We had a busy year in 2021. Here are some of the details, quantified.
online platforms
Next year is shaping up to be just as busy. We are scheduling two in-person exhibitions and accompanying catalogs, videos and online walkthroughs. And this year, we are adding a book, scheduled for Spring publication. Also, coming soon on browngrotta arts’ website: Viewing Rooms. More news to come. Watch this space in 2022!
As this year comes to a close, we’re finishing our New This Week series with some of our favorite artists! Throughout the month of December we’ve highlighted art from notable artists like: Norie Hatakeyama, Mia Olsson, Grethe Sørensen, and Åse Ljones. Here’s a recap of all the art we’re closing out 2021 with.
This piece comes from Japanese artist, Norie Hatakeyama. Hatakeyama is predominantly known for her contemporary and complex plaited works of paper tape. The works resemble living organisms — and, on close inspection, have no apparent starting or endpoints.
This piece comes from Swedish artist, Mia Olsson. Together is made of sisal fibers, dyed and formed in a technique unique to Olsson. The sisal fibers used are shiny and reflect the light, even more when formed in relief. The colors are richly saturated — engaging the viewer on each viewing.
This piece comes from internationally acclaimed artist, Grethe Sørensen. Since 2004, she has been working exclusively with digital thread control/digital jacquard weaving. She is credited with revolutionizing the art of tapestry through her method of converting photographic pixels into threads. The technique allows her to create complex motifs; the city, urban landscapes, light and optical patterns are frequent inspirations for her.
This artwork was created by talented Norwegian artist, Åse Ljones. Ljones uses a blizzard of stitches to create her works. Ljones told TextileArtist.org in an interview that, “To embroider by hand takes time. It is a slow process that gives room for silence. I seek silence. In silence, I retrieve memories and find new paths forward. In all my work as an artist I have eliminated the extraneous. I’ve cultivated simplicity to approach the core of myself, in myself, with fewer measures.” For Ljones, “the sewing needle is like the pencil is to the author,” with it, she can create pictures and tell stories.
Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of this past year at browngrotta arts. We’re going into 2022 excited for another year of art-filled fun!
Thanks are due all around this year!
At browngrotta arts, we hosted two 2021 exhibitions, Adaptation: Artists Respond to Change and Japandí: shared aesthetics and influences. Each featured exceptional artwork — more than 75 artists from 18 countries were included. Both were open to the public, with proper covid protocols. We got great press — from Art in America online, to Architectural Digest online to Gessato and ArteMorbida in Italy. Our teams from Juice Creative, State PR and Ezco Productions helped us get the word out through emails and social media. They are probably the reason we had more people attend than any year before. We published a full-color catalog for each exhibition. Tom’s had to head to the basement to print more copies of Japandí five times since the show closed.
Our artists gathered accolades and awards all year. Just a small sampling – Polly Sutton, whose recently acquired work, Facing the Unexpected, will be included in the Renwick Gallery’s 50th Anniversary exhibition, This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, which opens in May; Adela Akers whose recently acquired work, Compostela, is featured in the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s current exhibition, Parallel Lines: New Textile Masterworks Inspired by Geometry (through August 28, 2022); Simone Pheulpin, whose 80th birthday is being celebrated by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (Simone Pheulpin: Time Bender, through January 16, 2022) and the retrospective of Kay Sekimachi’s 70-year career at BAMPFA in Berkeley, California (Kay Sekimachi: Geometries).
Our charitable project for 2021 engaged hundreds of people. It involved our contribution of a early, accomplished work, Spatial Ikat 2, by Lia Cook, created in 1976. The work was the prize in a sweepstakes on the UncommonGood nonprofit platform. Hundreds of people entered the sweepstakes. The proceeds from their entries went to the Breast Cancer Alliance headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut
Great feedback was received from our clients, artists and fans: “Over these past years, I do not walk past any of the pieces you hung for us without appreciating how it enhances my life.” • “We are so delighted with our sculpture.” • “Thank you also for sharing all the rich documentation on the Japandi exhibition! It’s a real pleasure for us to discover this beautiful exhibition from afar.” • “We so enjoyed seeing your fabulous show on display in your amazing home …. Thank you for sharing the art and your time.” • “The new exhibition is such a thoughtful juxtaposition of the Japanese and Scandinavian.” • “I am happy and proud to be a part of your family of artists.”
