Category: Books

Good Reads: Textiles, Tapestry and Ceramics

September 30, 2012 0 Comment

We’ve received three comprehensive and attractive books in the last few months, Textiles: The Whole Story, Uses, Meaning, Significance; Tapestry: A Woven Narrative; and Yasuhisa Kohyama: The Art of Ceramics, and we have enjoyed them all. (We know they are attractive and comprehensive, because they include artists whose work we represent and, in some cases, photographs by Tom.) 

Beverly Gordon, author of Textiles: The Whole Story, Uses, Meaning, Significance from Thames & Hudson, has an ambitious aim. “My intention” she writes, “is to shine new light on the light on the taken-for-granted but fascinating subject of the roles and meanings that textiles hold in cultures throughout the world. I hope to make it undeniably evident that to be human is to be involved with cloth.” To do that, she takes readers on a dizzying trip across centuries and continents and beyond, from the linen strips that cover a mummy in Egypt circa 150-175 CE. to the fluropolymers protecting an astronaut as he walks in space in this century, with stops at Betsy Ross in colonial America, Mohandas Gandhi in colonial India, women glass spinners in Murano, Italy in 1905 and the Renaissance, where women worked on textiles in groups, along the way. In sections covering textiles and human consciousness, human survival, social meaning, money, status and control, meaning and beauty and the spiritual significance of cloth, Gordon provides insights and information for anyone with an interest in textiles and all they entail.
Tapestry: A Woven Narrative also takes the long view, providing a general introduction to the state of artisan tapestry weaving in the 21st century by way of contextual essays outlining developments from the Middle Ages to the modern age. In addition to the essays,  the book also includes illustrated profiles of contemporary weavers, including Jo Barker, Sara Brennan and Sue Lawty — along with studio profiles of Dovecot and others. Tapestry: A Woven Narrative is available from browngrotta arts.

Also available from browngrotta arts is Yasuhisa Kohyama: The Art of Ceramics, which contains lush photos of dozens of Kohyama’s works as well as a foreword by Jack Lenor Larsen and essays by Susan Jefferies and others. What is important about Kohyama’s work, writes Jeffries, “is his embrace of contemporary life, and his bold and poetic use of line, mass  and form; he is fully aware of the sculptural possibilities available to him. A love of nature and a life-long interest in sculpture and architecture have also inspired his work.”

Looking Forward/Looking Back: Sherman F. Lee

September 3, 2012 0 Comment

Details of Adela Akers 1988 Midnight and 2011 Triptych. Adela is one of the artists who was included in the 1977 Fiberworks exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her work will be included in Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture this fall at browngrotta arts.

“The 20th century has been a period of numerous experiments in the arts based on new concepts, materials and techniques which have proliferated as never before in history. Some of these new developments, however, have been only fashionable and have been inappropriate exploitations of materials or techniques for very vague and general ideas. Among the exceptions to these trends, enjoying widespread and lasting success, has been the use of fibrous materials to create aesthetic equivalents of sculptures and paintings.

Adela Akers 1960 portrait. Photo Archives of American Art, aaa.si.edu. Courtesy of the artist.

New tools, techniques and synthetic fibers have fired artists’ imaginations. The variety of effects possible range from the predominantly decorative to the highly expressive. And unlike some other recent developments in the arts, contemporary fiber works rest firmly on long and substantial traditions from all major cultures. Although many new and significant forms have already appeared, the future seems to offer even further possiibiities for the growth of this art.”
Sherman F. Lee, then-Director
Cleveland Museum of Art 1977
from the Forward for Fiberworks catalog, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977

Books Make Great Gifts 2011: Artist Recommendations

December 7, 2011 0 Comment

This year we asked the artists we represent just one question:

What was the most enjoyed/most inspirational book you read this year?? Here are their wide-ranging replies:

Nancy Moore Bess and her friend, artist Sharon McCartney share studios with for occasional “play dates” that involve hours of restorative art chat, small handwork and book sharing. It was Sharon, Nancy says. who introduced me to the exhibition catalogue, El Anatsui at the Clark (Clark Art Institute). “I had seen ads for his work,” adds Nancy, “but the catalog was more than glorious photographs – it placed his current work in the larger context of his entire career/life. Known now for his monumental ‘fabrics’ with metals and Nigerian liquor bottle caps, his earlier work with wood, found metals, steel sheets, etc. was equally exciting for me. I love rust! I was extremely sorry to have missed the exhibition which was installed in the Stone Hill Center at the Clark Museum, but delighted to have access to the book.

