Process Notes: Permanence and Impermanence in Public Art – Randy Walker

August 18, 2012 0 Comment

Randy Walker, Conceptual Rendering for
Filling the Void

In March 2012, Randy Walker was the first grantee of the McKnight Project, which is funded by the McKnight Foundation and Forecast Public Art. The McKnight Project grant of $50,000 supports the creation of publicly accessible temporary or permanent artwork in Minnesota by a Minnesota-based mid-career public artist. Projects may be in any form or discipline, including performance, dance, storytelling, photography, film, sculpture, painting, etc. http://forecastpublicart.org/grants-mcknightproj.php.

Randy Walker, Conceptual Rendering for
Filling the Void

Walker, in partnership with YouthLink, a drop-in center for homeless youth, is installing a public art sculpture, Filling the Void, that the grant website describes as “a way finder and creative outlet” for the Kulture Klub Collaborative (KKC) http://www.kultureklub.org/about.html. KKC is an independent arts organization that brings together artists and homeless youth in the Twin Cities through multi-disciplinary workshops, open mics, cultural presentations and art outings. Walker’s project, Filling the Void, will consist of a permanent steel framework, a three-dimensional grid, that will act as a loom for a series of temporary fiber installations to be completed collaboratively by Walker and kids from YouthLink. After these initial installations, the framework will be programmed by KKC.  Future artists-in-residence will decide, together with the young people involved in the program, how, and in what media, the framework should be used.

Randy Walker, Conceptual Rendering for
Filling the Void 

“Filling the Void will be an exploration of permanence and impermanence in public art through a collaborative process,” says Walker. “As an artist who works with both durable, long-term materials and more temporal fibrous materials, I will investigate how a work of public art might bridge the gap between the ephermeral installation and a traditionally static, unchanging sculpture.  I believe there is a fertile middle ground, where a work of public art might be regenerated, renewed, and recreated periodically in different ways, by different community members, and even different artists,” he adds. “I am interested in how the ‘minimal routine maintenance’ so often invoked in the commissioning of public art might be an opportunity to celebrate a work of art, re-engaging it in the future, rather than the mere preservation of the object.”

Randy Walker, Conceptual Rendering for
Filling the Void

It is Walker’s hope that the sculpture will be a permanent framework upon which ever-changing installations will take place, in the same way YouthLink is a permanent fixture for the ever-changing homeless population it serves.  “It is a visible, public space that will be claimed and defined by a vibrant and creative population that lacks a space of their own,” Walker says.

Randy Walker, Conceptual Rendering for
Filling the Void

The images here are conceptual renderings, showing several possibilities for fiber installations, and potential ways the framework might be engaged using non-fiber media. They also provide insight into a piece of the grant application process, the importance of designing a presentation that enables decision makers to share the artist’s vision.

Randy Walker, Conceptual Rendering for
Filling the Void

Coast to Coast — Exhibitions Around the US

August 7, 2012 0 Comment

Here’s a round up of exhibitions throughout the US that are worth traveling to see.  They are listed in date order — a few of them close this month or next; others are open through the fall.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Craft Spoken Here
Last Week – through August 12th

Artists in the exhibit include: clockwise; WATERFALL by Lenore Tawney; SPIRALS AND PATHS by Rebecca Medel; CERAMIC 42 by Yasuhisa Kohyama; BODY LANGUAGE by John McQueen; SEASIDE by Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet; RAY by Mary Merkel-Hess

With Craft Spoken Here, curated by Elisabeth Agro, the Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art seizes the opportunity to experiment with its craft collection and to understand craft in an international context. Some 40 contemporary works from 1960 to the present in ceramic, glass, metal, wood, lacquer, paper and fiber—some by living, acclaimed artists, including Lenore Tawney, Rebecca Medel, Yasuhisa Kohyama, John McQueen,  Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet, and Mary Merkel-Hess and others by lesser-known creators—are on view. Representing the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe, the works highlight formal qualities that cross cultures, time, and media. Hear Agro describe the evolution of the exhibition and the installation of Tawney’s Fountain of Water and Word, in a podcast at the art blog.

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Perelman Building
2525 Pennsylvania Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19130
phone 215.763.8100
www.philamuseum.org

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
At First Light: The Katagami Sculpture of Jennifer Falck Linssen
through September 16, 2012

Handcrafted vessel of katagami-style handcarved paper. Materials include archival cotton paper, aluminum, waxed linen, paint, varnish, freshwater pearl, and sterling silver.