We have plenty of plans for 2022 — an exhibition April 29th to May 8th, a browngrotta arts produced book, scheduled for Spring 2022 publication. More on these to come in the next few months.
In sum, a heartfelt thanks to all of you for letting us live a life filled with art and to fill others’ lives with art, too!
Agave sisalana, better known as sisal, is a cactus-like plant cultivated in Mexico and Central America. Known for its stiff fiber, most often used to make ropes, rugs and even construction materials, sisal fibers are yellow-white in their natural state. Through a kind of alchemy, Swedish fiber artist Mia Olsson manipulates the prickly sisal into airy, semi-transparent wall sculptures, dyed in richly saturated warm tones. “I am interested in exploring textile fibers, how they are, their properties and characteristics, and what I can do with them,” say Olsson. Sisal fiber is flat and shiny, reflecting light beautifully and strengthening the color. Olsson describes it as “so interesting to work with, especially when forming three-dimensional pieces. My work is experimental and I never know on which journeys the fibers will take me.”
Dyeing is an important part in the process. The last couple of years, Olsson has been working with natural dyestuffs to see if she can replace synthetic dyes with natural ones. “The most difficult fibers to dye natural is plantfibers. It´s hard, but I am working on it,” she says. “My goal is to have the same ‘paintbox’ with natural dyestuff as with my ordinary ones.”
In creating her works, Olsson dyes the fibers, then organizes them into a kind of fiber cloth, making it possible for her to connect them on a sewing machine. “I save all fibers, even ones that are too short, fiberscraps and cut-off pieces,” she says. “They can lead me on to new exploring paths.” Even very short fibers can be formed into circles or other shapes that can be joined together and then formed to create bigger or smaller pieces. An example is the patchwork of sisal squares that make up Map of a Warm Area. The piece offers a textured topography mapped in a wanderlust hue of orange, red, yellow, rust and black. “When working with Map of a Warm Area I was thinking of a very hot place, hard to live in, too dry and sunny,” remembers the artist. “It was made 2012 and then I didn’t think about climate change in the same way as we do today, But it can absolutely be read as reflecting concerns about the environment.”
Olsson also works with larger sisal pieces, Her larger sisal banners, like Blue/Purple Pleats and Orange Pleats, float effortlessly in space highlighting their dimensionality, bold color and tactile dynamics. She creates sculptural works from fiber as well, groupings of soft stones in jewel-colors. And, more recently, she created Together, a minimalist work,
Other themes Olsson identifies in her work are clothes and their symbols, memory and time. and maps and game plans. Living part of her time close to nature also affects and inspires her work. She also credits Japan as an influence, “I am inspired by and fascinated of Japanese art and crafts. Their exquisite ways of using natural material, as well as synthetic material, their skilled dyeing techniques and the way traditions and innovations are combined in textile art is an inspiration,” she says.
2021 has brought us a bumper crop of book recommendations. In Part One, we looked a biographies and autobiographies. This week. in Part Two will look at a broader list — novels, art and reference books, politics and philosophy and a charming children’s biography of Ruth Asawa that we didn’t discover until after Part One was posted.
Novels:
Wlodmierz Cygan recommended Nocturnes, Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Tamiko Kawata is rereading another Japanese novelist, Soseki Netsuke, while on an exercise bike — currently Sorekara. Carolina Yrrazaval is finding Putas Asesinas by Roberto Bplagno, Murdering Whores in English, “very interesting.”
