Category: Exhibitions

Make a Day of It! Stimulus and Other Art Events Nearby

October 16, 2011 0 Comment

If you plan to come to Wilton between October 22nd and November 1st for Stimulus: art and its inception, consider adding a stop at one of our other local art venues to your trip. There are several exhibitions to choose from — all within 20 minutes of browngrotta arts:

Jessica Stockholder, Hollow Places Court in Ash-Tree Wood (partial installation view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield), 2011 Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Jessica Stockholder: Hollow Places Court in Ash-Tree Wood, a collaboration of sculptor Jessica Stockholder, cabinetmaker Clifford Moran and screenprinter Gary Lichtenstein utilizing the wood from a ailing 100-year old ash tree from the Aldrich’s grounds.
258 Main Street, Ridgefield
Tuesday – Sunday, 12 pm to 5 pm.
http://www.aldrichart.org/exhibitions/stockholder.php

Norma Minkowitz at her New Cannan Library Opening

New Canaan Library

Drawn to the Edge: Sculpture and Drawings by Norma Minkowitz
151 Main Street, New Canaan
Monday -Thursday 9 am – 8 pm; Friday – Saturday 9 am – 5 pm; Sundays 12 pm – 5 pm
http://newcanaanlibrary.org

Silvermine Arts Guild, Joe Saccio, Elegy for Clint, Homage for Motherwell, Wood, 6′ x 3′ x 14″

Silvermine Arts Guild

Memory and Metamorphosis, an exhibit of sculptural works in a variety of sizes and materials, including wood, paper and fiber bindings, by Joseph Saccio.
Discovered Masterworks: The Extraordinary Collages of Larry Lewis, the Director’s Choice exhibit that features works by reclusive artist, Larry Lewis, as seen in the collage books that he began in the late 60s and continued to produce until his death in 2004.
1037 Silvermine Road, New Canaan
Sunday: 1 pm – 5 pm; Monday -Tuesday: By Appointment; Wednesday-Saturday: 12 pm – 5 pm
http://www.silvermineart.org

Westport Arts Center

Love: In The Eye Of The Beholder, a members exhibition juried by David Kiehl of the Whitney Art Museum
51 Riverside Avenue, Westport
Monday – Friday, 10 am – 4 pm; Saturday – Sunday 12 pm – 4 pm
http://westportartscenter.org/ev?genre=exhibitions#11valove

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

September Site-ings from New York to LA and Como to Cheongju

September 13, 2011 0 Comment

rush-hour-shanghai, photo by Grethe Sorensen

September offers an abundance of exhibition openings of interest. On Sunday the 11th, Connecting opened at the Ostrobothnian Museum in Finland (Museokatu 3 – 4, 65100, Vaasa, Finland; +358 (0)6 325 3800; http://museo.vaasa.fi/w/?lang=3&page=9. Ending on November 27th, the exhibition features 40 artists from Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Germany, including Grethe Sørensen.

Serino_japan society

On Friday the 16th, it’s Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers at the Japan Society in New York (333 East 47th Street, (212) 832-1155; http://www.japansociety.org/gallery, through ). Six artists represented by browngrotta arts — Kiyomi Iwata, Naomi Kobayashi, Kyoko Kumai, Hisako Sekijima, Naoko Serino and Hideho Tanaka — are included. (We’ll have more on the opening and the exhibition next week).

Aerie by Lizzie Farey, photo by Tom Grotta

On Wednesday September 21st the Cheongju Biennale opens in Korea (through November 30th; http://eng.okcj.org/home/contents/view.do?menuKey=277&contentsKey=137) which includes Randy Walker, Chang Yeonsoon and Lizzie Farey.  On Saturday the 24th, Energhia — 2011 Miniartextiel Como opens in Italy.

Lightwear 2006 by Anda Klancic

Installed through November 20th, the exhibition features dozens of international artists, including Anda Klancic and Gyöngy Laky (former Church of San Francesco and other locations, Como, Italy; 011-39-31-30-56-21; http://www.miniartextil.it.

PRESENCE/ABSENCE: IN THE FOLDS by Lia Cook photo by Tom Grotta

The ambitious International Kaunas Biennial,  Textile 11: Rewind-Play-Forward  takes place from September 22nd to December 4, 2011, in Kaunas, Lithuania The Biennial offers a rich programof diverse events – collective and individual exhibits, performances, workshops and a series of conferences organised by the European Textile Network (ETN) – aimed at examining the conceptual evolution of visual and textile arts. On the 23rd, in “Rewind into the Future” several speakers, including Lia Cook, Cynthia Schirra, Reiko Sudo  and Chunghie Lee, will discuss how to empower textile culture for the future, why it is important and what is to be done for the upcoming generation. Lia Cook will also show work from her latest research project in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine including jacquard weavings and a video, in a satellite exhibition About Face. http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?p=375&lang=en  Elsewhere, the Fondation Toms Pauli, which played an important role in the International Tapestry Biennials of Lausanne (1962-1995), will exhibit the works of some of the artists represented in its collection of twentieth-century textile art, such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jagoda Buić, Kati Gulyas, Ritzi and Peter Jacobi, Jean Lurçat, Maria Laszkiewicz, Wojciech Sadley and Mariyo Yagi http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?p=391&lang=en.  For more information, visit the Biennial’s website http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?page_id=2&lang=en  or ETN’s http://etn-net.org.

