Category: Sculpture

Congratulations! Mary Giles is a Renwick Gallery Master of the Medium

April 7, 2013 0 Comment
Mary Giles details by Tom Grotta and Don Casper

Mary Giles details by Tom Grotta and Don Casper

Today, Mary Giles will receive the 2013 Master of the Medium award for fiber from the James Renwick Alliance and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. The Masters of the Medium award recognizes artists of consummate craftsmanship who have contributed to and influenced their chosen fields. The Masters of the Medium awards were initiated in 1997 on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the James Renwick Alliance and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Renwick Gallery. The Masters of the Medium Awards are given biennially in odd numbered years.

Mary Giles resides in St. Croix, Minnesota. She creates mixed-media coiled baskets that are sculptural in nature, totems and three-dimensional wall works. Giles’ recently created a 53-inch “boulder,” The Long Divide, of hammered waxed linen, torched tin-coated copper and brass.

The Long Divide by Mary Giles, photo by Don Casper

The Long Divide by Mary Giles, photo by Don Casper

Her 2012 work,Twist, has been added to the American Decorative Arts collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.

Sentry Field by Mary giles, photo by Tom Grotta

Sentry Field by Mary giles, photo by Tom Grotta

The sculptural piece was made of waxed linen, iron twists, hammered tin and coated copper wire. Giles’ work is in several other museum collections, including that of the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Minnesota, Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin, Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York. She has said of her work, “Today, I am very concerned about the environment and try to capture the forms, textures and light found in nature” and that she is influenced by the views out of her studio windows, “the light on the river, shadows in the woods, and the textures of the water, rocks and trees.”

In Honor of Asia Week: Eight More Japanese Artists

March 23, 2013 0 Comment

Among the museum offerings in Asia Week New York 2013 is the Guggenheim’s No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, through May 22nd.The first exhibition in the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative features work by 22 artists and collectives representing some of the most compelling and innovative voices in South and Southeast Asia today. No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia revokes national borders as limits to understanding, revealing in their place networks of influence and resistance. It will be followed by art from Latin America and the Middle East. At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue (at 89th Street), New York, New York. And, as our last tribute to Asia Week, the work of eight more artists from Japan — basketmakers, weavers and a ceramist.

Revolving Gaps Between 03 by Noriko Takamiya, photo by Tom Grotta

Revolving Gaps Between 03 by Noriko Takamiya, photo by Tom Grotta

Norkiko Takamiya (Japan)

Four Squares by Chiyoko Tanaka, photo by Tom grotta

Four Squares by Chiyoko Tanaka, photo by Tom grotta

Chiyoko Tanaka (Japan)

Vanishing: Emerging 1, 3 & 4 by Hideho Tanaka, photo by Tom Grotta

Vanishing: Emerging 1, 3 & 4 by Hideho Tanaka, photo by Tom Grotta

Hideho Tanaka (Japan)

A Harden Nest by Takaaki Tanaka, photo by Tom Grotta

A Harden Nest by Takaaki Tanaka, photo by Tom Grotta

Takaaki Tanaka (Japan)

Imyo by Tsuruko Tanikawa, photo by Tom Grotta

Imyo by Tsuruko Tanikawa, photo by Tom Grotta

Tsuruko Tanikawa (Japan)

Kasuri Panels by Jun Tomita, photo by Tom Grotta

Kasuri Panels by Jun Tomita, photo by Tom Grotta

Jun Tomita (Japan)

Untitled by Jiro Yonezawa, photo by Tom Grotta

Untitled by Jiro Yonezawa, photo by Tom Grotta

Jiro Yonezawa (Japan)

Kuu 410 and 441 by Masako Yoshida, photo by Tom Grotta

Kuu 410 and 441 by Masako Yoshida, photo by Tom Grotta

Masako Yoshida (Japan)

In Honor of Asia Week: Three Artists from Korea

March 18, 2013 0 Comment

If you are planning to tour Asia Week New York 2013, there are a wide range of exhibitions, workshops and lectures to choose from. A complete list can be accessed here: http://www.asiaweekny.com/sites/asiaweekny/files/AWNY2013-Guide.pdf. Among the activities that interest us are Chunghie Lee’s exhibition and workshop, Bojagi: Cloth, Color & Beyond by Chunghie Lee, through May 31st, and Wedding Bojagi Workshop, Friday the15th and Saturday the 16th, both at the Korea Society, 950 Third Ave., 8th Floor, New York, New York, 10022;  and Seven Sages of Ceramics: Modern Japanese Masters at Joan B. Mirviss Ltd. through April 26th, 39 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075;. For those touring chairside, enjoy these works by three accomplished artists from Korea.

