk leather, aluminum, flourescent tubing (including some materials obtained from Dorothy Liebes) 54″ x 15″ x 15″ (each), 2001. Photo: Tom Grotta

Dorothy Liebes (1897 – 1972) was an influencer before the term was coined. Known as the “mother of modern weaving,” and initiator of “The Liebes Look” she served as a national arbiter of interior design and fashion trends reaching thousands of people through print magazines, television, film, and significant collaborations with architects and corporations from Frank Lloyd Wright to Dupont. Liebes created luminous, jewel-toned fabrics, often incorporating nontraditional materials and metallic threads.

Life Magazine, Dorothy Liebes

Her influence extended well beyond influencing consumer trends. She impacted the careers of numerous artists – some who only met her and studied her work and others who worked in her studios in San Francisco and New York.

Rossbach, plaited Metal Foil Baskets
120-121r Tribe of Baskets IV, Ed Rossbach, plaited metal foil, 14” x 3” x 3”, 13.5” x 3.5” x 3.5”, 1970. Photo by Tom Grotta

Ed Rossbach met Dorothy Liebes only in passing, but her influence on his work was marked. In 1940, after he had finished college, he visited an International Exposition at Treasure Island in California and saw the decorative arts exhibit that Dorothy Lieber had installed there. “I didn’t know anything about Dorothy Liebes, naturally,” he told Harriet Nathan in 1983. (Charles Edmund Rossbach, “Artist, Mentor, Professor, Writer,” an oral history conducted in 1983 by Harriet Nathan, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1987, p. 14.) “I saw these contemporary textiles and weavings and wrote in my diary that I would like to learn how to weave so that I could weave upholstery.” Years later, when Rossbach had moved to the Bay Area, he visited Liebes’s studio. He recounted being awestruck by the things she inserted into her warp, by her whole personality, and how she interacted with those who worked for her. (Lia Cook, “Ed Rossbach: Educator,” in Ed Rossbach: 40 Years of Exploration and Innovation in Fiber Art, Lark Books and Textile Museum, 1990.) Liebes “had a sense of [her] own importance,” he said later, in an interview with the Archives of American Art. (Oral history interview with Ed Rossbach, 2002 August 27-29. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.) Like Liebes, Rossbach would become known for incorporating non-traditional materials into his work.

Three other artists whose work is shown by browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut – Sherri Smith, Glen Kaufman, and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette — were among Liebes’s studio alumni  — their experiences with the designer were evident throughout their artistic careers

1ss Linde Star, Sherri Smith, plaiting, discharge; cotton webbing, 34″ x 37″, 1976. Photo by Tom Grotta

Artist and educator, Sherri Smith, went to work in Dorothy Liebes’s studio after she completed MFA in weaving and textile design at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1967. From there she went to Boris Knoll Fabrics, where she headed the Woven Design Department. Smith was well situated for her first major museum success — the inclusion of her piece Volcano No. 10, 1967 in MoMA’s Wall Hangings curated by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen in 1969.

Portrait of Glen Kaufman, courtesy of Glen Kaufman estate

Glen Kaufman spent a year at Liebes’s New York studio from 1960 to 1961, after a Fulbright in Scandinavia. Kaufman was also a Cranbrook graduate. There he created handwoven pile rugs among other items. At the Liebes studio, he and Harry Soviak, a Cranbrook classmate, concentrated on carpet designs and created pillows in “wild colors.” The pair would try to “out-Dorothy Dorothy Liebes,” making pillows using Liebes’s daring color combinations and metallic yarn, Kaufman told Josephine Shea in an oral interview in 2008. He recalled that the designer “had this reputation of being the arbiter of interior taste. And she would put together things like red and pink and orange, which were absolutely out in left field,…”  (FN4 Oral history interview with Glen Kaufman, 2008 January 22-February 23, Josephine Shea.)

Glenn Kaufman Banner
500gk Banner, Glen Kaufman, silk, wood, 76″ x 41″ x .75″, 1960s. photo by Tom Grotta

Kaufman’s work from the early 60s like Banner, paired vibrant colors. In others, like Herringbone, Odd Man In and Polymaze, Kaufman continued to explore carpet making techniques. Over time, however, he adopted a more muted palette. Liebes remained enthusiastic but bemoaned the color change. In her essay for Cooper Hewitt exhibition on Liebes and her legacy, Erin Dowding quotes a 1967 letter from Liebes to Kaufman in which the designer writes about seeing his works, “which I thought were wonderful. I missed color, though, and I’m sure you do too.” (Glen Kaufman essay by Erin Dowding, Cooper Hewitt Museum).

Portrait of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
Mariette Rousseau-Vermette. Photo by Tom Grotta

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s experience with Dorothy Liebes was perhaps the most formative. The details of the year she worked in Lieben’s California studio have been compiled and generously shared with us by Anne Newlands. Newlands is the author of Weaving Modernist Art: the Life and Work of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette and the guest curator of an upcoming retrospective of Rousseau-Vermette’s work at the Musée National des Beaux-arts du Quebec in Quebec City in 2025.  

After graduation from the École des beaux-arts in Montreal in 1948, Mariette, then Rousseau, later Rousseau-Vermette, looked to the United States to further her education, unlike fellow students who travelled to France. She was inspired by a 1947 issue of Life magazine in which an article titled “Top Weaver” introduced her to the innovative Dorothy Liebes studio in San Francisco. Years later, she described the impact: “The article blew me away — this magnificent woman was radically changing textiles in the United States, she was returning them to art. For her, textures, colours, techniques had no limits.” (Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, public lecture, Musée du Québec, 23 August 1992. Translation by Judith Terry. Cited Anne Newlands.) In addition to Liebes’s innovations with non-traditional weaving materials, Rousseau-Vermette said she was captivated by Liebes’s “prophetic instinct for trends in color.”