Utilizing the ancient Japanese paper carving technique of katagami, Colorado-based artist Jennifer Falck Linssen creates three-dimensional sculptures that explore the beauty of line and the delicacy of nature. Since 2003, Jennifer has been shaping katagami stencils into three-dimensional vessels and sculptures, combining the katagami 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.

Myrtle Beach Museum of Art
3100 South Ocean Boulevard
(across from Springmaid Pier)
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
phone 843.238.2510
fax 843.238.2910
www.myrtlebeachartmuseum.org

East Hampton, New York
Accumulations NOW
through October 6th

Dawn MacNutt is one of the artists included in Accumulations NOW

Accumulations: NOW bills itself as, “[s]imply, the best of craft. NOW.” Cuurated by Jack Lenor Larsen, the exhibition at LongHouse Reserve features 500 works made in the last 100 years, including a number of important pieces from the collection of the late Dena Katzenberg. Artists shown in the NOW collections include, in fiber Anni Albers, Jun-ichi Arai, Dawn MacNutt, Ed Rossbach, Peter Collingwood, Ethel Stein, Helena Hernmarck and Chunghie Lee; in clay Hans Coper, Toshiko Takezu and Peter Voulkos; hollowware by Chunghi Choo; and furniture masters including Judy Kensley McKie and Edward Wormley. You can see the exhibition catalog and installation shots, here: Accumulations_Now_Catalog.pdf and here: http://www.longhouse.org

LongHouse Reserve
133 Hands Creek Road  East Hampton, NY 11937
phone 631.604.5330
http://longhouse.org

 

San Francisco, California
Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers
Part one through October 6th
Part two October 13 – December 29th

Takaaki Tanaka in front of his work at Fiber Futures when it was in New York at the Japan Society

If you missed this remarkable exhibition last fall at the Japan Society in New York (or in an earlier incarnation in Japan) you’ve got another chance. Fiber Futures explores a new art that is emerging from a remarkable fusion of Japanese artisanal and industrial textile making. Coaxed from materials as age-old as hemp and newly developed as microfilaments, a varied array of works by 30 artists from multiple generations, including Hisako Sekijima, Takaaki Tanaka, Naoko Serino, Hideho Tanaka, Naomi Kobayahsi and Kyoko Kumai, are on view in this important two-part exhibition.

Museum of Craft and Folk Art
51 Yerba Buena Lane
San Francisco, CA 94103
phone 415.227.4888
http://www.mocfa.org

Minneapolis, Minnesota
In Our Nature: Tapestries of Helena Hernmarck
through October 14th

Helena Hernmarck 2009 FOREST PATH , wool and linen, 6′ 7″ x 6′ 7

In Our Nature: Tapestries of Helena Hernmarck, is an assemblage of 19 large-scale tapestries by  legendary trompe-l’oeil weaver, Helena Hernmarck. Monumental works immerse the viewer in the best of nature: lush blooms, rich green forest scenes, and sunny poppy pastures. Hernmarck’s work represents a lifetime of closely honed weaving technique that combines intensely sensitive attention to color with one-of-a-kind combination of textures creating layered, shaded effects. The tapestries in In Our Nature: Tapestries of Helena Hernmarck are on loan from three major arts museums, several corporate and individual collectors, and from Hernmarck’s own collection.

American Swedish Institute
2600 Park Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55407
phone 612.871.4907
http://www.asimn.org

Olympic Art News: David Watkins Talks About Designing the Medals for the 2012 Games

August 5, 2012 0 Comment

London 2012 Olympic medals designed by British artist David Watkins.
The Olympic medals disk circular form is a metaphor for the world. The front of the medal always depicts the same imagery at the summer Games – the Greek Goddess of Sport – ‘Nike’ – stepping out of the depiction of the Parthenon and arriving in London.

Turns out that our family friend, and very talented artist, Davis Watkins, was selected from among 100 artists to design the medals for this year’s Summer Olympic Games. For the Olympic bronze, silver and gold medals, Watkins developed a striking geometric design, juxtaposed with imagery on the front of the medal, which has since 2004 depicted Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, stepping out of the Parthenon. His design for the back of the medal features a 3-dimensional emblem that suggests the built structures of a modern city, a background grid that radiates energy, a ribbon-like form representing the River Thames, and a square, to balance the circularity of the design. Get a behind scenes view of the design process at the Crafts Council’s web page: Striking Gold, http://onviewonline.craftscouncil.org.uk/striking-gold, where Watkins and his student Lin Cheung, who designed the medal for the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games are interviewed. If you are in London, the medals are on display at the British Museum through September 9th http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/london_2012_games_medals.aspx.