Sharon loved a book that Nancy owned, Boro, by Amy Sylvester Katoh, who lives and works at the Blue & White shop in Tokyo. When she tried to order it, she found a different book that Nancy recommends,  Boro: Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan by Yukiko Koide and Kyoichi Tsuzuki (Aspect). Both books illustrate the traditional practice of reusing rags and stitching them into clothing and household textiles. Amy’s book concentrates on mostly indigo fabrics which she collects. Both books include impressive photographs with the closeup images really illustrating how the fabrics are used. “Sharon and I both do a great deal of top stitching,” Nancy says, “she on her fabric constructions (she is the queen of French knots!) and I on my experimental paper work. The variety of garments in her book and the variety of fabrics really inspires me to get to the book store!!”

“I have one great book to add,” writes Gyöngy Laky, “though only peripherally art related:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney (Little, Brown; National Book Award) . This is a semi-autobiographical novel by award-winning author, poet and film-maker, Sherman Alexie.  Alexie has been named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has been lauded by The Boston Globe as “an important voice in American literature.” He is one of the most well-known and beloved literary writers of his generation, with works such as Reservation Blues and War Dances. He also wrote the screenplay for the film, Smoke Signals, based on a short story from his book, Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.   In his novel, Alexie tells the heartbreaking, hilarious, and beautifully written story of a young Native American teen, Arnold, as he attempts to break free from the life he was destined to live.  Arnold’s drawings illustrate the book.”

Kate Hunt’s suggestion was a CD, rather than a book, Souvenirs, featuring opera star Anna Netrebko. The Independent says she is, “in a word, sensational . . . Netrebko’s strength is not just in the mobility of her voice and the razzle-dazzle of her upper register’s big-money notes – no, it’s the fullness and beauty of the middle voice that singles her out . . . properly overwhelming. For once, fullness of heart is truly matched in fullness of sound.”

Mutsumi Iwasaki enjoyed,「朝鮮陶磁図録」(tyousen toji zuroku), a book on ancient Korean pottery that accompanied last year’s exhibition of Korean Ceramics – 50 Years After the Death of Muneyoshi Yanagi at the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo.

Lawrence LaBianca recommends The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford (Modern Library) and Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft (Simon & Schuster) by Thor Heyerdahl. Both are true accounts of heroism and determination and creative reasoning used to reach historic goals in exploration — Huntford in the South Pole and Heyerdahl in the South Seas..

Sue Lawty, wrote to us about Edward R. Tufte’s Envisioning Information (Graphics Press), a book I bought for Tom a few years ago.  Sue bought the book, which covers wide-ranging systems, patterns or logic for presenting information from mathematics to maps, a couple of weeks ago in London as a present for her nephew, but now she wants a copy of her own. “It stimulates thinking,” writes Sue.  “For example, in the micro/macro design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, artist Maya Ying Lin had the vision of ordering names chronologically (resolutely resisting pressure for a more pedestrian telephone directory-type listing) thus, within the overwhelming density of 58,000 named dead, the unique loss of each individual is retained. I know I need this book on my shelves to dip into at sly moments and be informed by.”

“I read a good book called The Craftsman by Richard Sennett (Yale University Press),” Mary Merkel-Hess  wrote. “It is a broad-ranging analysis of what it means to do good work. His definition of a craftsman extends beyond those who work with their hands to include everyone who wants to do a job well. So many references to literature, sociology, society — it was fascinating.” Mary also enjoyed Architecture of Silence: Cistercian Abbeys of France, photographs by David Heald which contains marvelous photos of stone buildings and their simple but inspiring interiors and the catalog from Stimulus: art and its inception (browngrotta arts). “[S]peaking of inspiring, thanks for the Stimulus catalog! It’s great!”

For Lija Rage, her most-enjoyed book this year was Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Penguin), the first work by Salman Rushdie after The Satanic Verses (Random House Trade Paperbacks). She’s also been reading about Chinese culture in preparation for her next exhibition.