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette maquette
Mariette Rousseau-Vermette maquette for stairwell commission. Photo by Tom Grotta

After graduation, despite the fact that she spoke little English at the time, Rousseau traveled to San Francisco for two reasons: to secure a job or an internship at the Liebes studio and to study at the California College of Arts and Crafts in nearby Oakland. Her mornings were spent at the college in Oakland, and in the afternoons she waited patiently in the reception area of the Liebes studio, her thick sample books from the École des beaux-arts on her lap, trying to convince the studio to hire her. With a determination that would become legendary, Rousseau-Vermette returned daily and finally Dorothy Liebes relented, saying that she could not pay her (although later she would), but that she would let her work. (Material on Mariette Rousseau-Vermette. Cited by Anne Newlands.)  “Try — Do not be afraid — Make ‘research’ a pleasure – Share with others. These are the ‘gifts’ I received during my stay in Dorothy Liebes’s studio.” Rousseau-Vermette wrote. “At the end of the 1940s, Dorothy Liebes’s endless energy and joie de vivre, and the friendship among her thirteen assistants, started me on the path that became my way of life.” (Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, “Fiber-Optic and Other Weavings,” in Wired, browngrotta arts, 2001.)

Roy Thompson Hall ceiling by Mariette Rousseau Vermette
Roy Thompson Hall. Building designed by architect Arthur Erickson; ceiling sculpture by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette. Photo by Tom Grotta

Like Liebes, much of Rousseau-Vermette’s career was devoted to creating textile works on commission to mediate architectural spaces, notably, The Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto, Exxon in New York City and Arthur Erikson’s Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Working with architects was central to Leibes’s practice. As Alexa Griffith Winton has noted, “Liebes encountered architectural blueprints and quickly learned to read them.” (“’None of Us is Sentimental’: About the Hand: Dorothy Liebes, Handweaving, and Design for Industry,” Alexa Griffith Winton,The Journal of Modern Craft, Volume 4—Issue 3, November 2011, pp. 255.) Rousseau would follow suit; her most preferred commissions would be those that involved collaborations with architects. Her files were thick with blueprints and architectural drawings. Where buildings were hard and cold, Liebes’s textiles were warm and soft says. Like Liebes, Rousseau-Vermette’s brilliance came from building and bridging a tension between textiles and architecture. (“How the Mother of Modern Weaving Transformed the World of Design,” Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian Magazine, July 19, 2023.)

Brilliant coloration also featured in Rousseau-Vermette’s work and she utilized unique materials as Liebes’ did. Canadian architect, Arthur Erikson, wrote of a series of color fields of luscious color and texture composed vertically or horizontally of combed wool that he commissioned for a building in Vancouver, B.C. “I found the simplicity of her work blended perfectly with the simple structural expression of the building, the building transformed through the artist’s eye.” (Arthur Erickson, “Introduction,” in Wired, browngrotta arts, 2001.)

626mr Elégante, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, optical fiber, metallic thread, mylar, 48″ x 48″, 2000. Photo by Tom Grotta

In the 1990s, Rousseau created a series innovative weavings, like Elegante, that incorporate optical fiber. Another work from 2001, Hommage á Liebes, incorporates silk, leather and fluorescent tubes, some of it material that Rousseau-Vermette had sourced from Liebes. In its title, the student explicitly credits the mentor as an impetus for her work. Liebes also influenced the way in which Rousseau-Vermette would manage her studio. Like Liebes, Rousseau-Vermette created detailed cartons and maquettes for each of the 644 tapestries she created in her career. Her meticulous notes are now in the archives of the National Gallery of Canada. She was motivated by Liebes’s success as an independent owner-operator, holding as she did a singular place in the male-dominated business world.

Dorothy Liebes exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt
Dorothy Liebes exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt. Photo by Tom Grotta

Want to know more? Liebes’s life and design have received renewed attention in the past year as a result of the expansive exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in New York, with many resources available online. A lush volume accompanied the book, both entitled, A Dark, A Light, A Bright: the Designs of Dorothy Liebes.

Mark Rothko as a Textile Influence

April 10, 2024 0 Comment

Recent exhibitions of Mark Rothko’s work, a massive Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, comprising more than 100 paintings (through October 18th) and Mark Rothko Works on Paper at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., have brought another wave of attention to the deservedly acclaimed artist. Rothko is best known for his color field paintings that feature irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, produced from 1949 to 1970. “[R]ectangles of dazzling, unearthly color floating one above the other,” that “lend themselves to … an intense, even religious devotion …” wrote Anthony Majanlahti, in Hyperallergic in March 2024.

Hommage a Rothko Tapestry, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
476mr Hommage a Rothko, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 87″ x 84.5″, 1979. Photo by Tom Grotta

Rothko’s work has been a potent influence for several of the international artists who have worked with browngrotta arts. Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s appreciation is perhaps the most literal. The Canadian artist saw an exhibition of the Rothko’s works in Italy in 1958. It was pivotal in inspiring her “to produce strictly artistic works in weaving,” Anne Newlands wrote in Weaving Modernist Art: The Life and Times of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, Ontario, 2023, p. 32). Throughout Rousseau-Vermette’s life, Newlands says, Rothko was a powerful influence, “triggering compositions with floating blocks of color, soft edges and her signature brushed wool technique to create a blending of colors and a sense of inner light.” Her interest in Rothko “marked her as a colorfield artist-weaver, fueling her ambition to create large-scale tapestries that would engulf the viewer and employ powerful chromatic contrasts of light and dark to evoke an emotional response.” 