One Evening by Young-Ok Shin, photo by Tom Grotta

One Evening by Young-Ok Shin, photo by Tom Grotta

Young-ok Shin (Korea)

Steel Mesh Untitled by Jin Sook So, photo by Tom Grotta

Steel Mesh Untitled by Jin Sook So, photo by Tom Grotta

Jin-Sook So (Korea/Sweden)

Matrix II-201011 by Chang Yeonsoon, photo by Tom Grotta

Matrix II-201011 by Chang Yeonsoon, photo by Tom Grotta

Chang Yeonsoon (Korea)

Against the Grain: Randy Walker’s Dream Elevator and Other News

January 22, 2013 0 Comment

 

photo by Randy Walker

photo by Randy Walker

December 2012 saw completion of Dream Elevator by Randy Walker for the City of St. Louis Park, Minnesota.  The structure is a 45-foot tall stainless-steel-and-concrete tower woven with custom-braided polyester rope.  The sculpture is inspired by the nearby Peavey-Haglin Grain Elevator of 1899, the first cylindrical concrete grain elevator in the world.

photo by Randy Walker

photo by Randy Walker

The dedication date of Dream Elevator is as yet undetermined. This year and next, Walker will be at work on at least four public commissions. First,  a permanent outdoor work, Sky Portal, for the Anderson Abruzzo International Balloon Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which will be visible from the sky as well as the ground. Second, Entanglement, in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Walker will use an existing bell tower as a framework for a fibrous wrapping.

photo by Randy Walker

photo by Randy Walker

Third, a temporary, site-specific installation will be built at the two main cargo shipping terminals in San Diego, California that will be part of WRAP: an artistic investigation of the San Diego Tidelands. Finally, Walker will work with his South Minneapolis community to create a large-scale, collaborative installation for which Walker received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant.

This Month’s Don’t Miss Exhibitions

January 13, 2013 0 Comment

through January 20, 2013
High Fiber: Recent Large Scale Acquisitions in Fiber
Racine Art Museum
Racine, Wisconsin

Ahnen Galerie by Françoise Grossen

Ahnen Galerie by Françoise Grossen

High Fiber transforms RAM’s largest gallery space with larger-than-life size sculpture by significant contemporary artists who have established reputations working with fibers such as fabric, metal wire, and cedar. Created with techniques like weaving and knotting––and touching on a variety of subjects including metaphysics, the human condition, and the natural world––the works featured in this exhibition delight the eye and engage the mind. The artists whose work is included are: Nancy Hemenway Barton, Carol Eckert, Françoise Grossen, Jan Hopkins, Michael James, Ruth Lee Kao, Nancy Koenigsberg, Gyöngy Laky, Rebecca Medel, Linda Kelly Osborne, Barbara Lee Smith, Jean Stamsta, Merle Temkin, Dawn Walden and Claire Zeisler. For more information, call: 262.638.8300 or visit: http://www.ramart.org/sites/default/files/userfiles/exhibitions/2012/HighFiber/High Fiber Notes.pdf.

opened January 12th
Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers
Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, Visitor Center GalleryGrosse Pointe, Michigan

FordEdsal.Install.1

Green from the Get Go: Contemporary International Basketmakers installation at the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, photo by tom grotta

Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers, curated by browngrotta arts and Jane Milosch, former curator of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, opens at the Visitor Center Gallery of the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and runs through March 9th. The Edsel & Eleanor Ford House is at 110 Lake Shore Road, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 48236. Hours are 11 a.m to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. For more information call: 313.884.4222 or visit: http://www.fordhouse.org/calendar.html?month=&year=&cat=&cid=8691.

opened January 12th
Aleksandra (Sasha) Stoyanov: Warp and Weft Painting
Tefen Open Museum
P.O.B. 1
Migdal Tefen, Israel 24959
Art Gallery: 04-9109613; Visitors Department: 04-9872022; 04-9109609

AleksandraStoyanov.TefenOpen.Installation

Aleksandra Stoyanov Tefen Open Museum Installation, photo courtesy of the Tefen Open Museum

The Tefen Open Museum exhibition features a large grouping of Stoyanov’s painterly weavings, whose subjects feel like dream fragments or half-forgotten memories. There is a catalog for the exhibition, which is open through August 2013, http://store.browngrotta.com/aleksandra-sasha-stoyanov-warp-and-weft-painting/. It features an essay by Davira Taragin and will be available through browngrotta arts. Stoyanov’s work, From the First Person – Number II, has recently been added to the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
opening January 17th
Lenore Tawney: Wholly Unlooked For
University of the Arts
Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Book of Foot by Lenore Tawney, photo by Tom Grotta

