Category: Exhibitions

Discourse, Our Spring 2024 Exhibition, and the Theory of “Unexpected Red”

April 24, 2024 0 Comment
Discourse art installation: Pagter, Klein, Rage, Luzzi, Hatekayama
Works by Gudrun Pagter, Anneke Klein, Lija Rage, Federica Luzzi, Norie Norie Hatakeyama. Photo by Tom Grotta

In curating our exhibitions, we develop an idea, then begin to compile art to build out the concept. We tweak the theme and design the installation in response to the what arrives. The process, and the artists we work with, always deliver surprises. 

The impetus for this Spring’s Discourse: art across generations and continents exhibition was formed by our hanging abstract weavings by Warren Seelig from 1976, one white and black, one red and black, next to a strikingly kindred work of black and red and grey and off-white by Blair Tate from 2023. The works seemed to have something to say to one another. We realized we had other works from different time periods and artists who approached the same material and techniques very differently. The result: Discourse, an exhibition inviting dialogue, discourse, comparison and contrast.

Warren Seelig and Blair Tate tapestries
Warren Seelig’s White Plus and White, 1976 tapestries, Blair Tate On Balance, 2024. Photo by Tom Grotta

As we compiled work for Discourse, an unanticipated subtheme emerged. The color red featured in several works that would be included. There was Anneke Klein’s Dialogue that we wanted to include, for obvious reasons. Gudrun Pagter sent us Red. Lija Rage sent us Leaves. Jin-Sook So offered us three red bowls, Federica Luzzi a dramatic wall sculpture, Red Shell No. 4, and Mary Merkel-Hess a red-tipped basket. After much online research, we had discovered the maker of a work from the estate of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette that we also wanted to include. It was Margareta Ahlstedt-Willandt of Finland and again, the work featured a good amount of red.  

Textiles by Margareta Ahlstedt-Willandt and Federica Luzzi
1awm Nåky Vision II, Margareta Ahlstedt-Willandt, fabric, 20″ x 19″ x 2″, 1950’s; 17fl Red Shell n.4, Federica Luzzi, dyed linen, waxed cotton, acrylic wool thread, 24” x 15” x 6.5”, 2024. Photo by Tom Grotta

There are more than 100 works in Discourse and most of them are not red. But red has a way of making itself known — as the works in the exhibition do. As we were planning, a theory, “Unexpected Red,” hit Tik-Tok, and, as Tik-Tok sensations are wont to do, then hit The New York Times, the Washington Post and Elle Decor. “Splashes of red really do just make anything mysterious, sexy even,” the Washington Post, quotes an email from Colette van den Thillart, a designer in Toronto. “Red is so dynamic, dangerous, and commanding. It can set an environment alight, which is why this trend makes total sense to me.” (“Designers say ‘unexpected red’ really works. Here’s how to use it.The theory making the rounds on social media can add a little intrigue to any room,” Washington Post, Kathryn O’Shea-Evans, March 16, 2024.)

71jss Soul of a Bowl I-III, Jin Sook So, steel mesh, electroplaited silver, pure gold leaf, acrylic, steel thread
6” x 12.75” x 9.75”, each, 2024; 212mm Another Autumn, Mary Merkel Hess, paper cord, paper, 28″ x 18″ x 12″, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

There’s a scientific basis for red’s preeminence, notes Ingrid Fetell Lee, who hosts The Aesthetics of Joy blog. In studies, red has been shown to capture and hold attention in emotional situations better than other colors and that exposure to red light increases blood pressure, respiratory rate, skin conductance, and eye blinking, all measures of an increase in what psychologists call arousal, a physiological measure of excitement. Many evolutionary biologists believe that our color vision evolved in large part to help our primate ancestors find ripe fruits and young leaves (which naturally appear red) among the green leaves of the treetop canopy. “So perhaps ‘unexpected red’ in a home functions more like seeing a bowl of ripe cherries than a cut to the finger,” Lee hypothesizes, like “a bright and exciting burst of joy.”

Bursts of joy is what we hope you’ll find at Discourse (May 4 – 12). Not just red; we’ve got works in shades of green, others in blue, beige, yellow and orange — lots of works in paper and natural materials, works by 50 artists from 18 countries. Schedule your visit to Discourse now.

Green artwork by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, Norma Minkowitz, Mary Merkel-Hess, Neda Al-hilali
572mr Printemps “Spring”, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, 40″ x 86″, 1988; 17fl Red Shell n.4, 106nm Whispers, Norma Minkowitz, mixed media, 15.75″ x 15.75″ x 15.75″, 2003; 211mm Sky and Water, Mary Merkel-Hess, paper cord, paper, 21″ x 19″ x 13″, 2023; 1na Crystal Planet, Neda Al-hilali, plaited color paper, acrylic, ink drawing, paper, 43″ x 49″ x 2.5″, 1982. Photo by Tom Grotta

Exhibition Details:
Discourse: art across generations and continents
May 4 – May 12, 2024
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, May 4th: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, May 5th: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 6th through Saturday, May 11th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 12th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)
Schedule your visit at POSH.

