“What is it about thread that is so appealing? Within contemporary society there is a hunger for sensual experiences that can only be satisfied by handle and texture. We are surrounded by smooth surfaces, from screens to kitchen counters, floors and cars. Clothing is increasingly constructed from a narrow range of nylon and cotton fibre – while appealing to the eye, these leave the hand starved of stimulus.” Polly Leonard, Founder/Editor, selvedge Magazine selvedge, Issue 84, Surface, September – October 2018To learn more about Polly and the founding of selvedge, access Threaded Stories: A Talk with Polly Leonard:https://classiq.me/threaded-stories-a-talk-with-polly-leonard

arttextstyle

If you want to see Sheila Hicks‘ work, you can visit the new MoMA in New York: Taking Thread for a Walk, the Art Institute of Chicago: In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists at Mid-Century or the Boston Museum of Fine Art: Women Take the Floor.

arttextstyle

arttextstyle

22sh/r Color Alphabet Tapestry by Sheila Hicks, wool, silk, 6’ x 6’, 1982. Photo by Tom Grotta

Last year we predicted that fiber art’s new-found popularity would continue into 2015. You need not take just our word for that — take the Wall Street Journal’s. Earlier this month, the paper identified fiber as the “Art World’ New Material Obsession,” http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-worlds-new-material-obsession-fiber-1439565675 and dubbed Sheila Hicks and Françoise Grossen “overlooked masters.” The short piece quotes Sheila Hicks, “I always joke that fiber is my alphabet. I can say an unlimited range of things.” (The Hicks’ work featured here, Color Alphabet Tapestry (1982), is an ideal example.) The New York Time’s review of Françoise Grossen’s long-awaited US survey exhibition, “Françoise Grossen, a Fabric Artist Inspired by Other Fields,”

FROM THE MERMAID SERIES IV, Francoise Grossen, poly, metal, paper, braided, 16″ x 72″ x 72″

http://www.nytimes.com/
2015/08/07/arts/design/
review-francoise-grossen-a-fabric-artist-inspired-by-other-fields.html, adds additional context. The author, Martha Schwendener, quotes Grossen describing the approach of pathmaking fabric artists of the 60s, “First we broke with the rectangle, then we broke with the wall.” Interested in learning more? The contemporary art fabric movement is discussed (and illustrated) in our recent catalogs, Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture, with essays by Jo Ann C. Stabb and Lesley Milar, MBE and Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now with an Essay by Ezra Shales, PhD

Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now
catalog cover artwork by Federica Luzzi

http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/catalogs.php.

arttextstyle

Details of Adela Akers 1988 Midnight and 2011 Triptych. Adela is one of the artists who was included in the 1977 Fiberworks exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her work will be included in Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture this fall at browngrotta arts.

“The 20th century has been a period of numerous experiments in the arts based on new concepts, materials and techniques which have proliferated as never before in history. Some of these new developments, however, have been only fashionable and have been inappropriate exploitations of materials or techniques for very vague and general ideas. Among the exceptions to these trends, enjoying widespread and lasting success, has been the use of fibrous materials to create aesthetic equivalents of sculptures and paintings.

Adela Akers 1960 portrait. Photo Archives of American Art, aaa.si.edu. Courtesy of the artist.

New tools, techniques and synthetic fibers have fired artists’ imaginations. The variety of effects possible range from the predominantly decorative to the highly expressive. And unlike some other recent developments in the arts, contemporary fiber works rest firmly on long and substantial traditions from all major cultures. Although many new and significant forms have already appeared, the future seems to offer even further possiibiities for the growth of this art.”
Sherman F. Lee, then-Director
Cleveland Museum of Art 1977
from the Forward for Fiberworks catalog, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977

arttextstyle

Ethel Stein preparing a warp, photo by Tom Grotta

What has set handcrafts apart, and always will, is the individual vision and extraordinary skill of those who create a unique, material work that can range from the practical to the abstract. The union of that vision and skill has an emotional charge lacking in impersonal articles of mass production, delivered with an unapologetic emphasis on the delight of the thing itself. That kind of direct, pleasurable response is almost totally lacking in the gloom and grunge of the arts today.

“Coming in from the Cold,” Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2011.

arttextstyle

Isaiah Zagar Magic Garden, Photo by Tom Grotta

arttextstyle

From “A Conversation with Roman Kraeussl,” Art + Auction, April 2011, page 48. For more on art as an investment, track down Art + Auction’s April issue, which features the magazine’s annual art investment guide: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37392/april-2011-table-of-contents/.

arttextstyle

Toshiko Takaezu: At Home, Hunterdon Museum of Art Clifton, NJ, 1998, photo by Tom Grotta

“You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.”

arttextstyle

Some rights reserved by l r

arttextstyle