Category: SOFA

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Norma Minkowitz

April 7, 2012 0 Comment

COMPOUND Detail by Norma Minkowitz, photo by Tom Grotta

 

Norma Minkowitz is one of the 25 artists whose work browngrotta arts will highlight at SOFA NY. Among the works by Minkowitz  that will be displayed is Compound, which illustrates the capture of Osama Bin Laden. Her inspiration for the piece was unexpected, she explains.

45nm Compound, Norma Minkowitz, mixed media, 70″€ x 54.75″€ x 1.5″€, 2011, photo by Tom Grotta

“I was already working on a wall piece, starting in a spontaneous, unplanned manner 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 Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan that I had recently read about and viewed in a newspaper article. The aerial view of the compound became both a replica of the actual space as well as an imaginary vision that I had.” Minkowitz is a National Endowment of the Arts grant recipient, a Fellow of the American Craft Council and a James Renwick Alliance Master of the Medium. The Alliance describes her as a sculptor, who ” has transformed the traditionally feminine art of crochet into a medium for figurative sculpture. The transparent openness of the crochet allows her to draw in three dimensions to reflect the psychological ideas beneath the surface.” Minkowitz’ work is included in numerous permanaent museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: John McQueen

April 6, 2012 0 Comment

KNOT ANATOMY Detail, John McQueen, photo by Tom Grotta

At SOFA NY, browngrotta arts will  show the work of American artist, John McQueen. The sculptor began exploring abstracted basketforms of natural materials in the 70s. Each of his pieces, is complete in its expression, Elizabeth Broun, then-direcor of the of the National Museum of Art has written “[T]aken together, they constitute a new language capable of telling our most intimate concerns….His genius lies in finding a simple declarative means of speaking about paradox, excesses, and fundamental truth. Today, when abstraction is often found insufficient to our needs, McQueen proves again that abstract form can contain our deepest thoughts.” ( From John McQueen: The Language of Containment, Renwick Gallery of the National Musuem of American Art, 1992, p. 7.) McQueen has received National Endowment for the Arts fellowships  in 1977, 1979 and 1986 and is a Fellow of the American Craft Council. His work is included in a number of permanent museum collections including the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, New York; Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan;

14jm KNOT ANATOMY, John McQueen, bark tied with string, 13″ x 25″ x 18″, 2012, photo by Tom Grotta

National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim, Norway; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina; Museum of Arts & Design, New York, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin; Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington; and the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut. McQueen creates basket and vessel formsand wall works from materials that he finds near his rural New York State farm, including twigs, bark, flowers, weeds, and vines—anything that comes from the earth.  In other sculptures, he “draws” with sticks, creating three-dimensional letters, books and other forms. Of trees, so significant in many of his works, McQueen has written: When I go to the woods I know I am not a tree…I go to the trees knowing their names…Trees do not know their names…I undo their dimensional reality…I put them to use….

 

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Sue Lawty

April 5, 2012 0 Comment

CALCULUS Detail, Sue Lawty

At SOFA NY 2012, browngrotta arts will exhibit stone drawings and weavings of lead and linen by UK artist Sue Lawty. Lawty’s constructed pieces and drawings in two and three dimensions explore repetition and interval in raffia, hemp, linen, lead, stone or shadow.

While an artist in residence at the the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2005, Lawty collaborated on a project “Concealed-Discovered-Revealed” with the theme of structure and landscape. Lawty used the opportunity to explore and extend her textile vocabulary by creating a large site-specific stone drawing Order, that moved beyond the constraints of a frame. The 6-meter linear pieced drawing of fine stones wavered along the wall’s surface, like a woven structure. Eventually, Origin was removed to The Haymarket Hotel in London.

15sl CALCULUS, Sue Lawty, natural stones on gesso, 78.75″ x 118″, 2010

At SOFA NY, browngrotta arts will exhibit a more recent stone drawing by Lawty, Calculus. At first glance, Calculus appears simple — like a painting of many dots of many sizes.  On closer inspection, you realize that the 2 meter by 3 meter surface actually contains hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny stones, each smoothed by the sea and hand sorted to create what Emma Crichton-Miller has called a “beautifully choreographed march past the ignored.” Calculus is the Latin word for small stone as well as the name of a branch of mathematics based, like Lawty’s work, on the sum of infinitesimal differences. Lawty’s work  has appeared in numerous exhibitions in the UK and abroad, including the International Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland; the Bankfield Gallery and Museum in Halifax, UK; the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, Australia and the Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum in Spokane, Washington.  On Friday, April 20th from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Lawty will present a lecture at SOFA NY, Rock – Linen – Lead,  about her work and her engagement with remote landscape, geology and the passage of time.