Safety protocols: 
POSH reservations strongly encouraged • No narrow heels please 

Catalog:
A full-color catalog, browngrotta arts’ 59th, Discourse: art across generations and continents, with an essay by Erika Diamond, Artist | Curator | Associate Director of CVA Galleries | Chautauqua Institution, will be published by the browngrotta arts in May 2024 in conjunction with the exhibition.

Opening in One Month – Discourse Offers Myriad Views of Contemporary Fiber Art

April 4, 2024 0 Comment

Fiber is having a moment — exhibitions of art textiles and fiber art are installed all over the world.  Having promoted this medium for more than 30 years, browngrotta arts couldn’t be more pleased. We represent the work of an extraordinary group of artists — from fiber art’s origins in the 50s and 60s, to those whose careers started many years later. Our Spring Art in the Barn exhibition, Discourse: art across generations and continents, is designed to celebrate this multiplicity of makers and methods. Open at browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut, from Saturday, May 4th through Sunday, May 12, 2024, Discourse will assemble a large and eclectic group of artworks that celebrate artists from different countries, who work with varied materials, and represent distinct artistic approaches. More than 50 artists from 18 countries will be featured. Included will be current works from 60 years ago, current mixed media works and sculpture, and pieces created in the decades between — enabling an intriguing look at intergenerational differences, material breakthroughs, and historical significance in fiber art.

The comparisons and contrasts on view in Discourse involve differing approaches to structure, materials, abstraction, messaging, techniques and more. Viewers are encouraged to develop and refine their own perspectives of contemporary fiber’s evolution and energy.

Exploring Bamboo

Exploring Bamboo, Baskets by Nancy Moore Bess, Hisako Sekimachi, Noriko Tanikawa. photos by Tom Grotta

The artists in Discourse each possess “material intelligence,” what author and curator Glenn Adamson describes as “a deep understanding of the material world around us, an ability to read that material environment, and the know-how required to give it new form.” They take a disparate approach to materials such as bamboo, rendered differently by Hisako Sekijima (JP), Nancy Moore Bess (US), and Noriko Tanikawa (JP)

Exploring Horsehair
Exploring horsehair details of works by Adela Akers, Marian Bijlenga, Marianne Kemp. photos by Tom Grotta

Three artists, Marianne Kemp (NL), Adela Akers (US) and Marian Bijlenga (NL) work with horsehair, each with differing results.

Paperworks six ways
Paperworks six ways: Shoko Fukuda, Wendy Wahl, Patricia Campbell, Jane Balsgaard, Neda Al-Hilali, Mary Merkel-Hess. photos by Tom Grotta

Paper is perhaps the most mutable material in the exhibition. Paper cord, book pages, and rice paper used by Shoko Fukuda (JP), Mary Merkel-Hess (US), Naomi Kobayashi (JP), Pat Campbell (US), Eva Vargö (SE), Neda Al-Hilali (US), Jane Balsgaard (DE), and Wendy Wahl (US) are among the material variations found in Discourse.

Exploring Sculpture
Exploring structure, details of works by Norma Minkowitz, John McQueen, Norie Hatekayama. photos by Tom Grotta

Engaging structures are also featured in Discourse. Intricate sculptures of willow twigs by John McQueen, ethereal objects of jute by Naoko Serino, sinuous crocheted works by Norma Minkowitz (US), and Norie Hatekayama’s inexplicable forms of plaited paper tape illustrate the multiple ways in which artists continue to innovate in this medium.

Abstract tapestries
Abstraction, tapestries by Blair Tate, Gudrun Pagter, Warren Seelig. photos by Tom Grotta

Much has been made this year about the contributions of weaving and related techniques to abstraction, modernism’s preeminent art form. Witness Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and  Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, which aims to offer new insights into the emergence of abstract imagery. Specifically, the Met’s exhibition sets out to illustrate how the constructive nature of weavings, arising from the grid formed by the vertical and horizontal elements of the loom, prompted the formal investigation of geometric designs. There are several examples in Discourse, works by Warren Seelig from the 70s and 80s, and works from Blair Tate (US) and Gudrun Pagter (DK) created 50 years later.

Differing Sensibilities
Differing Sensibilities, tapestries by Zofia Butrymowicz, Michael Radyk, Lia Cook. photos by Tom Grotta

The evolution of contemporary fiber art can be seen in works from Eastern Europe and those from Western Europe and the US. One of the oldest works in the exhibition is a heavily textured wool-and-linen weaving, Słońce Szafirowe, (Sapphire Sun), by Polish weaver Zofia Butrymowicz from 1968 which was featured in Beyond Weaving: the art fabric, by Jack Lenor Larsen and Mildred Constantine which provides an interesting contrast to Jacquard tapestries of wool and cotton by Americans Lia Cook and Michael Radyk.