On Sunday the 25th, Golden State of Craft: California 1960 -1985 opens at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Boulevard (at Curson), Los Angeles; 323.937.4230; www.cafam.org. The exhibition, which runs through January 8, 2012, surveys an extraordinary, innovative artistic period that blossomed in post-World War II California.

The-puzzle-of-Floating-World-#2 by Katherine Westphal

Working in a range of materials and forms—from furniture, ceramics, and metals to textiles, jewelry, and glass—artists such as Sam Maloof, Katherine Westphal, Ed Rossbach, Lia Cook, Arline Fisch and Marvin Lipofsky defined the ethos of the era and the West Coast way of life through their creations. The message that these artists presented resounded across the country, shaping how people perceived their homes and instilled art into their daily lives; it made people see the fabric of their environments in a remarkably new light. The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time, http://www.pacificstandardtime.org, a series of exhibitions, involving 60 cultural institutions, mounted in conjunction with the Getty, which celebrates the birth of the L.A. art scene.

 

Exhibition News: Flora and Fauna, Museum of Arts and Design, New York

August 27, 2011 0 Comment

Rhonda’s friends from high school in Arizona visited New York from LA and Philadelphia in early August. We talked up the Museum of Arts and Design and the High Line as must-see sites and met them at the Museum and had a terrific time. We were all Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities (through September 18, 2011), which features artists constructing small-scale hand-built depictions of artificial environments and alternative realities, either as sculpture or as subjects for photography and video. These are worlds of “magic realism” conceived and realized through intense engagement with materials, attention to detail, and concern for meaningful content.

Dorothy Gill Barnes UNTITLED 1995

Gyöngy Laky Red Birds

Mary Merkel-Hess Tall Grass

Tom & Connie McColley Along the Path

There were also some remarkable pieces in A Bit of Clay on the Skin: New Ceramic Jewelry (through September 4, 2011). Flora and Fauna, MAD about Nature (through November 6, 2011), however, was less successful. There were individual works that we liked, including Steffen Dam’s Marine Forms, Wayne Higby’s Mesa Gap and Beth Katelman’s Folly and the works pictured here (two of which were sold to collectors by browngrotta arts, and the Gyöngy Laky work that lead us to contact her about representation back in the 90s). But by mixing works featuring motifs from Nature, like fish and flowers and butterflies, with works made of branches and bark and other natural materials, the curator has created a bit of a mashup — two exhibitions with very different sensibilities installed as one.  Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019, 212-299-7777, http://www.madmuseum.org/see.

Dispatches: Art in situ on Monhegan Island, Maine

August 24, 2011 0 Comment

We visited Monhegan Island inMaine http://www.monheganwelcome.com earlier this month in search of seafood and photos and some of Maine’s most beautiful coastline.  The island has no paved roads — but miles of trails, that are easy to navigate thanks to Monhegan Associates’ trail maps available in stores and trailside boxes all over the island.  Visitors are advised not to miss the shipwreck, lighthouse, museum, and the many

artists’ studios open to the public and to appreciate the abundant plant life and bird population. One of our favorite sites, however, was not listed in any of the literature.  We were delighted when we stumbled upon an art colony of tiny structures populating Trail 11. Reminiscent of the World Beach Project https://arttextstyle.com/2010/05/14/eco-art-news-world-beach-project, in which beachgoers create sculptures of stones, visitors to Trail 11 have created small sculptures of sticks, bark, pinecones, leaves and shells. Some are more accomplished than others, but it was the sheer

volume that impressed us.  We stopped counting at 100, but until then, we had great fun looking behind tree roots, around rocks, in branches and creeks to find as many as we could.  And, we couldn’t leave without making a contribution; Carter, our budding artiste, created the word “ART” out of large sticks.