 

 

 

 

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Gyongy Laky

April 4, 2012 0 Comment

DRY LAND DRIFTER Detail, Gyongy Laky, Photo by Tom Grotta

Gyöngy Laky’s sculptures, site-specific outdoor works, typography wall sculptures and vessels are composed of orchard debris and tree prunings, screws, nails, telephone wire or other nontraditional joinery like cable ties, food skewers, toothpicks and golf tees. Laky admits to a fascination with simple, improvisational constructions and architecture, such as scaffolding and fences. Her provocative works lead viewers to question what is and what is not waste in a throwaway culture —

115L DRY LAND DRIFTER, Gyongy Laky, dead tree, bullets for building, 32″ x 22″ 22″, 2010, photo by Tom Grotta

from the environment to war dead. At SOFA 2012, browngrotta arts will exhibit two of Laky’s works, including Dry Land Drifter, which is composed of dead tree baranches and bullets for building. Laky is a Fellow of the American Craft Council. Her work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the  Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin.

 

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Lawrence LaBianca

April 3, 2012 0 Comment

The Strong Are Saying Nothing DETAIL, PHOTO BY TOM GROTTA

Lawrence LaBianca wants “to be the blacksmith of the future.” His sculptures are both abstract and narrative, combining the natural, like branches,twigs and stones, and the manmade, including glass and metal  hinges and pulleys, in intriguing ways that create insightful messages about out role in the natural world. In The Strong Are Saying Nothing, one of two works by LaBianca that browngrotta arts will exhibit at SOFA NY 2012, the artist was influenced by the work of Robert Frost and by toy push puppets that become animated through kinetic activity.

5lb The Strong Are Saying Nothing Lawrence LaBianca, oak, steel, modified winch, steel cable102” x 32” x 24.5”, 2011, photo by Tom Grotta.

The result was an animated tree of oak, steel, cable and a modified winch, that requires the viewer to consider ideas of taming, manipulation, innocence and constraint. LaBianca just finished an artist’s residency at Anderson Ranch in Colorado. He is an Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts. His work has been exhibited at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Craft and Folk Museum, San Francisco, California; Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts; Virginia Groot Foundation Visual Perspectives, Chicago, Illinois; Bucheon Gallery, San Francisco, California; Oliver Arts Center, Oakland, California; Richmond Art Center, California; Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, California; Bitters Gallery, Seattle, Washington.

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Luba Krejci

April 2, 2012 0 Comment

Luba Krejci Thread Drawing, photo by Tom Grotta

At SOFA NY 2012, browngrotta arts will present two thread drawings from the 1970s by Czechoslovokian artist Luba Krejci (1925-2005).

Krejci was an extremely diversified artist who made lace, embroidered and printed textiles, created tapestries, straw figures, wickerwork and children’s clothing. She made handbags and hats and exhibited extensively in Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, Russia, Argentina and New Zealand.

THREAD DRAWING, Luba Krejci, 18.5″ x 18, photo by Tom Grotta

Her most significant contribution to field of textile history, however, was her adaptation of the traditional needle and bobbin lace, to create a technique that she called nitak or “little threaded one,” which enabled her to draw with thread,  She generally created her pieces in black linen thread but white, red and light brown examples also exist. At SOFA, browngrotta arts will have examples of works in black and brown.

Krejci’s work is in numerous public collections, including those ofThe Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Czechoslovakia; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, theNetherlands; Museum Bellerive, Lausanne, Switzerland; Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; Museum of Applied Arts, Brno, Czechoslovakia and the Czech
Ministry of Culture, Prague, Czechoslovakia.

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Yasuhisa Kohyama

April 1, 2012 0 Comment

 

SUEMONO by Yasuhisa Kohyama, photo by Tom Grotta

 At SOFA NY 2012, browngrotta arts will exhibit several pieces by ceramicist Yasuhisa Kohyama including Suemono. Suemono means ancient ceramic. Kohyama has nicknamed this piece “Dogu.” A dogu is an ancient Japanese clay figure, an earthen doll, made during the Jomon period.The artist made the archetypal piece in this shape in 1984 and returned to it in 2009. In the late 1960s, Kohyama was a pioneer in the revival of the Shigaraki region’s ancient ceramic traditions. As Robert Yellin described in the Japan Times (April 10, 2002), Kohyama draws inspiration from  ancient Japanese wares, “in a vital and energetic way, creating original sculptured forms that pay homage to his ceramic roots without being carbon copies of them.” Yellin gave an example, Kohyama’s triangular works with sharp wavy edges.