Messenging Four ways
Messenging Four ways, details of works by Irina Kolesnikova, Laura Foster Nicholson, Gyöngy Laky, James Bassler. photos by Tom Grotta

Some of the artists in Discourse, including Laura Foster Nicholson (US) Gyöngy Laky (US), James Bassler (US), and Irina Kolesnikova (RU/DE), use the medium of fiber art to make explicit statements about the modern world — about personal anxieties, human interaction and our impact on the environment. Gyöngy Laky’s (US) work, Anticipation, which spells out the word “Who?“ in applewood branches, presents a question. “Given the challenges, concerns, conflicts and other dangers we face today,” Laky says, “this question, underlies the search for a way forward to a better day.”  Laura Foster Nicholson’s (US) woven landscapes, idyllic at first glance reveal a concern with the natural world. “In recent years,” the artist says, “my work has moved toward recording the various ways humankind has interfered in the environment.” Through Spectator, Irina Kolesnikova (RU/DE) shares the anxiety of daily life. She presents a man, her alter ego, in a variety of discomfiting scenarios. In This Old House, Jim Bassler references the book Caste, which describes America as an old house, with the caste system wrought by slavery as central to its operation as are studs and joints. Bassler’s flag is patterned with wax resist and a multitude of woven elements “that could represent the textile talents of the Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619 and who were forced into slavery thus giving up their identity and culture.”

In sum, Discourse offers no end of ideas and innovations. We invite you to draw comparisons and gain new perspectives of your own. See you in May!

Exhibition Details:
Discourse: art across generations and continents
May 4 – May 12, 2024
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, May 4th: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, May 5th: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 6th through Saturday, May 11th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 12th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)
Schedule your visit at POSH.

Safety protocols: 
POSH reservations strongly encouraged • No narrow heels please 

Catalog:
A full-color catalog, browngrotta arts’ 59th, Discourse: art across generations and continents, with an essay by Erika Diamond, Artist | Curator | Associate Director of CVA Galleries | Chautauqua Institution, will be published by the browngrotta arts in May 2024 in conjunction with the exhibition.

A Pop-Up is a Good Op

March 6, 2024 0 Comment
Two Vermettes, Two offices
Claude Vermette’s water color Maligne Lake, 1979 and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s tapestry Electricity/Energy, 1994. Photo by Tom Grotta

If Wikipedia is to be believed, Pop-Up art exhibitions began in 2007 in New York City. They now occur all over they world. Pop-ups are generally temporary events, less formal than a gallery or a museum, often using unusual spaces. Their popularity has boomed since the oughts, including Banksy’s Dismaland which collected work by 58 artists in a rundown seaside town in the UK in 2015, Yasoi Kusama’s room that exploded with flowers in Melbourne, Australia in 2018, the Museum of Ice Cream (not technically a museum) currently in several locations including Miami, Boston and Singapore, and The Color Factory in New York City, Houston, and Chicago. Pop-Ups are often immersive, interactive, and collaborative like Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, which began in 2008 as a small collective of artists sharing an interest in publicly displaying their works and developing their skills. Meow Wolf now aims to “redefine the paradigm of art and storytelling to make a positive difference in the world.”

Out of Focus Series by Grethe Sørensen
White Shell Tongue I & II, 2006 prints by Federica Luzzi and Out of Focus tapestries by Grethe Sørensen, 2007. Photo by Tom Grotta

Fast forward to 2024: browngrotta arts has its own Pop-Up of sorts at JUICE Creative Group in Norwalk, CT. JUICE handles our social media, website development, event planning and other miscellany. It has loads of clients coming into its business and rental studio space each week. Now, select Juice visitors are able to view (and acquire) JUICE Art, a specially assembled group of works from artists who work with browngrotta arts.

Warren Seelig installation
Warren Seelig’s White Wheel, 1996 and Small Double Ended, 1996. Photo by Tom Grotta

In curating the collection, we were mindful of the JUICE ethos. It’s a brand and digital agency based in the US, with team members all over the world. JUICE takes pride in the team of brand experts, designers, marketers and tech geeks it’s built, and the vibrant creative culture it has fostered. To reflect that creativity and energy, we suggested works like Grethe Sorensen’s Out of Focus that references pixels from printing, Warren Seelig’s mechanical sculptures, Small Double-Ended and White Wheel, Gyöngy Laky’s playful Beach Sketch, made of electrical tape wrapped branches and Electricity/Energy by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, a tapestry that incorporates wire.

Sekiji, Laky and Seelig in the corner office
From left to right works by Toshio Sekiji, NYT Collage, 1997, Gyöngy Laky, Beach Sketch, 1987, Warren Seelig, Shadowfield/ Colored Light Single, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Printed pages are another theme; the agency produces a lot of textual content. There are collages made of books and newspapers by Toshio Sekiji; works by Wendy Wahl of encyclopedia pages, and an interesting work by Mercedes Vicente that mixes string and spiral notebook pages and “hints” at writing. Photography, too, was a theme. In a room clients use, we placed a textile triptych made of photo images of Japanese tile roofs that are fragmented, silk screened, and metal-leafed made by Glen Kaufman along with works of paper by Gizella Warburton. On a floor of offices, there are photographs of fiber sculptures by Federica Luzzi, White Shell Tongue 1 and 2 beside a graphic tapestry by Gudrun Pagter.

John McQueen in the conference room
In the conference room, Intimate Domain, 2019 by John McQueen

In deciding what to display, we also collaborated with the JUICE team, including some works by artists they chose. John McQueen is a favorite of several team members. We included Intimate Domain, which includes a tree made of repurposed plastic surrounded by a frame made of small branches and cable ties and also Treed, a depiction of a tree where the drawing creeps off the page an onto the frame. Another popular artist was Canadian painter and ceramist Claude Vermette. There are two of his large canvases, one triptych and one small water color hung throughout the space. Also on the team’s list, works by Keiji Nio, Jo Barker, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Jiro Yonezawa, Chiyoko Tanaka and Jennifer Falck Linssen.