“The most important book this year is for me,” writes Heidrun Schimmel, “is the catalog of the Venice Biennial, 54.Esposizione Internazionale d´Arte Illuminations. I visited most of the exhibitions in Venice for three days and of course there are many ‘pros’ and ‘cons.’ But this year the catalog is very good and there is an English edition, The Venice Biennale. 12th International Architecture Exhibition. People meet in architecture (Marsilio Editions). In Munich now you can see two wonderful exhibitions with works of Ellsworth Kelly. In Pinakothek der Moderne you see 60 drawings of plants (through January 8th) http://www.pinakothek.de/en/kalender/2011-10-07/14412/ellsworth-kelly-plant-drawings. And the catalog is an inspirational artwork for itself! But there is only a German edition.”

Karyl Sisson reports that, “Sometimes I just need to laugh.  Tina Fey’s Bossypants (Reagan Arthur Books) did it for me.”

Wendy Wahl, writes that, “It is with pleasure I sing the praises for a book that is pure joy to consume in a vicarious living sort of way. Rosamond Bernier has written Some of My Lives, A Scrapbook Memoir (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The author’s voice comes alive as she tells the stories of her amazing life’s experiences with leading personalities of the 20th century in the world of art and music. She has lead such a vivid and unique life; the book is fabulous armchair travel.” (Full disclosure: my day job is with this publisher’s parent.)

Sensual Relations by David Howes (University of Michigan) is Deborah Valoma’s recommendation.

Randy Walker  found Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century by Carl Schoonover (Abrams) to be inspirational. His wife bought the book for her sister, who is a Doctoral student in Psychology, but when Randy saw the images in the book, he nabbed it and his wife had to buy another one for her sister.

Lena McGrath Welker loved Jane Urquhart’s  Sanctuary Line (MacAdam/Cage Publishers).

Artful Gift Giving Made Easy: Visit our Online Gift Gallery for suggestions from $14 to $1200

November 21, 2011 0 Comment

Jiro Yonezawa bamboo vase $380, photo by Tom Grotta

Our Online Gift Gallery link makes it easy to surprise the special people on your gift list — and maybe even yourself — with a memorable, one-off gift of art. Art is often among the items people choose to forego in trying economic times. By choosing an artful gift, you can offer your family and friends something they might not be willing to buy for themselves, but something they’d love to own. You’ll have chosen a truly one-of-a-kind, individually selected gift, and that’s an art in itself.

Rebecca Medel TWO PATHS $650 photo by Sam Fritch

The Online Gift Gallery at browngrotta arts makes choosing art gifts simple by featuring three price tiers. In tier one are works $500 and under, which includes catalogs, books and videos starting $14, raw silk scarves made in India by Japanese artists Chiaki and Kaori Maki starting at $380, a whimsical lidded bowl made of measuring tapes by Karyl Sisson for $160 and an elegant bamboo vase, complete with presentation box, by Jiro Yonezawa for $380. In tier two are works from $501 to $1000, including delicate black baskets of waxed linen, thorns and porcupine quills by Birgit Birkkjaer of Denmark, a surprising geometric sculpture of safety pins by Tamiko Kawata, and a sculptural piece by Rebecca Medel. In tier three are works from $1001 to $1200, including a small embroidered drawing by Russian artist Irina Kolesnikova, an indigo banner by Hiroyuki Shindo and a wall sculpture made of newspaper and saw blades by Kate Hunt.

Irina Kolesnikova, BALANCING II $650

Purchase any item from the Online Gift Gallery before December 1st and your shipping, anywhere in the US, will be free.  (If you purchase videos, books or catalogs from the Online Gift Gallery through our website before December 1st, we’ll send you a refund for the shipping.) And, for every item we sell from the Online Gift Gallery by the end of the year, we’ll donate $5 to the International Child Art Foundation http://www.icaf.org.

browngrotta arts will also participate in Small Business Saturday on November 26th. American Express cardholders who register their cards before that date and then make a purchase at a participating member on the 26th will receive an American Express gift card worth $25. Register here.

Press News: Stimulus: art and its inception — our 40th catalog now available

October 23, 2011 0 Comment

Stumulus catalog front and back covers

We are very (and this will date me) jazzed about our 40th catalog, Stimulus: art and its inception. It’s a departure for us, not in the variety of artists and number of countries represented — sculpture, ceramics, art textiles and mixed media by 55 artists from 14 countries — but in what’s new — images and statements designed to give readers a sense of each artist’s creative process. For each of the pieces highlighted in exhibition, the process of finding an image to illustrate the genesis  — whether an event, an object, an emotion, a place —  and of working with the artists to share something of that process in words, was stimulating for Tom and me.  We were also energized by working with Jane Milosch, Director, Provenance Research Initiative, Smithsonian Institution, and former curator, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, who writes about creativity and its embodiment in this exhibition in the introductory essay.