Art and Reference Books:
Young Ok Shin offered us a sampling of favorite books from her bookshelf — those of lasting import:
Bauhaus Textiles (T&H, London, 1993), by Sigrid Wortmann Weltge (who wriote the essay in our catalog, Lenore Tawney: celebrating five decades of work); Art in Architecture, Jeanne Parkin (Visual Arts, Ontario 1982); Soft Art, Erika Billetier (Benteli 1980); Te Aho Tapu–The Sacred Thread, Mick Pendergrast (Reed Publishing, NZ, 1987). This book is based on the Te Aho Tapu exhibition of traditional Mâori clothing, mainly cloaks, put on by the Auckland Institute and Museum; Beyond Craft: the art fabric, Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen (Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1973) and On Weaving. Anni Albers (Wesleyan University Press, 1974).
Stéphanie Jacques has a classic that she returns to again and again: Hisako Sekijima’s Basketry, projects from baskets to grass slippers (Kodansha USA, 1986).
The Grotta Home by Richard Meier: A Marriage of Architecture and Craft (Arnoldsche, 2019) remains Dawn MacNutt’s “fave and inspiration.” She kindly shared a comment on the book from her correspondence with the late Jack Lenor Larsen: “Have you seen the newest Grotta Book?. It’s spectacular and a durable tribute to Son and Author.” Well, we can’t argue with that! At browngrotta arts we recommend Women Made: Great Women Designers (Phaidon 2021). The Wall Street Journal says it’s: “Thoroughly international in scope… a compendium of disarming surprises.” We’d also recommend our Japandí catalog (Japandí: shared aesthetics and influences, browngrotta arts 2021) our best-selling catalog of the year.
“Recently, I had to discard our family dictionary that I’ve depended on for 50 years,” Wendy Wahl, writes. “I could no longer engage daily with my trusted lexicon because every time I turned the pages to discover a new word it released its microbial matter causing me to sneeze. As much as I loved this book I knew it was time to let it go. This Webster’s Third New International Dictionary has been temporarily replaced by a two-volume World Book Dictionary set from my collection of encyclopedic materials reserved for artwork. Fortunately, WTNID, while not cloth bound, is still in print and available from amazon.”
Annette Bellamy and James Bassler both recommended Craft: An American History by Glenn Adamson (who wrote the essay in our Volume 50 catalog in 2020). “Well worth reading!,” says Bellamy.
Politics and Philosophy:
“The most important book for me this year is Un-Dinge written by the philosopher Han, Byung-Chul,” says Heidrun Schimmel (Ullstein, Berlin 2021)There are some essays about ” our hand”, meaning “working by hand,” today in our digital world, she says. “This fact is very interesting for me as ‘craft artist.'”
Say it Loud by Randall Kennedy (Random House, 2021) is Polly Sutton’s choice. It’s a collection of provocative essays exploring the key social justice issues of our time—from George Floyd to antiracism to inequality and the Supreme Court. The New York Times says Kennedy is “among the most incisive American commentators on race.” James Bassler has just begun Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2020) highly recommended last year, too, by Gyöngy Laky.
One more biography:
While gift hunting this season, we discovered Andrea D’Aquino’s biography of Ruth Asawa (A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa (Princeton University Press, 2019) for children. It is lovely and informative. D’Aquino is an artist. The book is charmingly illustrated, describing Asawa’s interest in spider webs and education in wire work in Mexico. It includes additional factual information in the back and also an activity guide.
To a Year of Good Reading in 2022!
This holiday season, we’re feeling extra thankful to be able to introduce you all to new artists and their impressive artwork. Over the course of the month, we’ve highlighted art from notable artists like: Irina Kolesnikova, Norma Minkowitz, Gudrun Pagter, Masakazu Kobayashi, and Toshio Sekiji. Just in case you missed it, we’re recapping all the pieces we think you should check out sooner rather than later!
This piece comes from renowned Russian artist, Irina Kolesnikova. Kolesnikova created this piece amid the pandemic, where she was able to take the time to reflect and do a deeper dive into herself; the end result was a series of powerful works titled Letters from Quarantine.
