Category: Obituary

Lives Well Lived: Maggie Henton

August 16, 2024 0 Comment
Portrait Maggie Henton
Maggie Henton, August 2024. Portrait by Tom Grotta

We were so sorry to learn about the death of artist Maggie Henton in August 2024. We have been exhibiting Henton’s work since our exhibition, The British Invasion: Maggie Henton and Dail Behennah in 1994. That event featured Henton’s meticulously constructed baskets of wire and colorful cane. Their weave patterns  were developed from the study of Southeast Asian weaving techniques, and reflected her interest in rhythm, form, and the interaction between layers of pattern. Henton attended the opening of The British Invasion in Wilton, Connecticut meeting many collectors who were excited by her work.

Two Sides of Double Sided Folding Screen, interlaced birch plywood and wire, 59” x 80”, 1996. Photos by Tom Grotta

Born in 1953, Henton studied basketmaking at the London College of Furniture. Henton’s work involved more than creating baskets and objects of wood, however, it also included drawing, stitch, printmaking, photography, video, and installation. Much of Henton’s practice is developed in response to specific sites. She was interested in quality of place, and in how places are constructed and inhabited. These interests led her to complete an MA in Architecture and Spatial Culture.

Triangular Box with Lid, dyed cane wire and metal, 7” x 14” x 14”, 1995. Photo by Tom Grotta

“Work is usually made in response to a specific location,” she said. “The forms the work take reflect the particularities of the site. Pieces included installations, photography, print, stitched and drawing series. Working in this way provided the stimulus for the development of new ideas, whilst the apparent restrictions (of working on site (and often out of a suitcase) are a creative challenge and a prompt to think beyond my comfort zone. I have worked at sites in various locations in Europe and extensively in Australia.” 

Rain at Dawn, birch plywood, acrylic paint, stainless steel wire, 18″ x 19″ x 4″, 2001. Photo by Tom Grotta

In recent years, Henton made work in response to museum collections, (including Hasting Museum in 2018); and textile mill buildings and their history (Sunnybank Mill in 2019). During 2020 she researched the 18th and 19th century textile trade and its legacy of mill buildings in Lancashire. Much of this work focused on investigations into the legacies of Empire, including a project concerning poverty and disease in Victorian London. 

Diamond Bowl
Diamond Bowl, Maggie Henton, dyed and painted cane and copper wire, 7.5” x 30” x 19”, 1993. Photo by Tom Grotta

In reviewing Henton’s legacy upon her death, artist Caroline Bartlett wrote, “I have found there a lifetime’s work from basketry and wood-based pieces to textile works and combinations of stitch and print, all executed with such integrity and based on thorough research of content and material.”

Maggie Henton Birch Plywood Sculptures
0206mh Untitled, Maggie Henton, laminated birch plywood, sandblasted perspex, acrylic paint, steel nuts and bolts, 14” x 11.675” x 5.275”, 2002; 0105mh Untitled, Maggie Henton, laminated birch plywood, sandblasted perspex, acrylic paint, steel nuts and bolts, 14” x 16” x 7.25”, 2001. Photo by Tom Grotta

Henton’s work is found in a number of public collections include that of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; American Craft Museum, New York, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Art, Racine, Wisconsin; Ulster Museum, Ireland; Negenoord Maaspark, Belgium; Crafts Council, London, UK; Contemporary Arts Society, UK; Calderdale Museums, Halifax, UK; Shipley Art Gallery, UK; Leicester City Art Gallery, UK; Zoology Museum, Cambridge, UK; Bankfield Museum, Halifax, UK;  the Welbeck Estate, Nottinghamshire, UK; Platt Hall Costume Museum, Manchester, UK; and Shoreditch Town Hall, UK. 