Hommage a Rothko Tapestry Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
613mr Si Rothko Métait Conté, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 94” x 80”, 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta

Rousseau-Vermette’s work Hommage á Rothko was included in Three Canadian Fiber Artists at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada in 1981. In 1997, browngrotta arts exhibited Si Rothko m’ était conté une histoire, 1997 at the SOFA art fair in Chicago, Illinois. “With its large scale, densely brushed woolen surface and stacked blocks of color in velvety jewel tones of deep blues and shadowy reds,” Newlands notes, “it underlined the artist’s enduring admiration of Rothko and her lasting desire to create contemplative, atmospheric tapestries.” The tapestry was purchased at the exhibition and later donated to the Art Institute of Chicago. 

American artist, Sheila Hicks, who studied with famed color theorist, Josef Albers, also found Rothko’s use of color an inspiration. She was one of the artists included in the 2021 exhibition, Artists and the Rothko Chapel: 50 Years of Inspiration, at the Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. “Like music, color is the almighty mood determinant: It sets the stage for emotional depth and inspires an expansive range of responses from joy to despair, from a sense of wonder to an affirmation of life,” Hicks has said. “Rothko’s painting did this for me.”  (“5 Artists on the Influence of Mark Rothko,” Artsy Editorial, April 13, 2021).

Home-Ii by Lija Rage wall hanging
7lr Home-II, Lija Rage, mixed media, wooden sticks, linen and copper, 53″ x 38″, 2020. Photo by Tom Grotta

Color is an important element of Lija Rage’s work, too. Rage is from Latvia, as was Rothko. In her one-person exhibition at the Mark Rothko Art Centre, Daugavpils, Latvia, entitled Colours, she described how she determines the colors she uses. “For digital printing,” Rage said in conjunction with Colours, “I use my own photographs. Real to begin with and taken in different seasons, they are processed until I’m left with blurred color fields. Color as a flash, an abstract field, a vision.” The color in her fiber works are drawn from nature. “Green – the woods outside my window; blue – the endless variety of the sea; orange – the sun in a summer sky; brown, grey and black – fresh furrows and the road beneath the melting snow; red – the roses in our gardens.”

Neha Puri Dhir working at the Rothko Center
Neha Puri Dhir, crumpling and stitch-resist dyeing on handwoven silk 2016, Photo courtesy of Neha Puri Dhir.

The Mark Rothko Art Centre also hosted Indian artist Neha Puri Dhir. In 2016, she was chosen with eight other participants to participate in an International Textile Art Symposium. ” I was fortunate to attend an art residency at Mark Rothko Art Centre as part of Textile Art Symposium at Daugavpils, Latvia and got an opportunity to study the great artist in the environs of his birthplace,” Dhir writes. 

Neha Puri Dhir in front of her weaving Autumn
(Rust colour) based on the colors and textures of maple leaves during Fall. Autumn, Neha Puri Dhir, 2016. Photo courtesy of Neha Puri Dhir.

“What Rothko brought to the world was very unique and personal. He looked at his works as an environment in themselves, works which transcended emotions and he did not like any academic dissection of his art. At Daugavpils, understanding his world and spending hours trying to seek a glimpse of his mind, re-affirmed the beauty of a unique creative self-expression for me. I realized what Rothko was expressing was nothing but very basic human emotions which invariably will always be layered and multifaceted. The layering of colors and mixing of oil and egg-based paints for expression has all left an indelible mark on my art,” Dhir says. 

Gizella Warburton of the UK and Gudrun Pagter of Denmark also reference Mark Rothko as a influence. “He manages to create a great image-based experience with his clean and focused divisions and distinguished color schemes,” Pagter says. UK artist, Rachel Max, read From the Inside Out by Rothko’s son, Christopher. Max says the artist’s meditative sensitivity and use of color inspires her. She was particularly interested in the chapter on the emotional power of Rothko’s paintings and its parallels to music. Christopher Rothko draws similarities between Mozart’s melodies and his father’s transparent textures, clarity, and purity of from in order to give what he calls greater expression  – for both artist and composer alike nothing was added unnecessarily. “I grew up surrounded with music,” Max writes. “The relationship between music and weaving is something I have been exploring and this particular essay resonated with me.” 

Rachel Max, Orange Nest Basket
4rm Rachel Max, Orange Nest, dyed cane, plaited and twined, 8” x 12” x 11”, 2006. Photo by Tom Grotta

While Rothko is best known for his paintings, he also created nearly 3,000 works on paper (the subject of the National Gallery exhibition). He mounted them similarly to how his canvases would be hung. “They’re attached to either a hardboard panel or linen, and wrapped around a stretch or a strainer to give them this three-dimensional presence,” says curator Adam Greenhalgh said. Another parallel to contemporary fiber art work, in which dimension is often an element.

Rothko’s son, Christopher, has said something about viewing his father’s works that applies to anyone for whom Rothko is an influence. “I often think about going to Rothko exhibitions,” he told CBS News. “It’s a great place to be alone together. Ultimately, it’s a journey we all make ourselves, but so much richer when we do it in the company of others.”

