Category: Japanese Art

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Masako Yoshida

April 17, 2012 0 Comment

Kuu #441 Masako Yoshida (detail), photo by Tom Grotta

Sculptures of bark by Masako Yoshida are among the works that browngrotta arts will feature at SOFA NY. The constructions Yoshida envisions are built by interlacing sheets of walnut bark with string made of nettle. “I consider myself a member of society who wants to make works that open into the new world earnestly, one step at a time,”  Yoshida finds that her work provides her “a means of release, allowing the truth to emerge and open the mind. In the process, I ask myself, ‘what is my connection to society?'” Yoshida has studied basketmaking with noted teacher and artist, Hisako Sekijima.

11my Kuu#441, Masako Yoshida;, walnut and maple, 20.5″€ x 12″€ x 4.25″€, 2007-2010, photo by Tom Grotta

She graduated from Musashino Art University, majoring in textiles and has since worked there as instructor. She has also taught at Tamagawa Institute. Her work has been exhibited at the Nagoya Trade and Industry Center (In Our Hands) Japan; Iwasaki Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan; Megro City Museum, Japan; Takashimaya Department Store (Amu Kumu solo exhibition); Tachikawa, Japan; Nuno Annex Exhibition (solo, traveling exhibition); Wayne Art Center, Pennsylvania (Green for the Get Go).

 

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Naoko Serino

April 11, 2012 0 Comment

4ns Generating-4 detail, Naoko Serino, photo by Tom Grotta

At SOFA NY browngrotta arts will present two dramatic works of jute by Japanese artist Naoko Serino. “Jute is attractive as it is, transient but also solid,” explains Serino. “Transforming jute into a fibrous material, I feel that the possibilities of expression have opened up and been induced, and eventually a three-dimensional expression is born, containing both light and air.” In creating  Generating-3, which will be displayed at SOFA New York, Serino was inspired by a Philodendron selloum bud and flower that she tended for 22 years before it bloomed, for just one day. Serino was taken by its strength and beauty.

4ns Generating-4, Naoko Serino, jute, 39″ x 39″ x 6.5″, 2012, photo by Tom Grotta

Generating-4, a standalone sculpture of jute that is more than three feet high will also be displayed at SOFA NY. “When my inner memory is stimulated,” Serino says, “I turn the fundamental illusion into a ‘shape’ and  I am able to enjoy interacting with shapes far beyond my imagination.” Serino’s’s work was included in the Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition which traveled from Japan to the Japan Society in New York last year. her work has also appeared in the Museum Rijswijk,  Haag, the Netherlands; Kajima Ki Building, Tokyo, Japan; Church of San Francesco, Como, Italy; Musée des Beaux Arts, Tournai, Belgium;  Gwangju Art Museum,Korea;  Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China;  Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; Urasoe Museum, Okinawa, Japan;  and St. Amandsberg Chapel, Ghent, Belgium.

 

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Hisako Sekijima

April 10, 2012 0 Comment

Intersection IV detail by Hisako Sekijima, photo by Tom Grotta

Japanese artist Hisako Sekijima is one of the 25 that browngrotta arts will promote at SOFA New York this year.   Sekijima has led the sculptural-basketry movement in Japan through her experimentation. She has expanded beyond her mastery of traditional techniques to offer new approaches to volume, mass, and space and new insights on the work of earlier times and ancient peoples. As Nancy More Bess has observed, Sekijima  is one of a distinguished few fiber artists, like Arai, Larsen, Liebes, McQueen, Rossbach–  who can be acclaimed as having changed perspectives on fiber.( “Hisako Sekijima: Explorer of Fiber Boundaries,” Nancy Moore Bess, Fiberarts, Summer 2002), “Sekijima has moved against popular current for more than 20 years…” Bess wrote.

523hs Intersection IV, Hisako Sekijima, walnut, plaited14.5″€ x 19″€ x 3.75″€, 2006, photo by Tom Grotta

“She was the exception–in Western terms, the renegade. Although now respected by many in Japan, sought after as adviser and authority, she remains outside the formal hierarchy of traditional basketry there. Her recognition, for now, comes from other highly regarded artists, her former students, collectors who earnestly vie for her newest work, gallery owners, and art authorities (including Jack Lenor Larsen, Rupert Faulkner, and Janet Koplos).” Sekijima’s work was included in the Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition which traveled from Japan to the Japan Society in New York last year.  Sekijima’s work has also been exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England; Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, Germany; Wakayama Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; Academy of Design, Kuopio, Finland and the Bellevue Art Museum, Washington.

 

Dispatches: Palm Beach, Florida

March 12, 2012 0 Comment

Tom behind a work by Chang Yeonsoon and in front of a Jun Tomita ikat. 2011 © Carter Grotta – courtesy cbgimages.com

Dawn MacNutt and Ceca Georgieva installation photo by Carter Grotta

We took a few days off and visited Florida last week. More rest than recreation, but we managed to visit Cocktail Culture at the Norton, which we had seen previously at the RISD Museum. Great fun! We wound up at the Apple Store and admired the iPhone cases by Fresh Fiber and appreciated the jewel-toned, stretched raw silk panels in our room at the Omphoy Resort.  We also visited friends who have two great works of fiber art: a pair of Dawn MacNutts from the Kindred Spirit series and Landscape for Men by Ceca Georgieva. On the Florida fiber art front, though, it’s hard to beat our in-laws’ collection.