Carter’s contribution to trail 11, Monhegan Island photo by Tom Grotta

Eco-Art News: Chris Drury’s Carbon Sink Creates Controversy in Wyoming

August 20, 2011 0 Comment

photo by Chris Drury

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An installation at the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie by British land artist Chris Drury has heated up the debate over coal in that state http://uwartmuseum.blogspot.com/2011/07/land-artist-chris-drury-begins.html. Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around,  is 36 feet in diameter, took three weeks to create and at its center  features logs from trees killed by beetles, surrounded by lumps of coal. Drury had learned from students and faculty in the fall of 2010 about mountain pine beetles that have infested and killed more than 100 million acres of forest in Wyoming and other mountain states in the last decade. Scientists attribute

photo by Chris Drury

photo by Chris Dury

the infestation to the warming of the planet, which has reduced the frequency of the well-below-zero temperatures that would otherwise kill the insects. Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are a major cause of rising temperatures; a primary contributor to greenhouse gases is the burning of coal. Two state legislators from coal-centric Campbell County were not impressed by Drury’s work.  According to the Green blog of The New York Times,  Representatives Tom Lubnau and Gregg Blikre, Republicans from Gillette, wrote to the University of Wyoming to complain about the sculpture, Lubnau telling a local newspaper, “…every now and then you have to use these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from,” which includes, of course,  tax revenues from coal and other energy industries. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/coal-themed-sculpture-annoys-lawmakers “I just wanted to make that

photo by Chris Drury

photo by Chris Drury

connection between the burning of coal and the dying of trees,” says Drury. “But I also wanted to make a very beautiful object that pulls you in, as it were.” The work “has certainly generated a big debate,” he says, “which is good.” To see Drury’s photos of the work and the West, visit his blog at http://chrisdrury.blogspot.com/2011/07/carbon-stink.html. “Art is free to speak its truth,” he writes there, “and in the case of Carbon Sink all I am trying to do is to make many and multiple complex connections in as striking and beautiful way as I am able.” Watch for an interview with Chris Drury, filmed by the museum it will eventually be posted on its You Tube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/uwartmuseum.

Dispatches: All Things Considered IV and More at the Fuller Craft Museum

August 4, 2011 0 Comment

We traveled to Brockton, Massachusetts this weekend to see juried works by members of the National Basketry Organization at the Fuller Craft Museum http://www.fullercraft.org/exhibitions.html#Basketry.

Sunrise Artifact by Mary Giles

Woven Vessel by Jonathan Kline

Marked by a Sapsucker by Dorothy Gill Barnes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the highlights in our view: Sunrise Artifact by Mary Giles;  Woven Vessel by Jonathan Kline; Marked by a Sapsucker by Dorothy Gill Barnes; Tipped by Nancy Koenigsberg a Basket Book #5 by Arlene McGonagle (of course, we’re suckers for anything related to books). Most impressive, however, were works that appeared to be diptychs.  First, was a pair of  large works, Cave and Snag by Linda Bills, made a year apart, but seamlessly echoing each other in shape and offering an intriguing contrast in volume.

Tipped by Nancy Koenigsberg

Basket Book #5 by Arlene McGonagle

Cave and Snag by Linda Bills

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second was a single piece, Wait, Weight by Jo Stealey, that seems to be two, interlocking basket/bowls of letters (yes, she had us at “A”). The show, which runs through December 11th, is worth seeing — with 85 pieces there is considerable variety in materials, technique and aesthetic. The exhibition would have benefited from more white space, however. The works are placed so close to one another it requires a second walkthrough to really focus on individual pieces.

Union by Christine Joy

Memories by Judy Mulford

Sidestep by Dona Anderson

Untitled 1985 by Kay Sekimachi

Kibiso III by Kiyomi Iwata

Wait Weight by Jo Sealey

CHAT by Jiro Yonezawa

Cradle to Cradle by Gyongy Laky

Calycanthus by Marion Hildebrandt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you can get there before Loom and Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale closes on September 11, 2011, do. There are interesting works by Kay Sekimachi in this show that did not appear in previous exhibitions of these artists’ work. Although this exhibition also features a large number of pieces in a limited space, as a result of Stocksdale’s and Sekimachi’s minimalist aesthetic and muted color palette, the installation is more successful.

 

We missed Fold It: Deena Schnitman, an installation of cookbooks which is on view in the café because we didn’t know it was there.  We didn’t miss the Flint Farm Stand, though, just down the road in Mansfield.  Great fresh corn and ice cream that has people standing in line.

Dusk by Norma Minkowitz

All Things Considered IV includes 12 artists whose work is represented by browngrotta arts.  Click any image to see more examples of these artists’ work.

Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street
Brockton, MA 02301
508-588-6000
http://www.fullercraft.org/home.html.

Summer Site-ings: Exhibitions from Coast to Coast

July 12, 2011 0 Comment

CRADLE TO CRADLE by Gyongy Laky ©2007 Tom Grotta

If you vacation in the East, Midwest or West this summer, you can see work by artists represented by browngrotta arts. In Washington, D.C, at the Textile Museum, is Gyöngy Laky’s work is included in Green: the color and the cause through September 11, 2011.