Claude Vermette and Gudren Pageter
Claude Vermette. Clairière, 1992 painting, Gudren Pagter, Thin Green Line , 2017 tapestry, Toshio Sekiji, Black Collage, 1998. Photo by Tom Grotta

For us, a Pop-Up is a Good Op. The JUICE space looks better, clients and staff appreciate the work, and we get more eyeballs for some great works of art!

Save the Date: browngrotta arts Spring Art in the Barn

February 14, 2024 0 Comment

We’ve spent the first weeks of 2024 summing up 2023 and looking at this year’s trends in art and design. Now we’ve got a more concrete prediction — our Spring Art in the Barn exhibition will run from Saturday, May 4 through Sunday, May 12, 2024. Discourse: art across generations and continents will explore the diversity in art textiles and fiber sculpture.

Blair Tate, Warren Seelig header
Details of tapestries by Blair Tate made in 2022 and Warren Seelig made more than 40 years earlier in 1976. Photo by Tom Grotta.

In Discourse, browngrotta arts will assemble a large and eclectic group of artworks that celebrate artists from different countries, who work with varied materials, and represent distinct artistic approaches. More than 50 artists from 20 countries will be featured.Included will be works from the art form’s origins 60 years ago, current mixed media works and sculpture, and pieces created in the decades between — enabling an intriguing look at intergenerational differences, material breakthroughs, and historical significance in fiber art.

Details: John McQueen, Norma Minkowitz, Norie Hatekayama
Details: John McQueen, Norma Minkowitz, Norie Hatekayama. Photo by Tom Grotta.

structural explorations
Despite their distinctiveness, the artists in Discourse share a common trait. Each possesses “material intelligence,” what author Glenn Adamson describes as “a deep understanding of the material world around us, an ability to read that material environment, and the know-how required to give it new form.” The works in Discourse reflect this mastery. Artists like John McQueen and Norma Minkowitz of the US and Norie Hatekayama and Naoko Serino of Japan engineer imaginative structures of unexpected materials — plaited paper tape, molded jute, crocheted linen, and pieced twigs and branches. 

Details: Gudrun Pagter, Warren Seelig, Blair Tate
Details: Gudrun Pagter, Warren Seelig, Blair Tate. Photos by Tom Grotta

fiber art … an evolution
Discourse also offers viewers a chance to make intergenerational and cross-continental comparisons. Included will be starkly graphic weavings by Warren Seelig (US) made in the 70s and 80s, and ones by Gudrun Pagter (DK), and Blair Tate (US) made 40+ years later. We have often observed a different sensibility among artists from Eastern Europe and those in Western Europe, Asia, and the US. Artists in Eastern Europe have a history, which began after World War II, of using items at hand to create works – sisal, rope, hemp, goat hair. A fierce energy is seen in these works; they are rugged and raw. By contrast, for artists who worked elsewhere in more traditional tapestry materials like wool, silk, linen – quietly refined works were often the result. Discourse will spotlight such regional contrasts. 

Details: Marian Bijlenga, Shoko Fukuda, Marianne Kemp
Details: Marian Bijlenga, Shoko Fukuda, Marianne Kemp. Photo by Tom Grotta.

material matters
Viewers to Discourse will also see a wide range of to material and technique approaches. Several artists make vastly different uses of paper — scrolling of encyclopedia pages by Wendy Wahl (US), knotted paper objects by Shoko Fukuda (JP), and sculptural works of rice paper by Pat Campbell (US). Three other artists, Adela Akers (US), Marianne Kemp (NL), and Marian Bijlenga (NL), use horsehair in vastly different ways. 

Details: Laura Foster Nicholson, Irina Kolesnikova, Anneke Klein
Details: Laura Foster Nicholson, Irina Kolesnikova, Anneke Klein. Photos by Tom Grotta.

the medium is the message
Some of the artists in Discourse, including Laura Foster Nicholson (US) Gyöngy Laky (US), and Irina Kolesnikova (RU/DE), use the medium of fiber art to make explicit statements about the modern world — about personal anxiety, communication, and humans’ impact on the environment. “I like to tease the brain – to promote or even provoke or cajole, a visual dialogue with the viewer,” says Gyöngy Laky (US). Her work, Anticipation, which spells out the word “Who?“ in applewood branches, presents a question. “Given the challenges, concerns, conflicts and other dangers we face today,” Laky says, “this question, underlies the search for a way forward to a better day.” Anneke Klein (NL) is interested in communication: In Dialogue — Her work is made up of two layers that hang, one in front of the other. When you change your position in front of Dialogue, the interaction between the two layers changes, as it does between two speakers.

Detail: Lia Cook
Detail: Lia Cook. Photo by Tom Grotta.

experiments in technique
Contemporary fiber art is by definition experimental. It arose when a group of artists used tapestry techniques to create abstract sculptures that hung off the wall. A work of parallel optical lines from studies Lia Cook (US) did for her master’s thesis in the 1970s will be included along with works reflecting Neha Puri Dhir’s (IN) currrent experiments dying silk and baskets by Esmé Hofman (NL) of black willow and elm that also incorporate color.