Around and A Round comes from internationally recognized textile artist, Norma Minkowitz. Often, Minkowitz works with fiber to create transparent mixed media sculptures – creating work that is at times fragile and relates to the human form and forms from nature. When asked about her artwork as a whole, Minkowitz said:
“I seek mystery in the shadows of the work. The netting’s effect is to blur the shape within. There is often paint on the surface, which can at times be invisible and at other times obvious depending on the light, another important element of my work. I want the openness to convey a sense of energy as the viewer moves around the sculpture. My work retains implications of containment and psychological complexity, while focusing on the human form and often the land-scape. I am engaged in a process that weaves the personal and universal together. The interlacing suggests a delicate quality symbolic of the human condition, but conversely, the pieces could also imply the strength of steel mesh. In many of my works twigs and branches are left inside, and are visible in an eerie way through the exterior of the sculpture, often suggesting connections to the human skeletal or circulatory systems.”
These woven tapestries come from talented Danish artist, Gudrun Pagter. In Pagter’s work, she often uses lines and shapes to achieve a tension and a spatial effect, with inspiration drawn from architecture. Pagter’s minimalism is emblematic of the shared sensibilities of Scandinavian and Japanese artists, popularly termed Japandi.
This one-of-a-kind contemporary piece comes from the late Masakazu Kobayashi. When interviewed, Kobayashi once stated that when creating his own work he searches for an equilibrium between his capacity as a creator and the energy of the world around him.
“In my own work, I search for an equilibrium between my capacity as a creator and the energy of the world around me,” said Kobayashi. ‘When I am able to find this equilibrium, my works exist on their own. Among the works I have created are projects that incorporate several styles and emphasize primary colors. In creating such combinations, I want the viewer to experience the resonating chords that come from each element of the work.”
Toshio Sekiji is a Japanese artist widely known for his exploration of merging cultures in his complex collages and weavings. Often, Sekiji uses repurposed newspapers, maps and book pages within his artwork. The end result is the creation of new stories atop the old – intertwining strips of paper from various cultures, rewriting messages and imaging a harmonious confluence of disparate cultures, languages and nationalities.
If you like this lineup, be sure to keep your eye out for the artwork we will be highlighting throughout December. We have another round of impressive artwork coming your way!
This year we’ve gathered our art selections into a clickable lookbook format. Whether you are gifting yourself, a friend or family member, a work of art makes a truly unique choice. Our curated collection includes art for every location, including crowdpleasing centerpieces (Rocking the Table) and coveted items to set on a bookshelf (Boosting a Bookshelf) or counter top (Counter Balancing).
We’ve included art suggestions to fill special spots — including those often hard-to-fill narrow walls (On the Straight and Narrow). Our choices include a pleated fabric work by Caroline Bartlett of the UK and a hanging of hand-painted threads by Ulla-Maija Vikman, known as “Finland’s colorist.” Or have you got your eye on an empty space? The one that makes you think — “I wish I could find just the right piece of art for that spot.” We’ve got a batch of ideas for you there — from embellished photographs by Gyöngy Laky(US) to an intricate embroidery by Scott Rothstein(US) to a newsprint and lacquer collage by Toshio Sekiji of Japan.
There are works at every price point, from the brightly colored abstract tapestry, Flow, by Jo Barker, a Cordis Prize winner from the UK to a basket sculpture of cottonwood by Christine Joy(US) to a new book about the innovative weaver Włodzimierz Cygan of Poland.
Take a look here: http://www.browngrotta.com/digitalfolios/HolidayFlipBook/Hoilday FlipBook 2021.html
The small print:
Order for the holidays by December 13th and we’ll ship by December 14th for domestic delivery by the holidays (though due to COVID and other delays, we can’t guaranteed the shippers’ schedule). If you’d like us to gift wrap your purchase, email us at art@browngrotta.com, as soon as you have placed your order. To ensure we know you want gift wrapping, don’t wait to contact us — we generally ship as soon as the orders are received. Quantities are limited.
