Category: Paper

Still Crazy After All These Years…30 years in art Preview: Hello Again!

April 6, 2017 0 Comment

For our 30th anniversary exhibition, we’ve invited six artists that had worked with browngrotta arts in previous years. Three; Leon Niehues, John Garrett and Kari Lonning, work in vessel forms. Laura Foster Nicholson and Eva create weavings and Carol Shaw-Sutton sculptural forms of fiber.

Woven Open Neck by Leon Niehues. Photo by Tom Grotta

Leon Niehues, a studio basket maker, creates his vessel forms from the young white oak trees that grow in his immediate area of the Ozarks. While using traditional splint techniques, he has added new construction methods and simple design elements that dramatically change his oak baskets into exciting contemporary pieces. We’ve captured several samples of his designs in a catalog that features his work and that of Mary Merkel-Hess. View them at: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c15.php.

Emerging from Chaos by Kari Lønning. Photo by Tom Grotta

Best known for her double-walled constructions and a complex-weaving process she refers to as her “hairy technique,” Kari Lønning works extensively with graphic patterns, using both bold and subtle color schemes. Lønning’s work is also featured in a browngrotta arts’ exhibition catalog, Mary Giles/Kari Lønning, which can be viewed at http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c11.php.

Age Basket No.4 by John Garrett, recycled metals. Photo by Tom Grotta

A weaver and teacher of experimental basketry, John Garrett’s weaving materials consist of aluminum, steel, brass, or cooper in slat or wire form. Many of his creative pieces are included in the permanent collections of museums nationwide. View samples of his weaving in our catalog, Dorothy Gill Barnes and John Garrett: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c14.php.

Being Here by Laura Foster Nicholson. Photo by Tom Grotta

Laura Foster Nicholson is a textile artist known for her powerful hand-woven tapestries that feature whimsical, engaging imagery. Her artwork is featured in several museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Denver Art Museum, among others. Nicholson was included in the 10th Wave II: New Textile and Fiber Wall Art: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c18.php.

Ist All History by Eva Vargo. Photo by Tom Grotta

Eva Vargö fuses paper and linen-thread materials into her weaving techniques to employ paper craft artwork. Many of her pieces are inspired by her own life experiences and also by integrating the various materials she discovers on her travels across the world. Vargö is from Sweden, but has lived in Korea as well as Japan. Vargo was included in the Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c25.php

White Sound by Carol Shaw-Sutton. Photo by Tom Grotta

A participant in browngrotta arts’ 25 for the 25th: Glancing Back, Gazing Ahead http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c25.php, Carol Shaw-Sutton creates sculptural forms of fiber. Her artwork often consists of personal narrative objects and installations that utilize both ancient and modern textile. Her new work focuses on our inter relationship to each other, which is reflected in images of the human form as organic flowing substance.

Still Crazy After All These Years…30 years in art runs from
April 22nd to 30th at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield, Connecticut. For more information, visit: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php.

Greenery On My Mind; Pantone Color of the Year

January 17, 2017 0 Comment
Pantone Color of the Year Greenery

Pantone Color of the Year Greenery

Pantone has revealed that “greenery” will be the Color of the Year for 2017. Pantone describes “greenery” as “a refreshing and revitalizing shade” that is “symbolic of new beginnings.”
With new beginnings in mind, here, in honor of January — are some green-themed artworks for you to view. Baskets, tapestries and mixed media sculpture–green can inspire works of all sorts, made of materials from glass beads to copper wire to Japanese paper.

Gyöngy Laky

Gyöngy Laky, Proceeding
Photo: M. Lee Fatherree

Rachel Max

Rachel Max, After Haeckel II
Photo by Tom Grotta

Lawrence LaBianca

Lawrence LaBianca, My Fathers Dream
Photo by Tom Grotta

Ed Rossbach

Ed Rossbach, Green with Four Ears
Photo by Tom Grotta

Scott Rothstein

Scott Rothstein, #62
Photo by Tom Grotta

Nancy Koenigsberg

Nancy Koenigsberg, Aurora
Photo by Tom Grotta

Adela Akers

Adela Akers, Five Windows
Photo by Tom Grotta

Debra Sachs

Debra Sachs, Green Armadillo Basket
Photo by Debra Sachs

Deborah Valoma

Deborah Valoma, The Surge
Photo by Tom Grotta

Jeannine Anderson

Jeannine Anderson, Untitled
Photo by tom Grotta

Axel Russmeyer

Axel Russmeyer, Untitled
Photo by Tom Grotta

Noriko Takamiya

Noriko Takamiya, #36 Revolving
Photo by Tom Grotta

Art Assembled: Featured in December

December 27, 2016 0 Comment
Dona Look White Birch Bark Baskets

Dona Look
10dl #10-1, white birch bark and waxed silk thread, sewn with wrapped edge
12.6” x 10” x 10”, 2010
10dl #13-2, woven white birch bark, sewn and wrapped with waxed silk thread
13.75” x 8.5” x 8.5”, 2013
9dl #15-2, white birch bark and waxed silk thread sewn exterior, woven interior and wrapped edge
11.75” x 11.75” x 11.75”, 2015.
Photo by Tom Grotta