Noteworthy: Scottish Tapestry by Jo Barker and Sara Brennan

March 13, 2024 0 Comment
Sara Brennan and Jo Barker portraits by Tom Grotta

Welcome to Noteworthy, the first in an occasional series on topics we think are worth a closer look. In number one, our focus is on Jo Barker and Sara Brennan, two contemporary tapestry artists from Scotland.

Sara Brennan, Journey Trees III and IV, linens and swing threads, 8″ x 8″ x 1″ (each), 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta

Scotland has a storied tapestry tradition, from the well-regarded Dovecot Tapestry Studio, founded in 1912, to the program at the College of Art at the University of Edinburgh. The country’s most ambitious entry is the Great Tapestry of Scotland (though technically an embroidery). It was hand stitched on linen woven by Peter Greig & Co in Kirkaldy, who have been at it since 1825. It involved 1000 people from across the country, 160 linen panels, and 300 miles of wool – enough to stretch the entire length of Scotland. 

11jb Flow, Jo Barker
cotton, wool, woven, linen, silk and embroidery threads, 28.5” x 54”, 2015, photo by Tom Grotta

Two of the artists that work with browngrotta artists, Jo Barker and Sara Brennan, studied together at the College of Art in Edinburgh where the basic assumption is that tapestry can be used as a visually rich and dynamic medium in contemporary art practice. 

38b Broken White band with Pale Blue II, Sara Brennan, linen, wool and cotton, 30″ x 30″ x 2″, 2012. Photo by Tom Grotta

Barker and Brennan were born in the same year and their studios are in the same building in Edinburgh now. They exhibited together in A Considered Place at Drum Castle in Aberdeenshire a few years ago. Both artists are accomplished and well recognized — Barker is a recipient of the Cordis Prize for Tapestry. Each creates elegant, evocative works that provide a painterly experience from a distance and a remarkably tactile encounter up close. Their approaches to tapestry, however, vary, particularly their use of color. 

9jb Resonance, Jo Barker, woven on cotton warp using wool, cotton, linen, silk and embroidery threads, 41″ x 67.25″, 2009. Photo by Tom Grotta

Jo Barker begins by taking photographs and drawing designs — often influenced by the Scottish countryside where she likes to walk. She builds collages with her images, manipulating them online and capturing gestural movement and deep color. The artist is interested in qualities and patterns of light: transient and ephemeral starting points translated slowly into woven form. She sees contradictions between the flowing nature of ink and paint and the illusion of fluidity translated into soft, richly colored yarns. “The finished images are consciously abstract and ambiguous. I want to create a sense of something as opposed to an identifiable object or picture,” she says. 

40sb Old Blue and Brown Bands – Series I , Sara Brennan, wools, linens and silk, 14” x 35” x 1.25”, 2020. Photo by Tom Grotta

Sara Brennan is also inspired by landscape, responding with a very simplified and reduced use of form. “My work has vertical and horizontal blocks,” she says, “lines and areas that can be traced back through all my work. There is also a consistent color palette. One or two predominant colors, a slight twist to some of the lines, a hidden line of red and yellow giving a subtle definition. I use different whites to change the planes ,..” Brennan weaves from her own drawings, no digital manipulation is involved. “Choosing each yarn is as important to me and the tapestry as making the original drawing,” she explains. “The yarn must work to help balance and convey the feel and mood. It is vital in the interpretation of the drawing, bringing the tapestry to life …”

13jb Cobalt Haze, Jo Barker, woven on cotton warp using wool, cotton, linen, silk and embroidery threads
15” x 33.5”, 2010. photo by Tom Grotta

You’ll find more about these artists at browngrotta.com.

Artist Focus: Mary Giles

August 16, 2023 0 Comment
Portrait of Mary Giles in her Saint Louis Home/Studio. Photo by Tom Grotta

Renowned for her exceptional fiber art, artist Mary Giles blended organic textures with meticulous craftsmanship, carving out a memorable niche for herself in her lifetime. Mary Giles’ artistry centered in the realm of fiber art, a space in which she has had a profound impact. Fiber art encompasses textiles, natural fibers, and innovative techniques to create striking three-dimensional forms. Giles studied fiber technique with artists such as Ferne Jacobs, Lissa Hunter, Diane Itter, Jane Sauer and John McQueen. 

69mg Quill Bowl II, Mary Giles, waxed linen and porcupine quills, , 4.5″ x 11.5″ x 11.5″, 1983. Photo by Tom Grotta

Giles’ unique ability to manipulate materials such as waxed linen, porcupine quills, metal, paper, silk, and copper wire allowed her to craft intricate sculptures and vessels that blur the lines between the natural and the imagined. This juxtaposition exudes messages of both strength and fragility, inviting viewers to contemplate the symbiosis of these elements. Throughout her diverse portfolio, this contrast is oftenfound. For example, in her piece titled “A Gathering Bowl”, she utilized woven waxed linen along with copper to help achieve this effect — using a hard material to create a remarkably sensuous form.

11mg Anointed Rank, Mary Giles, waxed linen, wire, bone, paint, gesso, 10” x 31,” 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta

Giles’ fascination with the natural world played a significant role in shaping her art. She explained when she received the Master of the Medium Award for Fiber from the James Renwick Alliance, that “my ideas are an accumulation, my sources most often from nature and my palette is drawn from the colors of earth, water, wood and stone.” Natural formations; the fluid curves of a leaf, the intricate patterns of a spider’s web, or even the rugged textures of tree bark and bouldershave all found their way into her creations. Her distinctive approach involved incorporating thin metal strips to create texture, light and shadow, and often, small human figures, as in Anointed Rank. It enabled Giles to breathe life into organic forms through her artistic expression.