Lives Well-Lived: Hiroyuki Shindo (1941-2024)

July 4, 2024 1 Comment
Hiroyuki and Chikako Shindo portrait
Hiroyuki and Chikako Shindo at browngrotta arts Sheila Hicks, joined by seven artists from Japan exhibition in 1995. Photo by Tom Grotta

We first met the talented and charming artist, Hiroyuki Shindo in 1995. Shindo was one of the artists in the east-west textile dialogue that Sheila Hicks crafted at browngrotta arts’ original location. Entitled Sheila Hicks, joined by seven artists from Japan, Shindo was one of the exhibition artists who created, in Hicks’ words, “strictly abstract, nonfolkloric works … Major statements in modest formats. Livable art. More than livable — inspirational and elevating, magnets of meditation.” Shindo and his wife, Chikako, came to Wilton, Connecticut from Japan, as did artist Chiyoko Tanaka, to install the exhibition with Hicks. Shindo served as an invaluable translator and witty raconteur. We learned about the virtues of cold sake, offerings made to the indigo gods, and his adventures in Broken Bow, Nebraska. (He had travelled, he told us, to Nebraska because it was where Sheila Hicks was born.) 

Indigo Thread Balls, Hiroyuki
Indigo Thread Balls, Hiroyuki Shindo, linen, cotton, indigo dye, 1995. Photo by Tom Grotta

We also learned in 1995 about Shindo’s remarkable art process. Shindo worked with indigo, which he first encountered as a student at Kyoto City University of Fine Arts in the late 1960s. An older artisan had told Shindo that he was the last of 14 generations of indigo dyers — Shindo was determined to prevent this art form’s extinction.

Hemp & Cotton, Hiroyuki Shindo
21hs Hemp & Cotton, Hiroyuki Shindo, linen, handspun and handwoven, indigo dye, 82″ x 44″, 1998. Photo by Tom Grotta

Shindo used only natural indigo for his work, which involved an elaborate ritual of his own formulation. He would first ferment the dye, pour it into a cement pool that contained pebbles. Next, he would move pebbles in a trough into the configuration he liked. Finally, he would press linen or flax into the trough of pebbles and dye, revealing the shapes and blurred edges he envisioned — from areas of nearly black to nearly invivible blue shadows. Shindo also made fascinating “thread balls” of wound thread where certain areas were highlighted with dye. As Hicks described the result, ”He is painting. He is sculpting. He is creating entire environments.” The white was as important to these works as the indigo Shindo believed. “If the white is not brilliant enough, or the undyed portion is not the right proportion, the balance is broken, and so I insist, white is as important to my work as is indigo.” Once dyed, the balls were placed in a nearby stream for rinsing, a process that is beautifully filmed in the video Textile Magicians by Cristobal Zanartu.

Wall Hanging, Hiroyuki Shindo
2hs Wall Hanging, Hiroyuki Shindo, linen and handspun and handwoven, indigo, x 12″, 1995. Photo by Tom Grotta

Shindo’s work has been exhibited widely. At the North Dakota Museum of Art, he created a series of panels responding to the flat landsape of the plains. He was among the artists included in Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Textile Wizards from Japan at the Israel Museum of Art in Jerusalem. His work is in a large group of museum collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York, and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. In 1997, he became a professor and head of the textile department at the Kyoto College of Art. 

Two Large Indigo wall hangings by Hiroyuki Shindo
Two Large Indigo wall hangings by Hiroyuki Shindo. Photo by Tom Grotta

In 2005, Shindo founded the Little Indigo Museum, in an old thatched-roof house, in the village of Kayabuki-no-Sato, north of Kyoto. This private art museum includes examples of indigo works not only from Japan, but also from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Central America — a representation of indigo dye culture from all over the world. The collection features indigo textiles found by the artist among discarded belongings, collected during field trips, and pieces received “from people along the way.”

Hiroyuki Shindo Large Wall Hanging detail.
Hiroyuki Shindo Large Wall Hanging detail. Photo by Tom Grotta

We are among the people he met along the way. He will indeed be missed.

Lives Well-Lived: Adela Akers (1933-2023)

August 23, 2023 0 Comment

We were greatly saddened to learn of the passing of celebrated artist Adela Akers on August 9, 2023 after a long illness.

Adela Akers portrait
Adela Akers portrait in her California home/studio. Photo by Tom Grotta

Akers’ journey to the US and to fiber arts was an extraordinary one. “During the Civil War in Spain my family left Spain and everything behind in 1937,” she told us in 2022 as we prepared for Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related Countries. “A right wing coup led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. It was a brutal war, but soon was overshadowed by the World War II that it helped introduce. My family relocated in Havana, Cuba. A tale of idealism, suffering tragically doomed yet a noble cause …. I definitely grew up being very aware of wars and emigration.” 