Each week of the year at browngrotta.com, we draw attention to a work, a book or a project by one of the artists we represent. Beginning this December, we’ll be providing a monthly round up of these works here on arttextstyle.com. This month on browngrotta.com we featured four very disparate works. First, baskets of white birch by Dona Look, who harvests the bark herself in Wisconsin where she lives. “Look carefully selects bark from large, healthy trees that will soon be logged—evaluating the diameter of each tree and the bark’s thickness, for its unique markings and flexibility,” explains Jane Milosch in “The Entanglement of Nature and Man,” Green from the Get Go: Contemporary International Basketmakers (browngrotta arts, Wilton, CT 2016). “Collecting and preparing the bark is painstaking and must be done in the spring when the sap is running. Unfortunately, her work has become increasingly difficult of late as not all of the trees are in a natural cycle, and some are dying due to climate change, such as white birch trees, once prevalent in northern Wisconsin forests.” The simple geometric patterns of some of her works, writes Milosch, “recall the patterns of Native American parfleche pouches, which were a kind of geographical depictions of the surrounding land, at the same time her basket preserves the radiant splendor of birch.”

steel weaving by Kyoko Kumai

31kk Kyoko Kumai, Sen Man Na Yu Ta, stainless steel filaments, 44″ x 38″ x 7.75″, 2016. Photo by Tom Grotta

A strikingly different sensibility is evident in Sen Man Na Yu Ta, Kyoko Kumai’s wall sculpture of stainless steel. The steel filaments, mass-produced in a factory, are inorganic and monotonous by themselves, but when they are woven, twisted or bundled together they take on an organic appearance that serves to express various aspects of wind, air and light.

Glass and paper boat

32jb Glass Boat, Jane Balsgaard, plantpaper, twigs and glass, 14″ x 13″ x 1.5″ 2015. Photo by Tom Grotta

Our third choice, Jane Balsgaard’s Glass Boat, deftly blends a sail of lightly processed handmade paper and a hull of glossy glass. Finally, in Process Piece, Ed Rossbach takes on construction, deconstruction and reconstruction in one work. First, he printed an image onto fabric, then he unraveled the fabric and finally re-constructed it into a new version. “I thought he was crazy,” his wife, artist Katherine Westphal told us.
The four works create a fine sentiment for 2017: Seek the splendid, airy, shiny and light; be willing to re-envision and remake.

Ed Rossbach Weaving

159r Process Piece, Ed Rossbach, 15″ x 15″ x 2.5″, 1981. Photo by Tom Grotta

Art: Antidote to an Edgy Election

November 13, 2016 0 Comment

No matter on what side of the political divide you sit, it’s been a long 16 months. And for some of us, the next 16 months will likely feel even longer. In our house we’re hunkering down – old movies, dinners with friends, letter writing and getting to all those to dos, like organizing our art books – and a news ban, at least for the next few weeks. We’re also aiming for an art fix. We are going out in search of what’s inspired, exhilarating, thought provoking. The markets are holding steady; why not invest in art? Surround yourself with what brings you joy. Here are four works that brought us feelings of peace, gratitude, tolerance and awe.

Lenore Tawney, The Path, Tapestry

Lenore Tawney, The Path, Tapestry. Photo Tom Grotta

Lenore Tawney’s The Path II, is meditative and reflective of a passage she marked in a favorite book: “[t]he spiritual path, the path of purification, of emancipation, of liberation, is a path where we change our inner nature.”

37ts Vertical to Horizontal and Vice Versa, Toshio Sekiji. Photo by Tom Grotta

37ts Vertical to Horizontal and Vice Versa, Toshio Sekiji. Photo by Tom Grotta

yagi

Mariyo Yagi, Nawa Axis for Peace Project 2014

In his “fugue weavings” like Vertical to Horizontal and Vice Versa, Toshio Sekiji, imagines a harmonious confluence of disparate cultures, languages and nationalities, so different than the facts on the ground. Mariyo Yagi’s art is infused with concern about the Cosmos. “Art is committed to the energy of human life,” she says. In creating her sculptures she has been informed by the study of nawa –– which means a spiral cord, which for Yagi provides a link between earth and heaven and all living things, creating a spiritual loop from DNA to the cosmos. Enlightening and innovative, Anda Klancic’s work combines creative use of machine-embroidered lace technique with experience from other disciplines, including photography. In Aura, Klancic says, “I wanted to show the vital energy in the human species: that the light, connected from man to the earth and the universe, has the rhythm of breath, of life.”