Book of Foot by Lenore Tawney, photo by Tom Grotta

The University of the Arts presents an exhibition by late artist Lenore Tawney (1907–2007), a leading figure in the contemporary fiber arts movement. Presented in conjunction with the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, the exhibition, which runs through March 2nd, will feature her paper-focused pieces. For more information, visit: http://www.uarts.edu/.The Maryland Institute College of Art, Tawney’s alma mater, is hosting a complementary exhibition, http://www.mica.edu/News/Multi-Venue_Exhibition_Honors_Legendary_Fiber_Artist_Lenore_Tawney_H92_(1907–2007)_This_Winter_.html under the same, title featuring her line-based objects.

Opening Reception: January 24, 5 – 7:30 p.m.
University of the Arts
Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Panel Discussion: January 24, 2 – 4 p.m.
The Legacy of Lenore Tawney
University of the Arts
CBS Auditorium, Hamilton Hall
Panelists: Jack Lenor Larsen: dean of Modern Textile Design, founder of LongHouse, Honory Doctorate, University of the Arts; Kathleen Nugent Mangan: director of the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation; Dr. Suzanne Hudson: assistant professor, University of Southern California; Warren Seelig: artist, distinguished visiting professor, University of the Arts; Moderator: Sid Sachs: director of exhibitions, University of the Arts.

opening January 22nd
MFA Book Arts and Crafts/Fibers Exhibition
Gallery 224 & President’s Office
University of the Arts
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
This exhibit features work by University of the Arts students in the MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking and Crafts/Fibers programs, who have each created a piece in response to Lenore Tawney’s work. The students researched an extraordinary collection of objects from the Lenore Tawney Foundation, including old books and parts of old books, wood containers, small bottles and thread, which they incorporated and used as inspiration for their exhibition pieces. The exhibition runs through February 8th. For more information, visit: http://www.uarts.edu/.

Looking Forward/Looking Back: Françoise Grossen

December 3, 2012 0 Comment

Earlier this year, Françoise Grossen sent bga these congratulations on our 25th anniversary. Grossen’s remarkable contributions to the field predate ours. In 1972, her work was featured in, “Rope Art: A new form fit to be tied,” in Life Magazine in an article on the exhibition Deliberate Entanglements. “Françoise Grossen, a Swiss better at knotting than entomology, concocted a 20-foot Inch Worm” the magazine wrote. “Some viewers at New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts thought it moved.” (Life Magazine, December 1, 1972, pp.86-90). This year, Grosssen’s work, Ahnen Galerie, 10 braided bundles of dyed manila rope with appendages, 13 x 116 x 92 inches, was acquired by the Racine Art Museum. Ahnen Galerie is now on display in High Fiber: Recent Large-Scale Acquisitions in Fiber, http://www.ramart.org/content/high-fiber-recent-large-scale-acquisitions-fiber, at the Racine Museum of Art through January 20, 2013.

November 26th: Our Online Exhibition Opens With an Offer for CyberMonday

November 26, 2012 0 Comment

On Monday, November 26th, browngrotta arts will present an online version of our 25th anniversary exhibition,Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture at browngrotta.com. The comprehensive exhibition highlights browngrotta arts’ 25 years promoting international contemporary art. Viewers can click on any image in the online exhibition to reach a page with more information about the artists and their work.

“Some works in Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture reflect the early days of contemporary textile art and sculpture movement,” says Tom Grotta, founder and co-curator at browngrotta arts. “There are also current works by both established and emerging artists, which provide an indication of where the movement is now and where it may be headed.”

Since Monday the 26th is CyberMonday this year, sales of art, books, catalogs, videos or dvds placed online or by telephone that day will be discounted 10% (excluding tax and shipping). In addition, bga will make a donation to the International Child Art Foundation for each sale made from November 24th through December 31, 2012. Visit browngrotta.com. For more information call Tom at 203.834.0623 or email us at art@browngrotta.com.

Looking Forward/Looking Back: Randy Walker

November 12, 2012 0 Comment

Woven Corncrib Copyright Randy Walker 2008

Ten years ago, I wound a spool of thread around a bent-up steel tomato cage for no reason at all. The idea of using thread to make art never entered my mind. I was just playing.