FB 1008, Kay Sekimachi ©2008 Tom Grotta

At the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, you can see Loom and Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale, through August 11th and All Things Considered IV, the National Basketry Organization’s biennial exhibition from July 30 to December 4th, which includes work by Kiyomi Iwata, Norma Minkowitz and Gyöngy Laky.

KIBUSO III, Kiyomi Iwata ©2010 Tom Grotta

BINARY TRACES: DREAM GIRL, Lia Cook, ©2005, Tom Grotta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Pittsburgh, Lia Cook is one of three female artists exploring race gender and culture in contemporary art production in Bridge 11, at the Society for Contemporary Craft through October 22nd.

Early Light, Mary Giles ©2006 Tom Grotta

Well represented in the Midwest, work by Mary Giles is included in Field of Vision: Artists Explore Place, at the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin, through October 2nd and in Basins, Baskets and Bowls: Women Explore the Vessel at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through October 23rd.

Legs, Norma Minkowitz, 6″x7″, 1974, Neusteter Textile Collection, photo by Bobby Hansson

In Colorado, at the Denver Art Museum, Norma Minkowitz and Lia Cook are among 14 artists included in Sleight of Hand, through December 31st.

TIMELINE, Lawrence LaBianca, photo by Lawrence LaBianca

Two stops in California: At the Bolinas Museum you’ll find Lawrence LaBianca & Wolfgang Bloch: Tracking Nature, through July 31st and at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, you’ll find

MATRIX 112570 Chang Yeonsoon, ©2007, Tom Grotta

Chang Yeonsoon’s work included in Wrapping Tradition: Korean Textiles Now, through October 22nd.

Dispatches: Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art

June 28, 2011 0 Comment

Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design, photo ©2011, Tom Grotta

Alphonse Mattia, Architect’s Valet Chair, 1989. Museum purchase with Funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Courtesy of Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

We delivered our aspiring artist (now on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/
shop/cbgarts?ref=seller_info ) to the pre-college program at RISD last week and had a chance to visit the art museum in the same trip.

The on-going exhibition iof 20th century art and design items from the permanent collection, Subject to Change, was well selected. Highlights during our visit were a weaving of saran monofilament from 1962 by Jack Lenor Larsen, a small but exquisite painting by Agnes Martin, the Architect’s Valet Chair by Alphonse Mattia (a professor at RISD) and the iconic Valentine typewriter by Olivetti. The items are changed continuously; the textiles rotated every five months to protect from light damage.

Furnishing textile, ca. 1939 American linen; plain weave, hand screen‐printed; 35.5″ x 26.25″ Gift of Howard and Schaffer, Inc. Courtesy of the Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Cocktail Culture catalog available from risd/works

The Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion, 1920-1980 exhibit is a delight. (“Highballs and High Art,” The New York Times dubbed it.)  One of the largest exhibitions in the Museum’s history, it combines more than 200 items — fashion, film, jewelry, fine art, design and commercial fabrics from Prohibition to disco; from Dansk to Dior. You have until the end of July to transport yourself to a more glamorous time — if you can’t make it in person, there’s a slide show at InStyle: http://news.instyle.com/
photo-gallery/?postgallery=51241#4 and a lavishly illustrated catalog, Cocktail Culture, available from risd/works: http://www.risdworks.com.

Exhibition News: “Sleight of Hand” at the Denver Art Museum through December 31st

May 9, 2011 0 Comment

Curated by Alice Zrebiec, Sleight of Hand features 14 contemporary artists whose work  challenge our powers of perception. The artists in this exhibition are among those who push time-honored textile techniques, including embroidery, quilting, weaving, netting, crochet, coiling, and ikat, to unexpected extremes and who invent new methods to achieve their creative vision.The exhibition includes sculptures, paintings and imagery produced over the last 30 years. Zrebiec calls the artists in the exhibition — Magdalena Abakanowicz, Olga de Amaral, Arlette Gosiewski, Tracy Krumm, Jane Mathews, Rebecca Medel, Norma Minkowitz, Cindy Hickok, Gugger Petter, Carol Shinn, Polly Barton, Lia Cook, Carol Eckert and Kay Khan — “alchemists” for their ability to change materials as diverse as cotton, newspaper, sand, and gold leaf into astonishing works of textile art.
If you are able to visit DAM before July 10th, you can also see Shape & Spirit: Selections from the Lutz Bamboo Collection which showcases more than 200 woven bamboo baskets, carved figures, and everyday tools that capture the spirit and cultural character of their makers.

Denver Art Museum
100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Denver, CO 80204-2788
(720) 865-5000 ‎