David Watkins, photo by Tom Grotta

With Wendy Ranshaw, Watkins is part of an art power couple (like Frida/Diego, Pollack/Krasner, and in our field, Stocksdale/Sekimachi, Rossbach/Westphal, Kobayashi/Kobayashi, McQueen/Mensing; Brennan/Maffei, etc.) If you get as far as Wales, you can see Wendy Ranshaw’s solo exhibition of jewellery and objects, Room of Dreams, at the Ruthin Craft Centre — also through September 9, 2012 http://www.ruthincraftcentre.org.uk/08artists.html.

Art for Good: Kids, Creativity and the International Child Art Foundation

July 14, 2012 0 Comment

Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin by Harriete Estel Berman installed at Anita Siepp Gaalery, Castilleja School, Palo Alto, California in March 2012. Photo: Phillip Cohen.

Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin, side view. Photo: Harriete Estel Berman.

Last December, we advertised out first gift site. For each gift purchased from the site, we promised to make a donation to the International Child Art Foundation, which we did. http://www.icaf.org/whatwedo. The ICAF seeks to ignite a “Creativity Revolution” that will spearhead American ingenuity and draw upon our collective imagination to solve problems and find innovative solutions to global challenges. For the revolution to succeed, creativity must be nurtured in our children.Twenty-two percent of the U.S. population (and 27 percent of the world’s population) are under 16 years old. The scientific evidence on the “4th grade slump” by E. Paul Torrance, known by some as the “father of creativity,” points to the need for creative education. For 15 years, ICAF has supported creative arts education, designed global programs — including ChildArt magazine, the World Arts Olympiad, Asian Tsunami Healing Arts Program and the World Child Award — tested the effectiveness of existing programs and hosted events, exhibitions and symposia. The ICAF is committed to spearheading the global children’s creativity revolution in order to reaffirm U.S. global leadership this century and beyond.

This post also gives us a chance to share Harriete Estel Berman’s thought-provoking piece, Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin. The work required four years of effort and thousands of pencils from all over world.  Successful on several levels, the installation, 15 feet tall and 28 feet wide, creates a bell curve, highlighting the impact of standardized testing on our educational system — a creativity-endangering development if ever there was one. For more information, visit Berman’s website at: http://www.harriete-estel-berman.info/sculpt/pencilPage.html.

Process Notes: On Paper and Pages – Wendy Wahl

July 2, 2012 0 Comment

Wendy Wahl talking about her works after her talk at the Flinn Gallery

Last month, Wendy Wahl spoke to a group at the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut at  the Paperworks: material as medium exhibtion about her recent works and installations made of re-purposed encyclopedias. Here are some excerpts from Wahl’s remarks:

REBOUND: FROM E/H Wendy Wahl discarded/deconstructed/ restructured encylopedia pages , blackened old elm barn beam 27″ x 27″ x 13″, 2009

“My daily walk in the woods allows me the quiet opportunity to hear the sounds of the trees, to see a segment of something larger and profound. Those walks provided the time and space I needed to figure out what the next series of pieces were going to be. It became apparent to me that the materials I needed to use should be familiar and abundant. In 2006, I participated in a group show titled Not Quite Natural, this was the first time I used the pages or leaves of books as a material to create an object. The exhibition was at the Wheeler School Gallery, an ideal setting to present art that is inspired by the concept of how we learn. “Stand for Knowledge” is constructed from pages of discarded New American Encyclopedias whose text I blackened with India ink. Each form stands on a base made from a recycled 200-year-old elm barn beam that has been blackened.”