Stimulus Catalog: Norma Minkowitz Compound with Stimulus

The stimuli identified by the artists in this catalog is diverse. Current events, like the earthquake in Japan and global warming, inspired some of the artists,  including Norma Minkowitz, whose stitched wall work, Compound, illustrates the attack on Osama Bin Laden. “I began in a spontaneous, unplanned manner,” Minkowitz explains, “arranging lines and subtle patterns, until I had a feeling of the direction it would take. Suddenly the linear image took on the apparition of an aerial view of the compound that I had seen in a newspaper article. Compound combines a replica of the space and my vision of the event.”

Mcqueen, Bess, LaBianca, Serino, Henriksen, Akers, Bijlenga, Hunt, Walker

Several artists, including John McQueen, Nancy Moore Bess, Lawrence La Bianca and Naoko Serino of Japan, have taken Nature as their inspiration. In Serino’s case, Generating-3 was inspired by a Philodendron selloum, which she tended for 22 years before it finally bloomed. Others were inspired by the efforts of previous artists.  Ane Henriksen of Denmark, considered the work of coverlet makers from the 1800s; Adela Akers‘ work references Mbuti designs from Africa. Palimpsest 1, a wall piece by Marian Bijlenga, of the Netherlands, was composed by following the pinholes on the walls of Dutch masterweaver Herman Scholten’s studio to recreate the nearly erased surface.
Still other artists looked to their immediate surroundings. Trio 4, a sculpture of twine and newspaper by Kate Hunt, was inspired by the goats who share her studio. Echoed Surface, an energy-charged object by Randy Walker, was made from a charred and deformed badminton racquet that he found near his home;  Re-Tire,  is a basket Dona Anderson created from a tire chain she found by the roadside.
The catalog is 140 pages and contains 197 color photographs.  It can be purchased on our website: http://browngrotta.com/Pages/c36.php

 

Update: Books Make Great Gifts 2010

October 8, 2011 0 Comment

Last December, in our who’s-reading-what survey, artist Kyomi Iwata selected Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 as the best book she read in 2010. (Lena McGrath Welker also selected Haruki Murakami, in her case, Kafka on the Shore , as her favorite read for 2010.) At the time, 1Q84 had yet to be translated into English, but there’s good news.  A massive volume (944 pages) will be released in an English translation on October 25, 2011.  http://www.amazon.com/1Q84-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0307593312. From Amazon, the book is: “A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.”

All Hicks/All the Time — Check Out the Sheila Hicks Wiki at the Mint Museum

September 30, 2011 0 Comment

Colored Alphabet by Sheila Hicks 1982

The third incarnation of Sheila Hicks’ retrospective opened at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC on October 1st and runs through January 29, 2012. In its previous two venues, Sheila Hicks: Fifty Years, was well reviewed and the book that accompanies the exhibition contains beautiful photos. http://www.
browngrotta.com
/Pages/b39.php  The Mint’s Wiki on Hicks, however,  raises the bar — adding another component to the retrospective and extending the exhibition’s impact beyond it’s closing date. http://mintwiki.
pbworks.com/w/page/
33119575/Sheila Hicks:
Fifty Years  Extraordinarily comprehensive, the wiki provides considerable detail about Hicks’ early education and career and features links to everything from a 1971 review in Design Journal of her exhibition of reinvented rugs in Rabat, Morocco to a video tour of her work as an “art treasure” of Nebraska and her 2004 Oral history interview with the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian.  Wandering from link to link offers an art textile historical and world tour (Macchu Picchu to King Saud University to Cour de Rohan, Paris; the Ford Foundation to the Fuji CIty Cultural Center to Target Headquarters). Be sure to take a look.

Sheila Hicks: Fifty Years
Mint Museum Uptown at the Levine Center for the Arts
500 South Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28202
704-337-2000; http://www.mintmuseum.org/upcoming-exhibition.html

Don’t Miss: Winged Weavers

August 31, 2011 0 Comment

Photograph by Johan Swanepoel/Fotolia via Princeton University Press.