Detail of Mary Giles, 64mg Annointed Manstick, waxed linen, wire, paint, gesso , 33.5″ x 5” x 5” 1997, Photo by Tom Grotta

Growing up in a rural setting, she developed an early connection with the Earth’s elements. Giles said in 2013, “I’ve been drawn to the woods most of my life, from childhood summers at a log cabin in northern Minnesota, to the redwoods of northern California, to the tropical jungles of Costa Rica, and now at our current home on the banks of the St. Croix River.” Her art often serves as an homage to the natural world.

60mg Lead Relief, Mary Giles lead, iron, wood, 23.75” x 56 .75”” x 2”, 2011. Photo by Tom Grotta

Giles found solace and strength through her craft. Her art became a sanctuary—a place where she could confront her vulnerabilities and transform them into something beautiful and resilient. Giles observed about her work, “I interpret and express explored communication and intimacy in relationships. The results are reflected in my figural work. I admire the directness and honesty I see in tribal art and I try to incorporate those qualities in my own.” This intimate relationship between her life and art allowed her to create pieces, like Lead Relief, which resonate on a deeply personal level with audiences, evoking emotions and contemplation. In the piece, dozens of tiny figures cluster around the center seam, while fewer individual figures stand alone in the periphery, seemingly lost, amongst faint marks where figures had once been. The work conjures thoughts about connection, community, identity purpose, and more.

27mg Black Profile, Mary Giles, waxe linen, copper, copper wire, 12.75″ x 31.25″ x 6.5″, 2002. Photo by Tom Grotta

Mary Giles’ artistic legacy extends beyond the boundaries of her individual works. “She is one of the people who took the concepts of basketry technique and pioneered using them to make sculptural work,” Lois Russell, artist, collector, and former president of the National Basketry Organization has noted. Giles played a role in elevating the profile of fiber art, garnering recognition and respect for this unique form of expression. Her artwork is featured in a number of  museum collections, including that of the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin, Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan., the Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York.

Giles work will be featured in browngrotta arts’ Fall Art in the Barn series, Vignettes: three exhibitions, one venue, from October 7 – 15.

Artist Focus: Judy Mulford

July 19, 2023 0 Comment

The late Judy Mulford was an artist known for her deeply personal and autobiographical approach to the creative process. This is reflected in her artwork, which serves as a testament to her life experiences, and the love she had for family. Mulford’s studio was located in Carpinteria, California, and acted as somewhat of a museum. The space was decorated with artifacts, baskets, and dolls from all over the world, which greatly influenced her artistic journey. Her artwork is a reflection of the unique storytelling ability that she possessed, manifested through a combination of various mediums and techniques and influenced by African and New Guinean artists.

31jm Bird Memory Chair, Judy Mulford, mixed media, 18″ x 9″ x 9″, 2016. Photos by Tom Grotta

Mulford’s compulsion to create was deeply rooted in her identity, as she explained, “I have to create. I cannot not create.” For her, art was a force that completed her being, and kept her calm and centered. She considered her art to be an autobiographical scrapbook, celebrating the essence of family, which she cited as the primary influence in her life. This influence was clearly visible in her studio space, which was adorned with pictures of her loved ones, serving as a constant inspiration for her work. “My work is personal, graphic, and narrative. Each piece I create becomes a container of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings, one that references my female ancestral beginnings.”

Mulford’s work was initially informed by her studies of the basketmaking culture of Micronesia, particularly on the islands of Truk and Ulithi. She was the author of Decorative Marshallese Baskets (1991) and other books about Micronesian material culture. Her array of artifacts, baskets, and dolls, displayed the cultural diversity that impacted her perspective as an artist. Her collection of over 200 dolls also served as a reflection of her emotional connection to motherhood and grandmotherhood. For Mulford, each doll carried its own story, and represented a “rescue” from being forgotten.

32jm Simple Abundances, Judy Mulford, gourd, waxed linen, photo transfers, antique buttons, hematite beads, beads, fine silver, polymer, 9” x 13” x 13”, 1998. Photo by Tom Grotta (Text: gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty, peace, balance, serenity, contentment, joy)

Mulford created natural material basketry, including pine needle baskets, in the 1970s. From there, her artistic practice evolved, and she expanded her repertoire to include clay, script, animals, and people. Eventually, Mulford settled on knotless netting (looping) as her signature technique, which she described as an obsession that pushed her passion to create even further. 

Dinner Party
The Dinner Party Acknowledgement Panel, The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Mulford embedded meaningful content in her pieces with each element. She was active in California in the years that feminist art was on the rise. Mulford was one of a group of women to work on Judy Chicago’s seminal work, The Dinner Party, in the 70s. Several of Mulford’s works offer an explicit take on women’s rights and family issues. In Help, Mulford included bullet casings, to make a statement about the plight of mothers in war zones. In Plan Your Parenthood/Overpopulation she referenced the old woman in the shoe to reflect her concerns about population and choice. Beaded babies burst from every room and even the roof of the tall thin house she built and embellished with wooden dollhouse chairs, a knitting needle and a rock. “I have one choice and it is pro-choice,” she said.

Another significant influence on Mulford’s artwork was her location on the California Coast. Living in a rustic beachside cottage in Carpinteria, the ocean and coastal surroundings inspired many of the materials visible in her work. The connection between her artwork and the environment is apparent in the themes of much of her work, including her mixed media piece, Aging By the Sea. Made up of materials such as shells, waxed linen, silver, beads, pearls, sand, and more, this captivating piece reflects the very environment it was created in.