Anda Klancic FiberOptic, textile sculpture

Anda Klancic FiberOptic, textile sculpture

Have you other works to recommend? Let us know.

SOFA Chicago Sneak Peek: Jennifer Falck Linssen – Work, a Panel and an Artist Q&A

October 29, 2016 0 Comment
Jennifer Falck Linssen

13jl Undone, Jennifer Falck Linssen
Katagami-style handcarved paper and metal, archival cotton paper, aluminum paint, waxed linen and varnish, 25″ x 27.5″ x 9″, 2014. Photo by Tom Grotta

This November, browngrotta arts will feature Jennifer Falck Linssen’s work in its Booth 921 at SOFA Chicago (November 3-6). The foundation of Linssen’s work lies in the ancient Japanese paper and textile traditions of katagami, stencil cutting, and katazome, a resist-print dyeing technique. Her artwork recontextulaizes the stencil, combining the paper carving with more traditional metal-smithing and basketry techniques to create contemporary sculptures that transform the two-dimensional stencil into a unique three-dimensional art form. In her work, Linssen seeks to understand how pattern lends overall strength to an object, and how light itself can be molded and shaped to conceptually express moments which embrace nature’s change, rebirth, resiliency, and endurance. Linssen will attend SOFA Chicago and participate in a CHUBB-sponsored panel, Art in the Future: A Look at Collecting Fragile and Unusual Materials, 2:30 to 3:30 pm in Room A, Friday November 4th, to discuss how collectors should approach art involving innovative techniques and non-traditional materials. At 5 pm on Friday, the 4th, Linssen will be at browngrotta arts booth 921 for an Artist Q&A. For more information, visit: http://www.sofaexpo.com.

SOFA Chicago Sneak Peek: Norma Minkowitz

October 23, 2016 0 Comment

The Gathering, a Lecture and an Artist Q&A

Minkowitz installation

The Gathering and Patterns of Flight, Norma Minkowitz, mixed media, 2016, photo by Tom Grotta

Next month, browngrotta arts will present an eye-catching installation from Norma Minkowitz‘ series, The Gathering in it Booth 921 at SOFA Chicago (November 3-6). Minkowitz is known for intricate pen-and-ink drawings, collages, crocheted wall works and three-dimensional mixed media sculptures. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (where t s currently on display in the exhibition, SHE: Images of Female Power from the Permanent Collection, through April 2, 2017). The Gathering at SOFA will combine three-dimensional, life-sized birds, rendered in stiffened, crocheted linen, and gut with pen-and-inked detail with meticulously stitched drawings of bird flight, captured at high speed.

Patterns of light Detail

Patterns of light Detail

The artist’s new multimedia work, Are We the Same?, will also be on view in one of SOFA’s public spaces. Minkowitz will attend the opening of SOFA on Thursday evening and will speak about her work as one of three artists in the panel, Fiber Art in Three Dimensions: A History and Discussion of Fiber Art Off the Wall at 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., Lecture Room B on Friday November 4th at the Navy Pier. At 2 p.m., on Friday, Minkowitz will be at browngrotta arts Booth 921 for an Artist Q&A. For more information, visit: http://www.sofaexpo.com.

 

Art Events: Birds on the Brain in New York and Massachusetts

June 6, 2016 0 Comment
Minkowitz Bird Stitch Drawing

61nm Patterns of Flight II, Norma Minkowitz, stitched, drawn, collage, pen and ink on paper, 20 x 14.75″, 2015

Perhaps it’s in the air —  or are three avian-themed art exhibitions in one season a mere coincidence? In any event, there are three very different takes on a popular theme for viewers to sample. At the Shirley Fiterman Art Center, 81 Barclay Street, New York, NY, 10007 is The Conference of the Birds, curated by painter Brenda Zlamany. The Conference of the Birds, is based on a poem composed in the 12th century by the Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar, about an epic, mystical quest narrative in which hundreds of birds embark on a perilous journey in search of a king called the Simurgh, who can right the wrongs in their world. Attar’s poem can be seen as a metaphor for the often perilous journey of self-discovery that artists face. This metaphor and the rich imagery of birds in the poem are the gravitational glue that brings together a diverse group of works for this exhibition, which features 36 artists. Among those included are Lesley Dill and Norma Minkowitz, who is exhibiting works from her new Patterns of Flight Series, which combines detailed drawings, collage and stitching. The Gallery, located at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m. For more information, go to: http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/sfac/.