We don’t know about you, but we’ve gotten a sort of voyueristic pleasure out of seeing people’s kitchens, living rooms and even bedrooms on Zoom calls and tv interviews for the last year and a-half. We’ve enjoyed seeing the art and decor and occasional cat, dog or child walk by. Is that the same impulse that spurred browngrotta arts’ artists to go heavy on memoirs and biographies this year? We can’t say for sure, but they surely have. Here are their recommendations and one of ours, as well.
Gyöngy Laky wrote eloquently about her re-reading of Fate and Art, the illustrated autobiography of pioneering Polish sculptor, Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose organic installations explored the politics of space in presciently fresh ways.
“This work it is not a woven Abakan nor a Bronze Crowd,” writes Laky. “It is Abakanowicz speaking to us directly herself in a most intimate and electrifying way. The first edition of Fate and Art, a monologue in her own words, was published in 2008. This second edition was initiated and overseen by Mary Jane Jacob, renowned American curator, writer, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was published in 2020 in the midst of an unexpected and deadly virus pandemic that is responsible for the deaths of nearly 800,000 Americans, more than in all the wars in which the US engaged since 1898.” In the current struggle, Laky sees an echo of WWII’s horrific conflict. Abakanowicz was 9, growing up in Poland, when the Nazis invaded. “Experiences that might have defeated others forged an artist whose works express the power, intensity and mystery of human existence,” Laky observes.
“Abakanowicz writes in English, an adopted language – every sentence honed to poetic perfection with each recounted episode providing the strong intellectual and emotional impact so characteristic of the muscle and might of her sculptures and installations,” says Laky.
“She was absorbed by the physical world around her. She writes of her childhood, ‘The urge to have around me, to touch, to hoard —twigs, stones, shards and bark— continued. They embodied stories with which I wanted to live.’ Those stories she absorbed and magnified to build the large themes of her work.”
Laky recommends that, if you did not read this captivating book in 2008, you should read it now. “Given the magnitude of the struggles we face today, Abakanowicz’s life and art will renew inspiration to hope, to act and to create. This monologue will regenerate belief in human resilience, so well expressed through her stirring and thought provoking narrative and in her art.”
Tamiko Kawata also recommended an artist’s biography, Everything She Touched: the life of Ruth Asawa. Mary-Merkel-Hess did, too: Silence and Beauty by Makoto Fugimura. “I have been following Makoto Fugimura,” Merkel-Hess writes.. He is a Japanese American, a Christian, a writer as well as an artist and recently had a show at the High Line Nine Gallery in Manhattan. As a Japanese artist and a Christian he was an advisor to Martin Scorsese during the filming of the movie Silence based on the 1966 novel by Shisaku Endo also called Silence. Both the book and the movie tell the story of the martyrdom of Japanese Christians in the late 17th century.” Fugimura’s book Silence and Beauty is an extended reflection on Endo’s novel, the nature of art and how Fugimura’s faith journey overlaps with Endo’s. Fugimura recently published another book called Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (2020).
Stéphanie Jacques has been reading Anita Pittoni’s diaries and articles, Anita Pittoni: Journal 1944-1945, and a postface by Christina Benussi, Journal 1944-1945 (Editions La Baconnière, Genève). The author was a textile designer, an artist, a writer and an editor. The book is in French, but she provided us a translated passage: “For me, writing is made exactly like a fabric, it brings me back to my humble artisan work (…); the same law governs me, makes me perform the same movements, so that the material and the structure of the fabric, made of stitches that are linked rather than tight threads, follows the thread of my thought.” Also on Jacques’ nightstand, a memoir of Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Incarneune abstraction /Embodying an abstraction, bilingual edition French-English (Actes Sud, 2020) summarizing her career and artistic aims. Shaped by 40 years of research and risk-taking, she takes the reader on a journey — each chapter is inspired by major encounters: from Constantin Brancusi and Trisha Brown to Johann Sebastian Bach and Pythagoras.