John McQueen (1994) JUST UNDER THE RECORD private Collection photo by Tom Grotta

Here’s Tom behind an abaca square by Chang Yeonsoon and in front of an ikat by Jun Tomita, along with shots of a fanciful marlin by John McQueen,

two bows by Masakazu Kobayashi

Masakazu Kobayashi installation photo by Tom grotta

and work by Keiji Nio.

Blue Keiji Nio, photo by Tom Grotta

Guest Post Alert: Carol Westfall

November 28, 2011 0 Comment

Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers

Carol Westfall first Guest Post is up. To Read FibernFutures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers, click Guest Post Above;

Hitomi Nagai (1954- ). Birth, 2011. Cotton; waffle weave. 79 x— 43 x— 11 in. (200 x— 110 x 28 cm). Photo: Mareo Suemasa.

 

 

Guest Post Alert: Carol Westfall’s First Guest Post This Monday

November 25, 2011 0 Comment

Kazuyo Onoyama, Orikata (Folded Form), 2006. Kyôko Ibe, Screen from the Hogosho series, 2009. Fuminori Ono, Feel the Wind, 2010. Hisako Sekijima, Kôzô o motsu ryô II (Volume That Has Structure II), #546, 2009. Hisako Sekijima, Renzoku suru sen (Continuous Lines), #559, 2010. Hisako Sekijima, Jûsan’yô no satsu (A Book with Thirteen Leaves), #553, 2009. Installation photo by Richard Goodbody.

Over the next few months, we’ll be featuring Guest Posts by artist, educator, collector and friend, Carol Westfall.  Westfall’s work has been exhibited extensively in Japan, Europe, South America and the US. She has taught at both Columbia University’s Teacher’s College in New York City and in the Fine Arts Department at Montclair State University in New Jersey  and is one of the artists included in the upcoming exhibition, Distinguished Educators, at the Crane Arts Building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania next March. We worked with Westfall when she was at Montclair state University to produce the Art of Substance  exhibition in the gallery there.

In her first post, up Monday, November 28th, she takes a comprehensive look at the Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition, open through December 18th, which is still being talked up in New York City (including in a segment on Sunday Arts NY on PBS, Channel 13). In December, she’ll review Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design, at the Museum of Arts and Design, in New York through January 15th. Kazuyo Onoyama, Orikata (Folded Form), 2006. Kyôko Ibe, Screen from the Hogosho series, 2009. Fuminori Ono, Feel the Wind, 2010. Hisako Sekijima, Kôzô o motsu ryô II (Volume That Has Structure II), #546, 2009. Hisako Sekijima, Renzoku suru sen (Continuous Lines), #559, 2010. Hisako Sekijima, Jûsan’yô no satsu (A Book with Thirteen Leaves), #553, 2009. Installation photo by Richard Goodbody.

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

 

Don’t Miss: Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers at the Japan Society in New York

October 19, 2011 0 Comment

Naomi Kobayashi, Kyoko Kumai and Takaaki Tanaka installation

We had the chance to attend the opening of Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition last month (which coincided with the addition of the Japan Society’s headquarters to the Landmark Preservation Commission’s roster of buildings in New York) http://www.japansociety.org/page/
programs/gallery. The exhibition is significant in scale — 15 artists, some with room-size installations — and in the comprehensive portrait it provides of the practice of textile art in Japan today. The materials, techniques and sensibility of the pieces varies widely. “During the past decade,” writes in her essay for the exhibition catalog,  Hiroko Watanabe, a professor at Tama Art University and one of the participants in the exhibition, “the unique softness and flexibility of fabric — qualities shared by no other material — have inspired these artists to move beyond mere mastery to create daring, original works that hold the promise of still more impressive advances in the years to come.” There are five related lectures and workshops coming up in November and December:

LECTURE
Mastermind in Textile: An Evening with Dai Fujiwara
Wednesday, November 16, 6:30 PM;
WORKSHOP
Free-Form Saori Weaving Workshop
Sunday, November 20, 10 AM
Sunday, November 20, 1 PM
WORKSHOP
Irresistible Colors: Shibori-Dyeing Workshop
Saturday, December 3, 1 PM
WORKSHOP
Nature’s Inspiration: Embroidery Workshop
Saturday, December 10, 1 PM
WORKSHOP
Nature’s Inspiration: Embroidery Workshop
Saturday, December 10, 1 PM
All at the   Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, New York (212) 832-1155.

If you cannot get to New York, or you just want to learn more, there is a catalog, Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers, produced by Yale University and available from browngrotta arts http://www.browngrotta.com/
Pages/b45.php. There’s also a free Fiber Futures app with images and artist statements  http://itunes.apple.com/kz/app/fiber-futures-japans-textile/id464150856?mt=8, and a video tour by Nihon NY,  on the exhibition, Episode 18,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE1X279oDVo.

Guest Post Alert: Kim Schuefftan

September 27, 2010 0 Comment
FOR THE LOVE OF CLAY

Yasuo Terada and his son Teppie with Carol in front of their 14 chamber noborigama which they are currently building in Seto.Looking down from the top of the 14 chamber noborigama kiln of Yasuo and Teppie Terada.

Kim Schuefftan’s third Guest Post is up. To read FOR THE LOVE OF CLAY, click Guest Posts above.