Birds Norma Minkowitz

The Gathering by Norma Minkowitz
mixed media, 2016

At the Katonah Museum of Art through June 19th, is theThe Nest, an exhibition of art in nature, which provides an unexpected lens through which to observe the fascinating parallels between human and animal behavior, raising timely questions about the survival of birds and their habitats in our increasingly fragile ecological world The Katonah Museum of Art is at 134 Jay Street/Route 22, Katonah, New York, and is closed on Mondays http://www.katonahmuseum.org/exhibitions/TheNest/. Baby Birds: An Artist Looks into the Nest is at Mass Audubon in Lincoln, Massachusetts now through September 18th. The featured artist, Julie Zickefoose, is an author, artist and naturalist in addition to being a wildlife rehabilitator. She works in a variety of mediums, though primarily watercolors, leaving the viewer with the sense that connectivity is important to all of us. Also on exhibit at Mass Audubon is Classic American Bird Carving: An Introduction. The Museum is located on a 121-acre wildlife sanctuary and has a collection of engravings and lithographs by John James Audubon and related works by many other artists including sculptor Larry Barth, Charly Harper and 100 prints from his Endangered Species series that were donated by Andy Warhol. The Museum of American Bird Art is at 963 Washington Street, Canton, MA 02021;781-821-8853; http://www.massaudubon.org/learn/museum-of-american-bird-art/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/baby-birds-an-artist-looks-into-the-nest-watercolors-by-julie-zickefoose.

Art in the Barn 2016: Artboom: Celebrating Artists Mid-Century, Mid-Career, Wilton, CT, April 30th – May 8th

April 19, 2016 0 Comment
photo includes work by Merja Winqvist, Jiro Yonezawa and Włodzimierz Cygan

photo includes work by Merja Winqvist, Jiro Yonezawa and Włodzimierz Cygan

In less than two weeks, browngrotta will open its 2016 Art in the Barn exhibition, Artboom: Celebrating Artists Mid-Century, Mid Career. This year’s exhibition brings together “baby boomers,” 33 artists born between 1946 and 1964, who are mid-way into their lives of making art. We’ve asked them to provide us work that is reflective; work that tells us where they’ve come from or where they hope to go; work that illustrates influences, roads not taken, and the like. Or, work that reflects on being a boomer, perhaps— part of the wealthiest, most active, and most physically fit generation up to that time and the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve. It was a generation that created music and literature in the 60s and art — including fiber art — to describe the change this generation was determined to bring about.

14cg The Iron Curtain, Ceca Georgieva, Burrdoch burrs,19" x 16" x 5", 2016

14cg The Iron Curtain, Ceca Georgieva, Burrdoch burrs,19″ x 16″ x 5″, 2016

The results are contemplative and thought provoking. Ceca Georgieva’s sculpture, The Iron Curtain, reflects her life in a Communist and post-Communist state. Karyl Sisson’s In Stitches, harkens back to her family’s past in New York’s Fashion industry — her grandmother made hats and beaded bags in New York’s lower East side; her mother spent 25 years as a buyer for the specialty store Bonwit Teller. For Lewis Knauss, this stage of his career means seeing unrealized ideas (sketches, notes, photos) and failed work in a new light. “I am happier with chaos,” he says, “the way I need to give up a bit more control of the outcome, flaws and in nature, the beauty of disaster. I guess it is acknowledging the approaching wall. I enjoy working at my pace rather than a deadline enforced one, allowing things to just happen, evaluating the outcomes as I finish each work. Keeping and discarding.” The Artist’s Opening for Artboom: Celebrating Artists Mid-Century, Mid-Career is Saturday, April 30th from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. The hours of the exhibition from May 1st through May 8th are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. — just call if you’d like to come by earlier or later: 203.834.0623. browngrotta arts’ contemporized 1895 barn is at 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897. For more information and a complete list of artists visit browngrotta.com: http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php. A catalog, Artboom: Celebrating Artists Mid-Century, Mid-Career will be available from browngrotta.com after May 1st.