Judy Mulford By the Sea
22jm Aging By the Sea, shell, waxed linen, waxed linen, silver, beads, pearls, silver spoon, sand, plexiglas
11 x 11 x 10 in, 2004. Photos by Tom Grotta

In her later years, her focus shifted to chairs as containers for people, covered in looping, and accompanied by dolls, artifacts, and buttons. She saw chairs as containers for people at meals, work, celebrations, for visiting, or just reading. These chairs celebrated lost loved ones, while simultaneously allowing viewers to reflect on their own stories and memories. Bird Memory Chair, for example, evokes the memory of a loved one who has passed on. It includes a handwritten journal with notes on the piece and process, as Mulford’s works often do. In this case, the journal is left blank in part, so the person who acquires the work can add notes of his or her own. In celebration of her 80th birthday, Mulford completed 80 Empty Chairs, accompanied by a book about them.

Judy Mulford exhibited widely, including at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina, the Textile Museum, in Washington, D.C. and abroad, including the 12th International Biennial of Tapestry in Szombathely, Hungary.  Much of her work was housed in her studio, a private space that she shared with few people. She viewed this space as a sanctuary where she could immerse herself in her creative process. Her artwork is best described as a visual narration of her life experiences, inviting viewers to connect with her stories and relate them to their own. Mulford hoped that others would find resonance through her art and come away with their own narratives.

Mulford is one of the artists that will be included in browngrotta arts’ 2023 Art in the Barn exhibition, Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions, October 6 – 15, 2023.

by Michael Propersi

Artist Focus: Ferne Jacobs

February 15, 2023 0 Comment
Installation Photo of Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs
Installation Photo of Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs. Photo: Madison Metro, Craft in America

At the forefront of the revolution in fiber art, Ferne Jacobs has been creating innovative work since the mid-60s. At her retrospective in 2022 in Los Angeles, Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs, the Craft in America Center noted that Jacobs is recognized for her mastery of material and process. Reinventing and advancing traditional techniques used for basketry, including knotting, coiling, and twining, Jacobs has generated an entirely new language of sculptural art. Her acute sense of color melded with her poetic and intuitive approach set her work apart. You can order a copy of the catalog at browngrotta.com.

Ferne Jacobs Portrait
Portrait by Carter Grotta

Ferne Jacobs began as a painter, exploring the possibilities of three-dimensional painting in the mid-1960s, before moving to weaving after workshops by such avant-garde fiber artists as Arline Fisch and Olga de Amaral. After the American Craft Museum (now Museum of Art and Design) exhibition Sculpture in Fabric (1972), Jacobs gained national attention for her work. Jacobs has taught and lectured on fiber arts and design since 1972. She received her M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University in 1976 and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists, and in 1995 she was named a Fellow of the College of Fellows by the American Craft Council. 

Red Sculpture by Ferne Jacobs
3fj Interior Passages, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined waxed linen thread, 54” x 16” x 4”, 2017.
photos by Tom Grotta

Jacobs’ work is meticulous, intensive and personal. She felt particularly close to Interior Passages, “as though we are one and the same.” She says that “[t]his has never happened so completely to me before. It has caused me to ask why, and to try to find a way to explain it to others. In the world I find myself today, feminine values are often desecrated. I am beginning to understand that there is no such thing as a ‘second class citizen’ — anywhere, anytime. There are aspects of world culture where weak people try to control others; because that is the only way they feel their own existence.” Interior Passages emphatically resists that approach. “Interior Passages knows she exists,” Jacobs notes. “She needs no one to tell her who she is or what she is. She knows her value, and I expect the world to respect this inner understanding. When it doesn’t, I think it moves toward a destructiveness that can be devastating.”

Green Basket sculpture by Ferne Jacobs
4fj Open Globe, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined wax linen thread, 13” x 13”, 2001. Photo by Tom Grotta

Open Globe reflects Jacobs’ reaction to the environment. “The title Open Globe came from experiencing the piece as I was making it,” Jacobs explains. “In my mind, it was the earth. The colors green, brown, blue, grey are the elements on our planet. Open came because there is no bottom or top. The piece is open, so can we see the earth as a globe/ball and open/unending.” The undulations in Blue Wave operate on numerous levels, conjuring ancient Greek pottery, wave froth and water, and the female form among other references.

Detail of Blue and white Ferne Jacobs wall sculpture
5fj Blue Wave detail, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined waxed linen thread, 19” x 17.5” x 6”, 1994.
Photo by Tom Grotta

Jacobs’s work is found in many public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California and the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. 

Ferne Jacobs’ work will be included in browngrotta arts’ spring 2023 exhibition Acclaim! Work by Award-Winning International Artists. You can order a copy of the catalog Ferne Jacobs: Building the Essentials at browngrotta.com.

Ferne Jacobs Building the Essentials catalog

Who’s New for Fall’s Art in the Barn? Introducing Baiba Osite and Mercedes Vicente

September 21, 2022 0 Comment

Baiba Osite and Mercedes Vicente are two more artists we are pleased to introduce whose work is included in Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries, our upcoming Art in the Barn exhibition this Fall.