Two Akers Weavings
Adlea Akers, 63aa Rain and Smoke, linen gauze, India ink, acrylic paint and metal foil , 30” x 22”, 2021; 54aa Dark Horizon, Adela Akers. linen, horsehair and metal, 23″ x 24″, 2016. Photo by Tom Grotta

Akers studied to be a pharmacist in Cuba, but began taking art courses while in Havana. Her family supported her switch to art. She came to the US and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, was weaver-in-residence at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and then taught at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia for 23 years before relocating to coastal California. Her students included Lewis Knauss, John McQueen, and Deborah Warner.

17aa Night Pyramid, Adela Akers, linen, horsehair and metal, 28” x 100”, 1999. Permanent Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Akers’ affinity for math and geometry shaped her artwork. Akers was very attached to using a loom because the process of weaving is linear and mathematical.“ [W]eaving combines structure and order, and offers me the best way to put together my visions,” she observed.  In 1965, Akers traveled to Peru as a weaving adviser to the Alliance for Progress Program and studied early Indian weaving techniques there. Pre-Columbian textiles, especially, appealed to Akers because of their mathematical and geometric properties. Her tapestry forms incorporated the subtle shaping and striping, slits, and tabs that she studied there. Architecture, especially doors which she saw as slites and walls which she saw as weaving, travel, particularly to the sea, Scandinavian weaving, the paintings of Mbuti women and Agnes Martin, and a book called The World From Above by Hanns Reich are among the many other influences Akers cited in her oral interview with Mija Reidel for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

56aa Summer and Winter, Adela Akers, sisal & linen, 54” x 66”, 1977-2015. Photo by Tom Grotta

The artist’s work evolved and advanced throughout her career. In 2015, Ezra Shales noted the sweeping impact of Aker’s ouevre: “This one artist suggests the immensity of pleasures and productive capacities for what fiber art might be and where it might go,” he observed, comparing works from 1977, 1988, and 2014 (Influence and Evolution: Fiber Art … then and now, browngrotta arts, Wilton, CT, 2015). In the 60s, Akers’ works grew larger and incorporated multiple units. In the 70s, she added sisal and jute for greater haptic and structural effects. Work from the 70s and 80s was monochromatic in subdued colors, black, brown, gray, maroon.  By the late 80s and 90s, color had returned along with a unique approach in which she created two views, each of which can only be seen clearly from opposite vantage points. When spliced together and arranged in an accordian shape, the overall images in these works shift as viewed from different angles. After leaving Tyler in 1995, Akers moved from large works of heavy fibers to more delicate materials including horsehair, linen, and recycled metal foil, which she painstakingly wove and stitched into repetitive, optical wall-works, often incorporating painting on their wefts. Shales described this body of work, “From afar, the surface image … is illusionistic and self-referential to the process of interlace, while up close a rhythm of metallic rectangles, quieter incidents that are the wrapping off of wine bottles, keeps the surface lively and unpredictable.”

8aa Compostela, Adela Akers, sisl, linen and wool, 60” x 180” x 6”, 1985. Collection of the Minneapolis Museum of Art

Adela Akers’ mastery has been widely recognized through grants and collections. In 2014, Akers was an Artist in Residence at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA. She was named a Fellow of the American Crafts Council in 2008. Fellowships, awards and grants include: Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2008); Flintridge Foundation Award (2005); Faculty Award for Creative Achievement, Temple University (1995); Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant (1989 and 1983); National Endowment for the Arts Award Individual Artist Fellowship (1980, 1974, 1971, 1969); New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant (1971); and Cintas Foundation Fellowship (1968 and 1967). Her papers are at the Archives of American Art. Her works are found in numerous permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; de Young Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco, California; Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island; Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Sonoma County Museum, California; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. 