Detail: Aby Mackie
Detail: Aby Mackie. Photo by Tom Grotta.

fiber art has emotional appeal
Fiber art — art textiles, tapestries, and three-dimensional sculpture — engages us on a deeply personal level. Our first memories are of cloth, fuzzy blankets, soft towels and they remain strong ones. Scientists have shown that different parts of the brain light up when we look at a woven image and a photographic image of the same item. Aby Mackie (SP) sources and recycles used fabrics from flea markets, fabrics laden with memory. She is captivated by these silent witnesses to a life lived; a worn bed sheet, a stained tablecloth, a moth-eaten gown. Such artifacts bear the marks and physicality of human nature, possessing a poetic power. She gilds this repurposed material in works like We Can All Be Saved, leaving viewers to consider what creates value.

We invite you to draw comparisons and gain new perspectives of your own. See you in May!

Exhibition Details:
Discourse: art across generations and continents
May 4 – May 12, 2024
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, May 4th: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, May 5th: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 6th through Saturday, May 11th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 12th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)
Schedule your visit at POSH

Safety protocols: 
POSH reservations strongly encouraged • No narrow heels please 

Catalog:
A full-color catalog, browngrotta arts’ 59th, Discourse: art across generations and continents, will be published by the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition.

Art Out and About: Exhibitions Here and Abroad

October 25, 2023 0 Comment

It’s a fall full of cultural attractions — across the US and abroad. Hope you can take in one or two!

Tamiko Kawata’s Self Portrait, 1996 and Vertical Wave, 1986

Tamiko Kawata: Beyond Edge, Beyond Surface
November 1- 28, 2023
Opening Reception November 1 6-8 p.m.
Pollock Gallery
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas 
https://calendar.smu.edu/site/meadows/event/tamiko-kawata-beyond-edge-beyond-surface–opening-reception/

The artist will create an onsite installation on October 29 – 30th

Weaving at Black Mountain College:
Anni Albers,Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students
through January 6, 2023
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
Asheville, NC
https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/weaving/

Weaving at Black Mountain College Installation. photo by BMCM+AC staff featuring The Weaver, painted on the weaving studio door by Faith Murray Britton in 1942.

Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers,Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students will be the first exhibition devoted to textile practices at Black Mountain College (BMC). Celebrating 90 years since the college’s founding, the exhibition will reveal how weaving was a more significant part of BMC’s legendary art and design curriculum than previously assumed.

BMC’s weaving program was started in 1934 by Anni Albers and lasted until the College closed in 1956. About 10% of all Black Mountain College students took at least one class in weaving. Despite Albers’s elevated reputation, the persistent treatment of textile practices as women’s work or handicraft has often led to the discipline being ignored or underrepresented in previous scholarship and exhibitions about the College; this exhibition brings that work into the spotlight at last. The exhibition will also feature work by selected contemporary artists whose work connects to the legacies of the BMC weavers: Kay Sekimachi, Jen Bervin, Porfirio Gutiérrez, Susie Taylor, and Bana Haffar. They’ve produced a catalog for the exhibition, too, that will be available October 31st. 

Folding Silences
through November 9, 2023
D21 Art Projects
Paeo Las Palmas
Providencia, Chile
https://www.d21virtual.cl/2023/09/20/comunicado-plegando-silencios-de-carolina-yrarrazaval/

Installation shot, Folding Silences exhibition. Photo by Jorge Brantmayer.

Through November 9th, the exhibition Plegando Silencios by international artist Carolina Yrarrázaval can be visited at gallery D21. The exhibition consists of a series of 12 tapestries that the artist has worked on in recent years experimenting with materials of plant origin, mainly with coconut fiber, which is intervened to obtain suggestive reliefs, textures, and transparencies that demand a new look at the artist’s work. The creative act of dyeing, folding, and incorporating raw material is transformed into the initial structure of a textile work that s, the gallery says, “seduces and incites the search for new sensations.”

Woven Histories: textiles and modern abstraction
through January 21, 2024
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, CA
https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/woven-histories-textiles-and-modern-abstraction

Ed Rossbach, Damask Waterfall, 1977, LongHouse Reserve, © Ed Rossbach, photo © Charles Benton, courtesy The Artist’s Institute. Ed Rossbach, Lettuce Basket, 1982, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Milton and Martha Dalitzky (M.2021.163.1), © Ed Rossbach, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Woven Histories sheds light on a robust, if over-looked, strand in art history’s modernist narratives by tracing how, when, and why abstract art intersected with woven textiles (and such pre-loom technologies as basketry, knotting, and netting) over the past century. Included are 150 works by an international and transhistorical roster of artists that includes Ed Rossbach, Katherine Westphal, Anni Albers, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Kay Sekimachi, Lenore Tawney, and Sheila Hicks. The exhibition reveals how shifting relations among abstract art, fashion, design, and craft shaped recurrent aesthetic, cultural, and socio-political forces, as they, in turn, were impacted by modernist art forms. It is accompanied by a book of essays and images, that can be purchased at browngrotta.com.