SUEMONO by Yasuhisa Kohyama, photo by Tom Grotta

“These have no decoration, only the warmth of their own muted orange clay. This allows the form of each to ‘speak,’ as if in a bold whisper. These works lack the ornate decoration of their distant Jomon cousins, fired 10,000 years ago, yet share something of the same verve and temperament. This also goes for Kohyama’s gray, vertical pieces that hark back to the fifth-12th century sueki wares — the first Japanese pots fired in an anagama (a single-chambered tunnel kiln). Introduced via Korea, the anagama reshaped the Japanese ceramic scene.” Kohyama’s work is in the collections of leading museums around the world, including the Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg, the Musée National de Ceramique, Sèvres, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This July will see the publication of Yasuhisa Kohyama: The Art of Ceramics (Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart, Germany).

 

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Anda Klancic

March 31, 2012 0 Comment

Anda Klancic, Black Grove detail, photo by Tom Grotta

Cerni Goj means the black grove in the ancient Slovenian language, but it is also a surname in Slovenia, the name of the late Slovenian painter and graphic artist, August Cernigoj. At SOFA NY 2012 , browngrotta arts will exhibit Anda Klancic’s work, The Black Grove. The work involved several techniques and manipulations, took 13 years to complete and explores the themes of global linkage and the interaction of humans and nature.
Klancic’s  first stimulus for The Black Grove was the structure of the vein-like net of the dried fruit from the plant echynocystis lobata, a wild pumpkin. Inspired by this natural structure, Klancic designed a pattern for industrial machine-embroidered lace and machine-embroidered fabric. From a piece of this embroidered fabric, produced from selected raw materials especially for this hand-manipulated experiment, she produced The Black Grove, using numerous hand-applied techniques.
Klancic’s work has garnered international acclaim. Her three-dimensional lace work, Foothpaths 2, was commended by the judges at last year’s International Triennial of Tapestry in Poland. Her lighted works Aura and Aura F&M, were presented at the Miniartextil Energheia touring exhibition that opened in Milan, Italy. Aura which is made of palm tree bark, optical fibre,  and includes three halogen light sources, is currently in Zagreb, Croatia in the Textil{e}tronic exhibition.

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Susie Gillespie

March 30, 2012 0 Comment

SETTLEMENT detail by Susie Gillespie, photo by Tom Grotta

Susie Gillespie’s weavings contain many influences besides those of ancient textiles that have survived the millennia. The artist writes that she finds “beauty in the ruins of what once must have been new: the patterns in damp and crumbling plaster; the remains of paint on decayed wood; rotting bark; broken carvings; fallen monoliths. Some of these I express in broken borders, insets and slits; twining and wrapping; weaves of herringbone and twill; mends, darns, fraying; drawn threads and slits.” She seeks to reinvent the past to some extent, “Despite my weaving having roots in the past, I look forward to a future where we do not discard things because they are worn out or outmoded. Out of decay and disintegration I wish to express a sense of renewal.”

Settlement by Susie Gillespie, antique handspun linen & Nepalese nettle yarn, modern linen, cotton, natural pigments from caves. gesso, hand-made paper, 45.5″ x 48″ x 1″, 2010, photo by Tom Grotta

At SOFA NY 2012, browngrotta arts will exhibit Gillespie’s 2012 work, Settlement, in which the artist has combined antique handspun linen yarn, handspun Nepalese nettle yarn, modern linen, cotton, natural pigments from caves, gesso and handmade paper to create a contemporary haptic artifact. Gillespie’s work has been exhibited at the Coombe Gallery, Dartmouth, UK; Somerset House, London, UK (Origin); Torre Abbey, Torquay, UK; Brewery Arts Centre. She is a recipient of the Theo Moorman Trust Weaving Award.

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Mary Giles

March 29, 2012 0 Comment

TWIST by Mary Giles, photo by Tom Grotta

53mg TWIST, Mary Giles, waxed linen, iron twists, and hammered tin coated copper wire, 22″ x 10″ x 5″, 2012, photo by Tom Grotta

Mary Giles‘ sculptures, Sentry Field and Twist, made of knotted linen, pressed metal and springs, will be on display at browngrotta arts at SOFA 2012 , booth 208.  Giles says of her work,  “I interpret and express my concerns about our environment and the human condition through my work. I have also explored themes related to communication and intimacy in relationships, and the results are reflected in my figural work. Today, however, I am very concerned about the environment and try to capture the forms, textures, and light found in nature. I admire the directness and honesty I see in tribal art, and I try to incorporate those qualities in my own.” Giles’ work is in numerous museum collections including that of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the St. Louis Art Museum  and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.