Lizzie Farey is reading The Luminous Solution by Charlotte Wood (Allen & Unwin, 2021) “Drawing on research and decades of observant conversation and immersive reading,” Farey writes, “Wood shares what artists can teach the rest of us about inspiration and hard work, how to pursue truth in art and life, and how to find courage during difficult times.” Charlotte Wood is one of Australia’s most provocative and gifted writers, Farey notes, an award-winning author, and, just happens to be, Lizzie’s cousin. In the Preface, Wood writes, “A rich inner life is not just the preserve of the arts. The joys, fears and profound self-discoveries of creativity — through making or building anything that wasn’t there before, any imaginative exploration or attempt to invent — I believe to be the birthright of every person on this earth. If you live your life with curiosity and intention – or would like to — this book is for you.”
Poet Warrior is a beautifully written memoir by Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, recommended by Annette Bellamy. Harjo shares with readers the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her “poet-warrior” road. Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.
Polly Sutton referred to us Michelangelo in Ravensbruck. The inspiring and beautifully written memoir records a neglected side of World War II: the mass murder of Poles, the serial horrors inflicted by both Russians and Nazis, and the immense courage of those who resisted. The memoir is of Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, a professor and wealthy landowner, who joined the Polish underground in 1939, was arrested, sentenced to death, and was held in Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she taught art history to other women who, like her, might be dead in a few days.
The remarkable life story of the pioneering surgeon, Samuel Pozzi, is the subject of The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes, which was recommended by Włodzimierz Cygan. Pozzi was a society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent’s greatest portraits. Barnes’ story of Belle Epoque Paris features Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Proust, James Whistler, among others and holds more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.
We would add to this list, Bente Sætrang, (Nina M. Schjønsby (ed.) Arnoldsche). This monograph tells the story of Sætrang (b. 1946) and her 40-year commitment to the medium of textile. She is known for her intensive investigation of trompe l’oeil drapery, bold textile printing, monumental abstract color studies, and charcoal drawings. She was Norway’s first professor of textile art, and her political engagement and unique knowledge of color and textile qualities permeate her work. Through essays, poems, interviews, montages, and rich imagery, this monograph sheds light on the different phases of Sætrang’s artistic practice.
Last, but certainly not least, Ai Weiwei’s much-anticipated memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir (Random House) is just published. It tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, the nation’s most celebrated poet and is, according to Michiko Kakutani, “an impassioned testament to the enduring powers of art.” Edward Snowden’s notes on the book and what it has to tell us about freedom (“The message that emerges from Ai’s work is that the truest resistance to the oppression of conformity is the riot of human diversity,….”) can be found here: https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/culturalrevolutions
This list may offer you enough reading inspiration for all of 2022, but there are more recommendations on the way! Watch for Books Make Great Gifts, Part Two: Novels, Art Books and the Like on arttextstyle next month.
Repurposing found objects in art has a long history. Long before recycling was a “thing,” Robert Rauschenberg was created his Combine series, works in which he intermixed paintings with items he found on the streets of New York. The works incorporated newsprint, cardboard, sandpaper, ladders, bellows and fuse boxes among other items. With the Combine series, the Rauschenberg Foundation observes, the artist “endowed new significance to ordinary objects by placing them in the context of art.”
Several artists that browngrotta arts represents or follows prove Rauschenberg’s theory that nearly anything can be adapted for an artistic purpose. In their works, however, the unconventional material takes center stage — not just as an inclusion but reinvented as a primary material. For example, early on in his art career,
John Garrett began exploring alternatives to traditional fibers. Developing unique personal methods based on needlepoint and embroidery techniques, he created flexible components that he manipulated into dynamic forms. Materials he uses are found in thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, dumpsters, curbside on trash days, roadside and in empty lots. Using the varied detritus of an affluent society, he creates artwork that presages less abundant times and focuses attention on the beauty of the discarded and overlooked.