Takaezu & Tawney: An Artist is a Poet
through March 25, 2024
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Bentonville, AK
https://crystalbridges.org/calendar/toshiko-takaezu-lenore-tawney/

Portrait of Lenore Tawney and Toshiko Takaezu at browngrotta arts’ exhibition Lenore Tawney: celebrating five decades of work, 2000. Photo by Tom Grotta

Takaezu & Tawney: An Artist is a Poet debuts 12 new acquisitions to the Crystal Bridges collection that tell the story of a remarkable friendship between Toshiko Takaezu and Lenore Tawney. Curated by Windgate Curator of Craft Jen Padgett, the exhibition highlights how these two women shaped craft history in the US by expanding and redefining the possibilities of their preferred mediums: Takaezu in ceramics, Tawney in weaving. Takaezu and Tawney had a close relationship for decades, from 1957 until Tawney’s death in 2007. From 1977 to 1981, Tawney lived at Takaezu’s Quakertown, New Jersey, home and the two shared studio space.

Tartan
through January 14, 2024
Victoria & Albert Museum
London, UK
https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/whatson/exhibitions/tartan

Louise Gray 2011. For her iconic collection ‘Up Your Look’, photo by Michael McGurk

If you are a fan of tartan (as we are), the V&A’s exhibition is for you. Tartan offers a thrilling view of over 300 mesmerizing objects showcasing tartan’s timeless appeal and rebellious spirit across fashion, architecture, art and design. See tartan worn by Bonnie Prince Charlie, a Scottish soldier’s unwashed kilt from the trenches of WWI, and the Bay City Rollers trousers handmade by a lifelong fan.

And there is always our Artsy Viewing Room that you can visit without leaving home: Glen Kaufman: Retrospective 1980 – 2010.

Enjoy!

Visit our Artsy Viewing Rooms

October 18, 2023 0 Comment

We are continuing our celebration of our Fall exhibition, Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions in three Viewing Rooms on Artsy now through December 20, 2023. 

Glen Kaufman: Retrospective 1960-2010 on Artsy

The first of these, Glen Kaufman: Retrospective 1980 – 2010., viewable through November 6th, features 50 years of work by this master weaver and designer. The expansive collection of works in the Glen Kaufman Viewing Room include double weaves, macramés, a sculpture of polypropylene and collages of fabrics gathered from flea markets in Japan. Also included are woven works silk-screened with gold, silver or copper paste — a technique Kaufman pioneered to create elegant and eloquent works that blend Eastern and Western sensibilities. The work reflects his varied career, which included teaching at at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and University of Georgia, a Fulbright in Scandinavia, work at Dorothy Liebes’s New York studio, and time spent working in Japan over 14 years.

Works by Dorothy Gill Barnes from Dorothy Gill Barnes: in collaboration with nature. Photo by Tom Grotta

The second Vignettes Viewing Room, Dorothy Gill Barnes: in collaboration with nature, will begin on November 7th and run through November 28th. In this VR, you’ll find works by Barnes, a renowned sculptor, known for weaving bark, transforming natural materials, and for her experiments with glass artists, resulting in objects that mix glass and bark and branches in intriguing ways. Among Barnes’ innovations were “dendroglyphs,” markings she’d make on live tree bark, which she allowed to develop into readable scars for months or years before harvesting and using the resulting bark “drawings” in her works.

Installation of Abundance of Objects, one of the three Vignettes exhibitions. Photo by Tom Grotta

Last, but scarcely least of the the three Viewing Rooms will be An Abundance of Objects, which will run from November 29th through December 20th. The right object in the right space has the power to prompt memories, evoke feelings, and exert a palpable energy on one’s surroundings. An Abundance of Objects celebrates that power. You’ll see an eclectic collection of sculptures, ceramics, baskets, and mixed media works that inspire awe, admiration and, sometimes, sheer delight, Notable for its diversity — 80 objects in all — An Abundance of Objects celebrates the acquisition process.

040gk Kyoto Kawara IV, Glen Kaufman, yarn-dyed woven silk, copper leaf, 15″ x 14″ x 2.5″, 1995. Photo by Tom Grotta
11mg Anointed Rank, Mary Giles, waxed linen, wire, bone, paint, gesso, 10” x 31,” 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta

Hope you’ll visit the Artsy Viewing Rooms in October, November and December. Check out the catalogs we produced for each of these exhibitions at browngrotta.com.

Fall 2023 Art for a Cause — cARTie the Mobile Art Museum

October 11, 2023 0 Comment

Each year, we host two exhibitions at browngrotta arts — one in the Spring; one in the Fall. With each, we try to identify a nonprofit to promote as our Art for a Cause. Our hope is to bring the group visibility and donated funds. Previous Art for a Cause groups have included

cARTie bus
cARTie at Edgewood School. Photo courtesy of cARTie.

Americans for the Arts, Ports of Cause, The Woven Community, Connecticut Institute for Immigrants and Refugees, Sunflower of Peace, and the World Affairs Council.

We are excited to announce that this Fall our Art for a Cause organization is cArtie, the mobile art museum. browngrotta arts is pledging 5% of the profits from sales during our Fall in-person exhibition, Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions (October 7 – 15th) to cARTie, a passionate nonprofit organization committed to empowering communities through art and education. By attending our exhibition and purchasing artworks, visitors directly support cARTie’s cause. Additionally, we are collecting cash and check donations made out to “cARTie,” onsite helping us make an even greater impact.