Lives well lived: Sandra Grotta

August 30, 2021 0 Comment
Sandra Grotta at her 80th birthday party. Jewelry by David Watkins, Gerd Rothmann and Eva Eisler. Photo by Tom Grotta

browngrotta arts is devasted by the loss of Sandra Grotta, our extraordinary collector and patron and mother and grandmother. Sandy and her husband Lou have been pivotal in the growth of browngrotta arts through their advice and unerring support. Sandy graduated from the University of Michigan and the New York School of Interior Design. For four decades, she provided interior design assistance to dozens of clients — many through more than one home and office. She encouraged them to live with craft art, as she and Lou had done, placing works by Toshiko Takezu, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, Helena Hernmarck, Gyöngy Laky, Markku Kosonen, Mary Merkel-Hess and many other artists in her clients’ homes. Among her greatest design talents was persuading people to de-accession pieces they had inherited, but never loved, to make way for art and furnishings that provided them joy. Sandy was a uniquely confident collector and she shared that conviction with her clients.  

Her own collecting journey began in the late 1950s, when she and Lou first stepped into the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City after a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. “The Museum’s exhibitions, many of whose objects were for sale in its store, caused a case of love at first sight. It quickly became a founding source of many craft purchases to follow,” Sandy told Patricia Malarcher in 1982 (“Crafts,” The New York Times, Patricia Malarcher, October 24, 1982). It was a walnut table ”with heart” on view at MoCC that would irrevocably alter the collectors’ approach. The table was by Joyce and Edgar Anderson, also from New Jersey. The Grottas sought the artists out and commissioned the first of many works commissioned and acquired throughout the artists’ lifetimes, including a roll-top desk, maple server and a sofa-and-table unit that now live in browngrotta arts’ gallery space. She followed the advice she would give to others:  “When we saw the Andersons’ woodwork,” Sandy remembered, “we knew everything else had to go,” Sandy told Glenn Adamson. From the success of that first commission, the Grottas’ art exploration path was set. The Andersons introduced the Grottas to their friends, ceramists Toshiko Takaezu and William Wyman. “The Andersons were our bridge to other major makers in what we believe to have been the golden age of contemporary craft,” Sandy said, “and the impetus to my becoming our decorator.”  

Sandra Grotta in her Maplewood, NJ living room
Sandra Grotta in her Maplewood, NJ living room surrounded by works by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, Peter Vouklos, William Wyman, Toshiko Takaezu, Rudy Autio, Joyce and Edgar Anderson and Charle Loloma. Photo by Tom Grotta

When Objects USA: the Johnson Wax Collection, opened in New York in 1972 at MoCC, by then renamed the American Craft Museum, the Grottas began discovering work further afield. ”Objects USA was my Bible,” Sandy told Malarcher describing how she would search out artists, ceramists, woodworkers and jewelers. A trip to Ariel, Washington, led the Grottas to commission an eight-foot-tall Kwakiutl totem pole for the front hall by Chief Don Lelooska. Sandy ordered a bracelet by Charles Loloma from a picture in a magazine. ”I always got a little nervous when the packages came, but I’ve never been disappointed,” Sandy told Malarcher. ”Craftsmen are a special breed.” Toshiko Takaezu, as an example, would require interested collectors like the Grottas to come by her studio in Princeton, NJ, a few times first to “interview” before she’d permit them to acquire special works. It took 15 years and several studio visits each year for the Grottas to convince the artist to part with the “moon pot” that anchors their formidable Takaezu collection. Jewelers Wendy Ramshaw and David Watkins in the UK also became dear friends as Sandy developed a world-class jewelry collection. At one point, in a relationship that included weekly transatlantic calls, Sandy told Wendy she needed “everyday earrings.” Wendy responded with earrings for every day – seven pairs in fact. “For me, the surprise was that they found me,” says John McQueen. “I lived in Western New York state far from the hubbub of the art world.” McQueen says that he discovered they the Grotta’s were completely open to any new aesthetic experience. “from that moment, we established a strong connection, that has led to a rapport that has continued through the years – a close personal and professional relationship.”

Sandy Grotta's bust by Norma Minkowitz
Norma Minkowitz’s portrait of Sandy Grotta sourounded by artwork’s by Alexander Lichtveld, Bodil Manz, Lenore Tawney, Ann Hollandale, Kay Sekimachi, Ed Rossbach, Toshiko Takaezu, Laurie Hall. Photo by Tom Grotta