Be sure to visit The Secrets of Winged Architects, a look at some of the most incredible nests in the bird world, in a slide show at Slate.com by Heather Murphy http://www.slate.com/id/2301690/. Murphy writes about Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer and Build, by Peter Goodfellow. a retired English teacher who has been studying birds since the 1970s. browngrotta arts’ fall exhibition, Stimulus: art and its inception, will feature Éclosion, a work by French artist Simone Pheulpin, that was inspired by a bird’s nest.
Simone Pheulpin

38sp ÉCLOSION
Simone Pheulpin
cotton
4.5″ x 7″ x 7.25″, 2011

Book Lust: Penguin Books – Threads Deluxe Classics and Tie-ins

June 21, 2011 0 Comment

 

We love Penguin Classics.  The collection includes more than 1,000 classic titles from The Adventures and Memoirs of  Sherlock Holmes to Gulliver’s Travels to A Christmas Carol to Middlemarch and Dracula. This October, new versions, Penguins Threads Deluxe Classics, will be released with gloriously embroidered covers by Jillian Tamaki. You can pre-order the three titles commissioned to date, Emma, The Secret Garden and Black Beauty on Amazon now. You can also order a set of

100 Penguin Book Cover Cards from Amazon. And Penguin has released two versions of Book Cover Wrapping Paper. One, a collage of Penguin covers, is available from Bas Bleu, the other, an image of Penguin spines, can be found at Shiny Shack in the UK. Still not enough Penguin? You can obtain the entire line of Penguin Classics in one complete paperback collection, from Renaissance philosophy to the poetry of revolutionary Russia, from the spiritual writings of India to the travel narratives of the early American colonists, from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare to The Portable Sixties Reader, for $13,000+.

Art into Text: Naomi Kobayashi’s Work Inspires a Plot Twist

June 7, 2011 0 Comment

KAKU 2000/106 & 104 Naomi Kobayashi, paper and thread, 17” x 13.5” x 2”

William Bayer, author of The Dream of the Broken Horses, Switch, Peregrine and Punish Me With Kisses, among other titles, has woven Naomi Kobayashi’s art into his upcoming novel – working title, In the Weave. Bayer is a collector of Kobayashi’s art work — weavings of thread and strips of washi paper on which she has written calligraphy. For his new book, Bayer envisioned a character with a secret recorded on paper that she protects by cutting the pages into strips and incorporating it into a weaving, which is then unraveled so the paper strips can be steamed and pieced back together to reveal the secret. When contacted for her advice, Kobayashi agreed that a weaving of paper strips and thread could be de-constructed and de-coded as Bayer planned; the paper strips would survive steaming and unraveling, she wrote, because handmade washi paper is strong. She worried, however, that the ink might blur during steaming and suggested that Bayer’s character use oil-based ink. We’ll let you know when the book is ready to hit  bookstore shelves. In the meantime. We’ve gotten Bayer’s permission to share a snippet of what’s to come:

From In the Weave, by William Bayer:

Kate and I are up in the A.I.R. loft. Liv’s weaving is spread out before us, reminding me of that T. S. Eliot line “like a patient etherised upon a table.” In fact, we have set TPR on the apartment dining table, and beside it have set out our instruments: scissors, needles, tweezers. Surgery is about to commence.

Kate smiles. “Nervous?”

“How can I not be?”

“I think you should make the first cut,” she says.

I nod, gaze down at the weaving, so beautifully finely made. And then I take the scissors in hand, and begin.

We’ve discussed this deconstruction process at great length, and though we’re not certain if we’re right, we’ve decided to start by scissoring off the top selvage, snip the cotton warp in numerous places to try and loosen the weave, then pluck out the first several washi paper wefts. It’s our hope that if we steam these wefts, they’ll open up and flatten out. Then and only then will we be able to determine if there’s writing on them. If there is, we’ll repeat the process hundreds of times until we’ve removed and steamed open all the strips, and then try, as puzzle solvers, to reassemble these strips until we’ve reconstructed the original sheet of paper. Only then will we be able to read whatever Liv may have written on it. We know this process  will be laborious, will take us many hours, and may, in the end, come to nothing. In which case we will have destroyed her amazing work of art. But what choice do we have? If Liv did in fact “conceal my pain in the weave,” we must uncover it. And if she didn’t, we’ll be left with nothing but a heap of cotton thread and marked up paper strips, and a tremendous amount of remorse.