In less than a week, on Sunday, September 20, 2009, we’ll inaugurate our first Guest Post. Our first guest blogger will be artist, author, curator, teacher and art tour guide Nancy Moore Bess. Nancy’s work has been exhibited or acquired by the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Barbican Centre, London; Szombathely Art Museum, Hungary; the Hunterdon Art Museum, New Jersey; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; and the Society for Arts and Crafts in Boston. Nancy is an insightful observer of the fiber art field and an acclaimed writer. Nancy lived and researched bamboo in Hawaii and Japan, then authored Bamboo in Japan, now in its second printing. The Japan Times called Bamboo in Japan, “a compendium of information that is not likely to be soon duplicated” and “one of the best-designed books of the year.”Guest Post Alert: Nancy Moore Bess
In less than a week, on Sunday, September 20, 2009, we’ll inaugurate our first Guest Post. Our first guest blogger will be artist, author, curator, teacher and art tour guide Nancy Moore Bess. Nancy’s work has been exhibited or acquired by the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Barbican Centre, London; Szombathely Art Museum, Hungary; the Hunterdon Art Museum, New Jersey; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; and the Society for Arts and Crafts in Boston. Nancy is an insightful observer of the fiber art field and an acclaimed writer. Nancy lived and researched bamboo in Hawaii and Japan, then authored Bamboo in Japan, now in its second printing. The Japan Times called Bamboo in Japan, “a compendium of information that is not likely to be soon duplicated” and “one of the best-designed books of the year.”Willow Talk
photo by Shannon Tofts
We visited London in May for the Collect show at the Saatchi Gallery. While there, we had a chance to speak with journalist Emma Crichton-Miller about the fiber art field for an article on the state of contemporary basket weaving – not just in the U.K., but also in Europe, the US and elsewhere. The article, Willow Talk, appeared in the July-August 2009 issue of Crafts magazine. and in it, Crichton-Miller offers a positive prognosis for the art of basketry in the U.K. In the article, Crichton-Miller tracks the growing appreciation in the U.K. for basketry as an art form, comparing artists like Ed Rossbach and John McQueen in the U.S., Markku Kosonen in Finland and Shouchiko Tanabe of Japan, with artists like Lizzie Farey of the U.K., Joe Hogan of Ireland and Dail Behennah, Lois Walpole, Shuna Rendel and Mary Butcher of the U.K., for whom recognition has been more recently won. “Basketry, in an artist’s hands, becomes as richly metaphorical as any craft,” Crichton-Miller observes. Listing a series of solo and group exhibits, including East Meets West: Basketry from Japan & Britain and European Baskets, Crichton-Miller predicts that basket-weaving in the U.K., as in America, Europe and Japan, seems ready to leave behind “its hobby status, its nostalgia for the past, to join the contemporary conversation.”