You can also contribute online or by mail. Send your checks to cARTie, 326 Navajo Loop, Shelton, CT 06484. Your contribution, whether through art purchases or donations, goes a long way to foster creativity and education. Join us in creating a brighter future for aspiring artists and learners.

cARTie bus students
cARTie-at-Northeast-Academy-(Clare-Murray). Photos courtesy of cARTie.

More about cARTie:

  1. cARTie is Connecticut’s first and only nonprofit mobile art museum bus committed to bridging inequities in education and arts access across the state. cARTie’s programming is focused on high-school student-artists, entire communities, and PreK-2 students with limited access to the arts in education. 
  1. cARTie ensures all young children positive and prolonged early introductions to museum-based learning and opportunities for developing critical and creative thinking dispositions. 
  1. cARTie will work with 5,000+ PreK-2 students this year and 27 elementary and pre-schools across the state with limited access to the arts in education (up from 17 last year and 7 the year before). cARTie visits these partners multiple times throughout the year, to help nurture students’ critical and creative thinking, as well as their museum habits of mind.

You can learn more about about cARTie on its website: https://www.cartie.org/

Schedule your visit to Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions, and its three included exhibitions, Dorothy Gill Barnes: a way with wood; Glen Kaufman Elegant Eloquence; and An Abundance of Objects on Eventbrite.

Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions
Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions at browngrotta arts. Photos by Tom Grotta

Vignettes opens this week: Who’s New? Lissa Hunter

October 5, 2023 0 Comment
1lh The Gathering, Lissa Hunter, eleven-piece nesting basket set with handmade elements, 7” x 16”, 1994.

An Abundance of Objects, this Fall at browngrotta arts, will feature The Gathering, an interesting 1994 work made by Lissa Hunter, whose work we have not shown previously at the gallery. Hunter earned a BA in painting and an MFA in fibers at Indiana University. Choosing to work in both two and three dimensions has allowed Hunter to explore numerous materials and techniques and to push her art in many directions. “Lissa Hunter’s choice of materials is modest, yet impactful.  Raffia, paper, charcoal, clay, thread and an array of natural and found objects. These seemingly ordinary elements, devoid of intrinsic value or distinctive identity, serve as the foundation for her artistic process.Techniques such as coiling, drawing, hand building, sewing and mark making elevate these unassuming materials to a realm of significance,”explains Angela Truscott of FibreArts Take Two, in its recent video interview of Hunter.

1lh The Gathering, Lissa Hunter, eleven-piece nesting basket set with handmade elements, 7” x 16”, 1994.

In the 90s, Hunter would create coiled baskets, then coat them with handmade paper, apply acrylic medium, “age” them with watercolor, and add decorative elements. The result were baskets that resembled ancient artifacts. Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf, the authors of Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, observed thatHunter “was looking for spiritual embodiment, and Native American objects seemed a good model. But she labeled her borrowings, so to speak, by applying a tribal pattern in crochet so it was clear that she was quoting rather than copying the traditions.” The authors conclude that Hunter “demonstrates the satisfactions of making and repeating, the pleasures of materials and the symbolic importance of objects, charting a course between the Scylla of sentimentality and the Charybdis of illustration.”

lh The Gathering, Lissa Hunter, eleven-piece nesting basket set with handmade elements, 7” x 16”, 1994.

Hunter’s work can be found in the collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California, among others.

See works by Hunter — and 30+ other artists — at An Abundance of Objects, part of browngrotta arts’ Fall 2023 “Art in the Barn” exhibition, Vignettes: one venue; three exhibitions this October 7th through October 15th. Reserve a time to visit on Eventbrite.

Vignettes at browngrotta arts in October: Who’s New? Joe Feddersen

September 20, 2023 0 Comment

We are excited to be exhibiting two basketworks by Joe Feddersen in our upcoming exhibition An Abundance of Objects (October 7-18). 

Joe Feddersen's Agressive Attitude and Roll Call Baskets
1-2jfe Agressive Attitude, 2020, Roll Call, 2018, Feddersen,, twined wax linen, 10 x 5.75″ x 5.75″; 5.25″ x 4.5″ x 4.5″. Photo by Tom Grotta

Fedderson is a widely known, highly respected, multimedia artist and member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. His fine art prints, paintings, baskets, glass vessels, installations, and photography, are found in several prominent museum collections, including, that of the National Museum of the American Indian. He is one of six artists featured in Sharing Honors and Burdens at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian through next March. The works in the Shared Honors and Burdens exhibition are culturally specific, yet communicate across cultural boundaries, weaving together stories of resilience, heritage, and shared experiences. 

Feddersen’s work has been featured in several solo and group exhibitions, and has been written about in a number of essays, catalogs, and books including a major retrospective and monograph titled Vital Signs at the Missoula Museum in Montana in 2008. “Arising from Plateau Indian iconographic interpretations of the human-environment relationship, Curator Rebecca J. Dobkins wrote in the exhibition notes, “Feddersen’s prints, weavings, and glass sculptures explore the relationships between contemporary urban place markers and indigenous design.” From the artist’s perspective, she says, Plateau basketweaving designs have resulted from generations of people living on the land and interpreting their relationship with the land through abstraction.