City Walls driftwood wall sculpture Latvian artist by Baiba Osite
Detail: 1bo City Walls, Baiba Osite, driftwood, canvas, 70″ x 54″ x 4.5″, 2019. Photo Tom Grotta

Baiba Osite is from Latvia. Since graduating from the Latvian Academy of Art Textile Department and finishing her Master’s degree, she has participated in art exhibitions worldwide. Among those exhibitions were the biennial Textil Art of Today which traveled to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, International Fiber Art Biennial, From Lausanne to Beijing, China, the World Textile Art Biennial, Madrid, Spain, and the 3rd International Textile Competitions, Kyoto, Japan. She works in education and is a member of Latvian Artist Union and Textile Association. Recently, she has enriched her experience in two valuable residencies: ”Cite des Arts” in Paris and “Textilsetur” residency in Iceland. Osite leads a folk art textile studio. Partipants there spent two months sewing a safety net for Ukrainian national guards, a project they will continue again in the fall.

Detail: 1bo City Walls, Baiba Osite, driftwood, canvas, 70″ x 54″ x 4.5″, 2019. Photo by Tom Grotta

Osite is known for her work with different fiber materials including driftwood, glass beads, wire, metal spirals, wool and linen. “Historically,” Osite says, “these materials were used in household textiles. I assign to them contemporary understanding and concept.” The various materials are sources of inspiration for Osite to create new works. Her work is also inspired by traditional ethnographic patterns and influenced by different cultures.

The works that Osite will exhibit in Art for Allies are made from driftwood segments that she collects  on the shore of the Baltic Sea. One of Osite’s driftwod works, Substantia, was awarded the Acquisition Prize of Contextile 2018, the Contemporary Textile Art Biennial in Portugal. The work was based “on the paradoxical game between ‘being’ and ‘not being’ and the transformation of ‘being,’” Osite explains. Driftwood works like City Walls reflect her propensity for dissecting patterns from nature and recreating them in a new form. Osite created City Walls for the World Textile Association Biennial, Sustainable City in Madrid in 2019.

2mv Coralima, Mercedes Vicente, canvas, 13.5″ x 23.5″ x 12″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

Mecedes Vicente is an artist based in Galicia, Spain, specializing in craft art. A regular participant in exhibitions around the world, Vicente is currently working with wood and textile projects, including sculptures made of canvas strips. Her work is influenced by the French artist Pierre Huyghe.

Born in Madrid in 1958, Mercedes Vicente’s family moved to various locations in Spain during her youth, an experience that pushed her to approach learning in a fundamentally self-taught manner. Initially, her art was pictorial, but it evolved into sculpture, with canvas as her primary medium. She loves the elastic, organic, flexible and translucent properties of the fabric with which she works. She must first prepare the untreated canvas by gluing it and priming it.

“When I started using this technique, I realised that people were amazed by such a manual process,” she says. “Then I started to think that what I was doing was within the realms of craftsmanship, art and design.” She chose fabric in part because it was easy to get hold of, since a member of her family worked in a factory producing canvas.

Vicente’s works often being or adapt a spiral shape. She told Thought Object about the significance of that shape. “Space is where the spiral arranges itself and where it’s subject to effects that impact it as if it were an architectural work: it’s exciting and moving how light acts upon the figure and how you can imagine yourself for a moment inside the spiral,” she points out. “This is part of the experience of space, dimensions, and volumes. It’s also the material with its finish and configuration and moreover, it’s the empty space around it where emotion lives.”

3mv Carinaria, Mercedes Vicente, canvas, 10″ x 13.75″ x 6″ , 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (browngrotta arts, October 8 – 16, 2022) will feature nearly 50 artists and highlight work from 21 countries in Eastern and Western Europe, 18 countries in NATO and the three current applicants. The artists in the exhibition reflect diverse perspectives and experiences. Allies for Art will include art created under occupation, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, art by those who left Hungary, Romania and Spain while occupied, and art by other artists who left Russia in later years. Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related Countries will also include works created by artists. like Osite and Vicente, who are currently working in Europe. Reserve your spot in Eventbrite. 

Who’s New in Allies for Art? Anneke Klein and Aby Mackie

September 14, 2022 0 Comment

We are excited to include the work of five artists new to browngrotta arts in our upcoming exhibition, Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8-16). Among these artists are Anneke Klein of the Netherlands and Aby Mackie who lives and works in Spain.

Detail: 1-2akl Family and Labels, Anneke Klein, hemp, cotton, linen, acrylic paint, 21.5″ x 21.25″, each. Photo by Tom Grotta

Anneke Klein of the Netherlands was originally educated as a goldsmith. Her passion for weaving was born from her struggle with hard and cold materials. In order to pursue her preference for warmth and softness in materials, she retrained herself as a weaver.  After a period of designing and manufacturing clothing, she worked on a commission for the American minimalist Richard Tuttle for his exhibition in the Vleeshal of the Frans Hals Museum and for Alexis Gautier in the Bozar Museum Brussels. She developed her own style for wall objects. As a goldsmith she learned to express in miniature. It suits her, and she often applies that approach in her textile works as an element for rhythm and repetition. “I create a variety of shapes, textures and structures to express my imagination of social themes,” she says. “It is an ever-growing process inspired by instinct and intuition, an investigation, a translation, as if looking through a symbolic lens at the everyday and the things that touch me emotionally. It stimulates social awareness in myself and probably the viewer, too.”