Their accumulation of objects has grown to include more that 300 works of art and pieces of jewelry by dozens of artists, and with their Richard Meier home, has been the subject of two books. The most recent, The Grotta Home by Richard Meier: A Marriage of Architecture and Craft, was photographed and designed by Tom Grotta of bga. They don’t consider themselves collectors in the traditional sense, content to exhibit art on just walls and surfaces. Sandy and Lou’s efforts were aimed at creating a home. They filled every aspect of their lives with handcrafted objects from silver- and tableware to teapots to clothing to studio jewelry and commissioned pillows, throws and canes, a direction she also recommended for her interior design clients. The result, writes Glenn Adamson in The Grotta Home,”is a home that is at once totally livable and deeply aesthetic.” Among the additional artists whose work the Grottas acquired for their home were wood worker Thomas Hucker, textile and fiber artists Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney and Norma Minkowitz, ceramists Peter Voulkos, Ken Ferguson and William Wyman and jewelers Gijs Bakker, Giampaolo Babetto, Axel Russmeyer and Eva Eisler. They have traveled to Japan, the UK, Czechoslovakia, Germany and across the US to view art and architecture and meet with artists.

Perhaps their most ambitious commission was the Grotta House, by Richard Meier. Designed to house and highlight craft and completed in 1989, it is a source of constant delight for the couple, with its shifting light, showcased views of woodlands and wildlife and engaging spaces for object installation. The Grottas were far more collaborative clients than is typical for Meier. “From our very first discussions,” Meier has written,”it was clear that their vast collection of craft objects and Sandy’s extensive experience as an interior designer would be an important in the design of the house.“ The sensitivity with which the collection was integrated into Meier’s design produced “an enduring harmony between an ever-changing set of objects and they space they occupy.” The unique synergy between objects and architecture is evident decades later, even as the collection has evolved.  Despite his “distinct — and ornament-free — visual language, Meier created a building that lets decorative objects take a leading role on the architectural stage,” notes Osman Can Yerebakan in Introspective magazine (“Tour a Richard Meier–Designed House That Celebrates American Craft,” Osman Can Yerebakan, Introspective, February 23, 2020). The house project had an unexpected benefit — a professional partnership between Sandy and Grotta House project manager, David Ling, that would result in memorable art exhibition and living spaces designed for the homes and offices of many of Sandy’s design clients.

Sandy and Lou became patrons of the American Craft Museum in 1970s. As a member of the Associates committee she organized several annual fundraisers for the Museum, including Art for the Table, E.A.T. at McDonald’s and Art to Wear, sometimes with her close friend, Jack Lenor Larsen, another assured acquirer, as co-chair. At the openings, she would sport an artist-made piece of jewelry or clothing, sometimes both, and often it was an item that arrived or was finished literally hours before the event. “I wear all my jewelry,” she told Metalsmith Magazine in 1991 (Donald Freundlich and Judith Miller, “The State of Metalsmithing and Jewelry,” Metalsmith Magazine, Fall 1991) “I love to go to a party where everyone is wearing pearls and show up in a wild necklace …. I have a house brooch by Künzli – a big red house that you wear on your shoulder. I can go to a party in a wild paper necklace and feel as good about it as someone else does in diamonds.” Sandy served on the Board of the by-then-renamed Museum of Arts and Design, stepping down in 2019. 

Portrait of Sandy Grotta
Sandra Grotta Portrait in Florida Apartment in front of sculptures by Dawn MacNutt and a tapestry by Jun Tomita

From its inception, Sandy served as a trusted advisor, cheerleader and cherished client to browngrotta arts. She introduced us to artists, to her design clients and Museum colleagues. Questions of aesthetic judgment — are there too many works in this display? too much color? does this work feel unfinished? imitative? decorative? — were presented to her for review. (She was unerring on etiquette disputes, too.) The debt we owe her is enormous; the void she leaves is large indeed. We can only say thank you, we love you and your gifts will live on.

You can learn more about Sandy’s life and legacy on The Grotta House website: https://grottahouse.com and in the book, The Grotta Home by Richard Meier: A Marriage of Architecture and Craft available from browngrotta at: https://store.browngrotta.com/the-grotta-home-by-richard-meier-a-marriage-of-architecture-and-craft/.

The family appreciates memorial contributions to the Sandra and Louis Grotta Foundation, Inc., online at https://joingenerous.com/louis-and-sandra-grotta-foundation-inc-r5yelcd or by mail to The Louis and Sandra Grotta Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 766, New Vernon, NJ 07976-0000.