Detail Joe Feddersens aggressive attitude
Detail: 1jfe Aggressive Attitude, Feddersen, twined wax linen, 10 x 5.75″ x 5.75″, 2020. Photo by Tom Grotta

As he continued developing his Plateau Geometrics series, which was featured in Vital Signs, Feddersen decided he needed a fuller understanding of basketry and began learning from his friend Elizabeth Woody, an artist and poet who was a student of weaving. He returned to the Colville Reservation and talked, too, with renowned weaver Elaine Timentwa Emerson about basket designs. Dobkins writes, “For Feddersen, her assertion that design meaning was deeply rooted in location stood out above all else. In other words, the meaning of designs depends upon who the interpreter is and where he or she is from — a very local form of indigenous exegesis. To someone else, in the next valley, the same design may have a different meaning.” 

Feddersen has spoken about imagery he uses. In, Roll Call he told Cecile Ganteaume in his interview for the Archives of American Art (Oral history interview with Joe Feddersen, 2021 April 29 and May 6. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution) the imagery “is about the world around us” like “just stopping and thinking about what’s around you.” He cites a poem by William E. Stafford, called “Tracks.” The poet was on a train and saying, “Who’s around us?” On a fresh snow, you would see the tracks. And he would say, like, “Fox is here,” and so on. To Feddersen, it was “kind of who has survived.” And so he created the uniquely modern figures in Roll Call. “[W]e have like a television person here, and an android,” he said ,… “kind of a narrative about who’s here. And it also makes me think of those high school pictures, where they have the class pictures.”

Detail Joe Feddersens Roll Call
Detail: 2jfe Roll Call (small), Joe Feddersen, twined wax linen, 5.25″ x 4.5″ x 4.5″, 2018. Photo by Tom Grotta

You can see Small Roll Call in person at An Abundance of Objects at browngrotta arts October 7 through 15. Schedule your visit here. 

Can’t make the exhibition? You can see the works in the An Abundance of Objects catalog, available at browngrotta.com.

Vignettes is Less Than a Month Away: Who’s New? Kogetsu Kosuge and Aya Kajiwara

September 19, 2023 0 Comment

In our upcoming An Abundance of Objects exhibition (part of Vignettes: one venue, three exhibitions) October 7 – 15, we are pleased to include work by two well-known Japanese basketmakers, Aya Kajiwara and Kogetsu Kosuge.

Kogetsu Kosuge and Aya Kajiwara bamboo baskets
1kko Circular Flower Basket, Kogetsu Kosuge, bamboo, 17.5″ x 5″ x 3.75″, 2000’s; 1ka Spiral Pattern Basket, Aya Kajiwara, bamboo, 8″ x 11″ x 11″, 2007. Photo by Tom Grotta

In 2000, Aya Kajiwara became the first woman admitted as a full member of the Japan Art Crafts Association. She attended the Beppu Occupational School, the foremost art school with a bamboo curriculum, studying with teachers who themselves were pupils of Living National Treasure artists (those certified as “Preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties”). Kajiwara’s work follows the tradition of the hanakago, baskets made for holding flower arrangements for special ceremonial ikebana. In Ikebana, these baskets are viewed as sculptures, rather than utilitarian objects. Many of her titles allude to landscape or parts of nature. Her works are composed of very narrow splits of bamboo, Kajiwara’s work has been included in the prestigious Traditional Craft Arts Exhibition several times. 

Kogetsu Kosuge bamboo basket detail
1kko Circular Flower Basket Detail, Kogetsu Kosuge, bamboo, 17.5″ x 5″ x 3.75″, 2000’s. Photo by Tom Grotta

Kogetsu Kosuge, who died in 2016, was the son of Chikudo Kosuge, a well-known bamboo artist on the Island of Sado. As a boy, Kogetsu spent many hours in his father’s studio learning bamboo basketry. In 1972, the Niigata Governor commissioned the artist to create a basket as a gift to the Emperor of Japan and six years later he became a full member of the Japan Craft Art Association.

Aya Kajiwara bamboo basket detail
1ka Spiral Pattern Basket, Aya Kajiwara, bamboo, 8″ x 11″ x 11″, 2007. Photo by Tom Grotta

He primarily uses three techniques, hineri or twisted bamboo, the pine-needle pattern called matsuba-ami and masame-wari, in which lateral cuts are used to make narrow strips of bamboo. The artist told Tai Arts in 2009, that In each piece, he tries “to reflect my deeply held spiritual feelings and beliefs.” Among his prestigious awards are the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Prize at Japan’s Flower and Tea Ware Art Exhibition and the Niigata Nippo Prize at the 16th Prefectual Art Exhibition. 

See works by Kajiwara and Kogetsu — and many more — at An Abundance of Objects, part of browngrotta arts’ Fall 2023 “Art in the Barn” exhibition, Vignettes: one venue; three exhibitions this October 7th through October 15th. Reserve a time on Eventbrite. You can also order the catalog for An Abundance of Objects from our website: browngrotta.comhttps://store.browngrotta.com/an-abundance-of-objects/, after October 6, 2023.