Detail: 1-2am Between Chaos & Order 5 & 6, Aby Mackie, gilded gold lead deconstructed and reconfigured antique textiles, 72″ x 24″ each, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

For Aby Mackie, an emerging artist who lives and works in Spain, the very act of making artwork is political. Mackie responds to current economic and social inequities in her country, particularly in housing and food, by confronting consumerism head on. “Everything I buy, from the materials for my artwork to the clothes that I wear, the furniture in my house to the books that I read, I buy second hand — recycling, reusing, reimagining — standing against the insane consumerism that adds to that sense of us all living in a system that is broken.” Mackie reconstructs textiles — cutting, painting, stitching, weaving and gilding them … a process of deconstruction and transformation. “The materials that I use,” she says, “are sourced from the local flea market, a practice that was born out of necessity to find cheap (but unique, high quality, interesting, often sumptuous) and free materials to use in my artwork. I go at the end of the day and buy up all the unwanted antique cloth, clothing, and domestic textile, collecting the discarded, such as flamenco dresses, Spanish plates, antique dolls, horse collars integrating them into my practice.” In Mackie’s hands, these “discards” are given a new life as elegant and engaging artworks. A rich mix of influences can be seen in Mackie’s work in terms of concept (the found object sculpture of Picasso, Miro, Tapies, Grau-Garriga), techniques and materials (Anatsui) and subject matter and aesthetic sense (Basquiat, Schwarz), inviting the viewer to create their own connections and interpretations and encouraging a personal storytelling through materiality.

Join us at browngrotta arts in Wilton, CT
for Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8-16):

Exhibition Schedule:
Opening & Artists Reception (300-Visitor Cap)
Saturday, October 8th: 11AM to 6PM  
Viewing Dates & Times (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, Sunday October 9th: 11AM to 6 PM
Monday, October 10th – Saturday, October 15th: 10AM to 5PM 

Final Day (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, October 16th: 11AM to 6PM  

Address
276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 068977

Safety protocols
Eventbrite reservations strongly encouraged • We will follow current state and federal guidelines surrounding COVID-19 • As of August 1, 2022, masks are not required • No narrow heels please (barn floors)

RESERVE YOUR TIME: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/allies-for-art-work-from-nato-related-countries-tickets-392833123447

Contact Information
P: 203.834.0623
E: art@browngrotta.com

Portraits in Thread

July 20, 2022 0 Comment

The Textile Museum at George Washington University in DC has a portrait exhibition in the works. Learning about the Museum’s plans got us thinking about works created by browngrotta artists that feature human likenesses. We have a preference for abstract works and find them easier to exhibit as a group in the gallery. As a result, we don’t exhibit many works that are figurative, but we do find faces rendered in textiles consistently appealing. They record a person’s existence, but traditionally reflect much more — power, status, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning or other qualities of the sitter. Portraiture can be popular with artists because of the freedom of composition it involves — lighting, angle of the head, hair, clothes, background, facial expression — almost endless options. Below is a gallery of some engaging portraits by artists who have worked with browngrotta arts.

Process piece by ed Rossbach
Process Piece, Ed Rossbach, 15” x 15” x 2.5”, 1981. Photo by Tom Grotta

This deconstructed portrait by Ed Rossbach works on two levels — it appears to be a model of the way a likeness can be formed, and of course, it revels the likeness in black transferred onto fabric.

Ethel Stein portrait
Portrait, Ethel Stein mercerized cotton lampas (pre-dyed warp and weft) drawloom , controlled, 47” x 34.75” x 1” 1999. Photo by Tom Grotta

Portrait by Ethel Stein is an imagined depiction of a woman in contemplation while Helena Hernmarck’s On the Dock seems to capture an actual moment in time.

Helena Hernmarck tapestry
On the Dock, Helena Hernmarck, wool, 43″ x 57″, 2009. Photo by Tom Grotta

Marijike Arp portraits
DNA Unique, Marijike Arp, transparent foil, threads and paper, 66″ x 118″ x 1.5″, 2000. Photo by Tom Grotta

Marjike Arp made a statement about gender in DNA=Unique. The pair of subjects resemble one another and raise questions for the viewer: Are they related? Are they more similar than different? 

Iria Kolesnikova portraits
Photoatelier #11, Irina Kolesnikova, flax, silk, hand woven, 15.5” x 11.75”, 20” x 16” frame, 2004

Other artists also work from photographic images. Irina Kolesnikova, for example, likes old black-and-white old photos. “I play with images of these pictures, using silhouettes, details of dress, signs of profession. I make collage and imitate collage in woven technique. You can not recognize an exact person in these pieces, because it is not important for me …. I like a paradoxical combination of contemporary art language and ancient handweaving technque.”

From the First Person by Aleksandra Stoyanov
Aleksandra Stoyanov, From the First Person I, wool, sisal, silk, cotton threads 55.6” x 49.25”, 1999

Ukrainian-born artist Aleksandra Stoyanov began making tapestries in 1987, building on her background in graphic and set design. Some of these are based on photographs from her family album. The images evoke memories; the position of the subjects’ heads on their sides suggests the importance of one’s vantage point in interpreting events.

Lia Cook Su Series
Su Series, Lia Cook cotton, rayon, woven 72” x 132”, 2010-2016. Photo by Tom Grotta

Lia Cook is a master of creating woven portraits from photographic images. Her Su Series Installation features 32 individual portraits. The exact same face, an image of Cook as a child, is used in each of the pieces but it is physically and materially translated differently each time through the weaving process. “The specific way each is translated creates a subtle and sometimes dramatic variation in emotional expression.” Cook says. “As one moves through the installation each iteration evokes a new response. The experience of the person viewing the piece is what is important to me. I am interested in the threshold at which the face dissolves first into pattern and then into a sensual tactile woven structure.  What does this discovery and the resulting intense desire to touch the work add to our already innate, almost automatic emotional response to seeing a face?… The viewer can experience sadness, happiness anger fear etc.  They don’t believe it is the same image”. It is fascinating to Cook — and to viewers of her work — that how an image is translated through the technical weaving process can change the emotional expression of the work.

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.