Trained as an architect, I thought in terms of solid things made from serious materials like concrete, glass, wood and steel. I had no affinity for textiles of any kind. Thread was soft, formless and barely visible. It also came in colors, which any sophisticated architect would be suspicious of. Furthermore, I found it difficult to handle, and I was surely not using it for what it was intended.

As I continued to wrap the deformed metal frame, a surface began to emerge. Not a solid surface, but an intricate, transparent one that allowed the entire volume of the cylindrical shape to be seen at once. As the lines of thread multiplied, their color intensified and light played off them. It was magical. I realized that textiles were none other than surfaces like the one I was making, only more solid. I became fascinated with the idea of an in-between surface, neither solid nor completely transparent.

6rw Skimmer, Randy Walker, old cheese curd skimmer, nylon thread, steel base, 67.5″ x 21.5″ x 15.25″, 2008

Pleased with my three-dimensional creation, I went to the sewing store and bought an entire shelf of this thread. I searched for other things to wrap and found saw blades and kitchen sieves, a badminton racquet, scythes, and all manner of rusty implements to be ideal for my fibrous interventions. With each framework, I had to invent a way of adapting the fiber, and it was unknown and exciting territory.

I eventually discovered the work of Naomi and Masakazu Kobayashi, and from there browngrotta arts. I realized that browngrotta represented a small yet international community of artists that were pushing the traditional boundaries of textile arts. It was a place where art, craft, sculpture and architecture merged, unbounded by narrowly defined categories.

Randy Walker Skimmer detail

Over the years, I have continued to search for objects and spaces for my artistic investigations in thread. My explorations have led me to investigate the possibilities of fiber as a workable medium in architectural settings. At this large, public scale, I have used found objects and spaces that include an abandoned corncrib, concrete grain elevator, a historic wrought iron bridge and urban water fountains. Using fiber in the public realm challenges accepted notions of permanence and process traditionally associated with public art. I find that I must invest time not only in my art making, but in the research and development of fiber technology. On a more philosophical level, fiber has caused me to reflect deeply on what I am trying to do as an artist, and where my work is taking me.

Most of the time I am up to these challenges, but I have set out on a lonely and meandering artistic path. browngrotta is for me a beacon. I have only to look through these artists’ work to remind me of the unlimited and largely unexplored potential of this medium.

Randy Walker
November 2012

Looking Forward/Looking Back: Tamiko Kawata

November 6, 2012 0 Comment

Tamiko Kawata installations

Safety pin has been my primary medium for some time.  It functions variously as thread, yarn, clay or truss in my work process.  Safety pins entered my life soon after I arrived from Japan, out of the necessity to shorten the all-too long American clothing.

In the beginning, I made simple flat pieces, finding ways to interlock the pins as if weaving.  Each piece was an experiment and each piece took me to another unexpected stage.  Slowly and naturally I found constructing systems as I went along, using only the inherent structural properties of the pins, and I can now create from anything from drawing-like works to three-dimensional self-standing works and jewelry forms.

In 1999, I was given the opportunity to install these works outdoors.  It is a challenging and exciting practice, to expose this very domestic, usually hidden thing,  to the open, rough environment of nature, where it must face all kinds of weather and is susceptible to damage and decay.  Working outdoors gives me another angle to express my concept.

White City Detail by Tamiko Kawata, photo by Tom Grotta

I like to use materials suitable for expressing my belief in respect for common people and small lives, and things that reflect my feelings toward the American life that I have happily adopted.  The impact of the differences between these two countries, in the lifestyles and the philosophies is so great that it still preoccupies my mind, even though I have lived longer here than I lived in Japan.  Unconsciously, I continually connect two cultures.

I like to interweave these thoughts through my works… it is my diary in visual form.

Tamiko Kawata

September 2012

Hot off the Press: Our Largest Catalog Yet

October 24, 2012 0 Comment

The catalog for Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture is an ambitious venture for us. Currently weighing in at 182 pages, it features a timeline of art textile events from the 40s to the present, including the Lausanne Biennials (1962 to 1995), Fiber/Revolution in Milwaukee in 1986, Beyond Weaving in Greenwich, Connecticut in 2006, and key dates for fiber pioneers like Dorothy Liebes, Lenore Tawney, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Ed Rossbach. The catalog also includes two essays, one by designer Jo Ann Stabb, formerly on the design faculty at the University of California, Davis, on the emergence of contemporary textiles and fiber arts, the other by Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture at the UK’s University of the Creative Arts, on recent developments in the field and what’s ahead. The catalog will be available in our online bookstore at  http://browngrotta.com/Pages/c37.php for $55.00, plus shipping and  sales tax where applicable.