Most recently, he has turned to a surprising, and soon-to-be-scarce, material — VHS videotape. “Once out of the plastic container,” he writes, “the reels of tape leave behind their previous use. In fact, their stories are lost. They are there but can no longer be accessed. In my thoughts, this leads to a sense of mystery and melancholy, like finding an old photo album in the trash.” Lewis Knauss found a similar inspiration when he began to go through decades of slides he had taken of landscapes as he travelled. He had planned to simply discard them, instead decided to hold on to some to create a small piece, a “landscape of landscape images” that he had used as reference in his work.
“All artists repurposing and upcycling materials challenge preconceived notions. When the eye recognizes a found object, it changes the meaning and the value of that object in the work. Whereas it may have been thrown away by someone else, it is now living a new life, no longer destined for the landfill but now in a place of preservation created by the artist, “ write Lori Gipson and Brooke Garcia (Repurposing and Upcycling Found Objects in Art – #EarthDay50). Preconceptions are are surely challenged by Gyöngy Laky’s Coffee Break, constructed of coffee stirrers and Fissures III, by Karyl Sisson, made of nearly unrecognizable vintage paper straws, coiled in intriguing patterns.
Plastic and metal are ubiquitous in landfills and our own trash. In Real, John McQueen draws attention to the problem of plastic waste. “Though we are not all that conscious of it, plastic containers are everywhere in our daily lives,” McQueen writes. “We are burying ourselves in them without seeing them.” The vertical, flat landscape in the work comes reflects the Chinese tradition of painting huge mountains with extremely small inhabitants almost lost somewhere in the composition, a contrast, he says, to the way the West believes humans rule the world and we believe we can do what we please.
Harriete Estel Berman pulls ordinary material — in this case pre-printed steel from recycled tin containers — from the waste stream of society and recycles it, examining value and identity in our consumer society in the process. In her series, the Deceiver and the Deceived, Berman riveted together pieces of tin food containers, including SlimFast cans. The material looks plaited, quilted, or in the case of Figures in Fine Print, pieced. Through the text on the cans, the artist makes a potent statement about food and body image and the role advertising plays in our attitudes about both. Berman’s work is featured in the most recent episode of Craft in America, Jewelry which you can view online.
Boats and ships and time on the water are potent metaphors for the highs and lows of contemporary life.
As FineArt America says of “boat art”:”… whether you own a boat, grew up by the sea, or dream of sailing the wide-open ocean, boats have a way of making us feel a unique combination of calm and adventurous.”.
Artists at browngrotta arts explore the artistic potential of boats and boat shapes in widely divergent ways.
Some, like Lawrence LaBianca, Helena Hernmarck, Chris Drury and Annette Bellamy, have referenced them literally in their work. Lawrence LaBianca creates experiences in which water is an integral part. In Skiff, an antique telephone receiver links viewers to sounds of a rushing river. Twenty-four Hours on the Roaring Fork River, Aspen, CO, is a print created by Drawing Boat, a vessel filled with river rocks that makes marks on paper when it is afloat. Annette Bellamy has lived in a small fishing village called Halibut Cove right across the bay from Homer, Alaska and worked as a commercial fisherwoman. Off season, she reflects on her day job, creating porcelain, earthenware, raku-fired ceramic and stoneware boats, buoys, sinkers and oars that float inches from the floor.
Others, like Dona Anderson, Jane Balsgaard, Merja Winquist, Birgit Birkkjaer and Christine Joy, are moved to create more abstract versions. Boat is a part of new work of hers that is more angular, says Christine Joy. “The shape that occurs when I bend the willow reminds me of waves on choppy water, boats, and the movement of water.” Birgit Birkkjaer’s baskets contain precious amber that she has found washed up on the shore. The indigo-dyed baskets symbolize the sea that brings the amber to the shore – and a ship from ancient times, transporting the Nordic Gold to the rest of Europe. Boats and boat shapes conjure thoughts of water as a natural force, a spiritual source, or a resource for which humans are responsible — and not doing such a red hot job.
in each case the results are imaginative and intriguing. Enjoy these varied depictions and see more on our website.