pictured works by: Birgit Birkkjaer; Grethe Sorensen; Grethe Wittrock; Gudrun Pagter; Mary Merkel-Hess; Tom grotta; browngrotta arts

pictured works by: Birgit Birkkjaer; Grethe Sorensen; Grethe Wittrock; Gudrun Pagter; Mary Merkel-Hess; Tom grotta; browngrotta arts

art on paper preview: Chris Drury’s Double Echo

March 2, 2016 0 Comment
Double Echo Chris Drury Inkjet print with UV coating 54.25" x 46.25" x 2.75", 2007 Edition 2/4 Echogram/ Echocardioagram (edition of 4)

Double Echo, Chris Drury, Inkjet print with UV coating, 54.25″ x 46.25″ x 2.75″, 2007, Echogram, Echocardiogram, (edition of 4). Photo by Tom Grotta

We are heading to New York City tomorrow to set up for art on paper at Pier 36. Among the works we’ll be exhibiting is Chris Drury’s Double Echo, an inkjet print that merges a human echocardiogram and and echogram of Antartica, accompanied by the actual echocardiogram and the echogram on wooden spools. In 2006 and 2007, Drury spent more than two months with the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica as artist-in-residence. The scientists there were looking at what they stood upon but could not see – the structure of the ice and underlying land formation. In parts of Antarctica the ice is four kilometers deep 900,000 years old – as old as our earliest ancestors. One of the scientists, Hugh Corr, described the remarkable images that result as like a “heartbeat of the Earth.” The fragment of an echogram in Double Echo is from Flight W34 over East Antarctica – a long cross-section of the ice beneath the flight, made by radar pulses sent down though the ice and back up into a computer in the aircraft. The echocardiogram is of the pilot’s heartbeat, superimposed over the top. An echocardiogram is very similar in technology to an echogram although it uses ultrasound rather than radar.

DSC_6185

Double Echo, Chris Drury, Detail, Photo by Tom Grotta

For some time, Drury has been looking at systems in the body and on the planet, particularly systems of blood flow in the heart. He was invited by the heart surgeon, Mark Dancy, to make a blood flow courtyard (Echoes of the Heart) at Central Middlesex Hospital, adjoining the Cardiac ward. It was Dancy’s department that agreed to do an echocardiogram on the pilot who flew those echogram flights in Antarctica and so enabled Drury to make the work Double Echo. A print from that series hangs on the walls of that particular ward. The hours of the exhibition are Friday, March 4th and Saturday, March 5th, 11 – 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 6th, 12 – 6 p.m. There is a Preview, benefiting the Brooklyn Museum, Thursday, March 3rd, from 6 – 10 p.m. For ticket and other information visit: http://thepaperfair.com/ny/for-visitors/fair-dates-hours-location/.

art on paper preview: Helena Hernmarck collages

February 25, 2016 0 Comment
Helena Hernmarck Collages, from her stamp and Documents Series

Helena Hernmarck Collages, from her Stamp and Documents Series. photo by Tom Grotta

The art on paper fair opens next Wednesday at Pier 36 in New York City.  At browngrotta arts,  Booth 123, we’ll be featuring collages by Helena Hernmarck that meld ink watercolor wash, photocopy and rubber-stamp. Hernmarck creates the collages as studies for potential tapestries, for which she is known in the US and abroad, but like the tapestries, the delicately color-washed collages succeed on their own terms. Stamp

7hh Stamp Series 1, Helena Hernmarck, collage: photocopy; watercolor and rubber stamps on paper; white lacquered wood, 15.75" x 13.25”, 1984

7hh Stamp Series 1, Helena Hernmarck, collage: photocopy; watercolor and rubber stamps on paper; white lacquered wood, 15.75″ x 13.25”, 1984 Photo by Tom Grotta

Series 1, for example, was completed in 1985 as a tapestry  and is in the collection of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Certified Mail, was also woven in 1985. This work is in the permanent collection the Röhss Museum of Design and Decorative Arts, Gothenburg, Sweden. The hours of the exhibition are Friday, March 4th and  Saturday, March 5th, 11 – 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 6th, 12 – 6 p.m. There is a Preview, benefiting the Brooklyn Museum, Thursday, March 3rd, from 6 – 10 p.m. For ticket and other information visit: http://thepaperfair.com/ny/for-visitors/fair-dates-hours-location/.

13hh STAMP SERIES 3, Helena Hernmarck, collage: photocopy, watercolor and rubber stamps on paper, 15.75" x 13.25" x 1.5", white lacquered wood frame with den glass, 1984. Photo by Tom Grotta

13hh STAMP SERIES 3, Helena Hernmarck, collage: photocopy, watercolor and rubber stamps on paper, 15.75″ x 13.25″ x 1.5″, white lacquered wood frame with den glass, 1984. Photo by Tom Grotta