9ww #502, Wendy Wahl, seven pieces, paper, yarn,95″ x 60″ x 36″, 2001-2002, photo by Tom Grotta

“Originally, I was most interested in the process. I didn’t necessarily need to know what the outcomes would look like only that I had to do it and I wanted to work the material in three dimensions. Sometimes, it is in the act of making the parts where the inspiration resides; knowing there is a mystery of what is about to unfold. Earlier pieces were suspended by monofilament, just kissing the platform, swaying ever so slightly.“

Wendy Wahl works on her installation “Uncovered Grove” at Newport Art Museum. The show will run through February 3, 2008. (photo by Jacqueline Marque)

“In 2007, Curator Nancy Grinnell invited me to have an exhibition at the Newport Art Museum. I created Uncovered Grove. I was seduced by the idea of making a body of work that considered the association between the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. The intention was to describe the relationship of our natural and cultural realms in an attempt to understand the sources and structures that bind us together. I am a fan of Pablo Neruda’s poetry and in his last book of Questions he asks, “What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk to the sky? And Why did the tree undress itself only to wait for the snow?”

“A journal entry from Ralph Waldo Emerson dated November 2, 1833 clearly says the unsayable: “Nature is a language, and every new fact that we learn is a new word; but rightly seen, taken all together, it is not merely a language, but the language put together into a most significant and universal book. I wish to learn the language, not that I may learn a new set of nouns and verbs, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.”

8ww #77 Wendy Wahl paper, 29″ x 40″ x 15″, 2001-2002, photo by Tom Grotta

“In 2009, Tom Grotta called me up and said, the installation work is very nice, but do you think you cam make something to hang on a wall in a room rather than something that requires the whole room to hold the piece. And with that nudge I embarked on making a series of pieces on panel with frames using encyclopedias and dictionaries. “

25ww REBOUND DIPTYCH Wendy Wahl, Encylodpedia Britanica mixed editions, 2; 28″ x 18″ panels, 2010, photo by Tom Grotta

“They are somewhere between sculpture, collage and paintings. I see them as landscapes. They are constructed from hundreds and hundreds of scrolled pages glued to the surface of a wood panel.”

26ww Seeds(of knowledge) WB vol.18/19, Wendy Wahl, World Book encyclopedia pages on inked panel, 21.25″€ x 34.25″€ x 1.625″€, 2011, photo by Tom Grotta

“When WS Merwin was US poet laureate, I was inspired by his poem Unchopping a Tree and would recite it aloud prior to working on these 4’x4’ panels. It begins: Start with the leaves, the small twigs and the nests that have been shaken, ripped or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places, And ends: But there is nothing more you can do. Others are waiting. Everything is going to have to be put back.”

Branches Unbound Wendy Wahl’s installation at the Grand Rapids Art Museum

“I am still compelled to make large scale installations and last year I erected Branches Unboundat the Grand Rapids Art Museum. It is another iteration of my view of the connections between nature and culture. My continued interest is considering the associations between the tree of life, defined as the patterns of relationships that link all earth’s species and the tree of knowledge, defined as the connected branches of human thought realized in the form of writing and speaking.”

“This work is part of an ongoing experiment and series that uses the potency of printed text. I’m using a cultural artifact as my material for many of reasons that include the meanings that it carries, its unique physical qualities, and to recognize its symbolic status. By restructuring familiar elements that in a particular format belongs to a collective consciousness, I’m commenting on an aspect of our station in time.”

Wendy Wahl discussing her works at Paperworks: Material as Medium at the Flinn Gallery photo by Tom Grotta, courtesy of browngrotta arts

“I am often asked why paper? I began using paper as more than a substrate because of its beauty and mystery. It can be permanent or transient, delicate or strong, cheap or expensive, abundant or scarce. It can be cut, bent, folded, crumpled, twisted, torn, glazed, waxed, pulped or burned. Paper can go from two to three dimensions in unexpected ways. It can be preserved or returned to the earth. It is probably one of the most important technological developments that affected the course of human history.”

Who Said What: Ada Louise Huxtable

June 25, 2012 0 Comment

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.

Guest Post Alert: Carol Westfall

June 13, 2012 0 Comment

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Felt Balls for Peace, Carol Westfall, felted wool with barbed wire, 3″ each, 1994, photo by D. James Dee

We’ve uploaded a new guest post, Textiles and Politics by Carol Westfall. “Textile art is no exception to the rule that art both drives and documents political upheaval,” she writes. This post examines the textile in relationship to national and international political issues, including war, population control, energy and natural resource use and economic inequality. Westfall will be among the presenters at the Textile Society of America’s 13th Biennial Symposium in Washington, DC in September.

Art Event: Wendy Wahl Speaks at the Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut, Sunday, June 10th

June 6, 2012 0 Comment

Wendy Wahl works on her installation “Uncovered Grove” at Newport Art Museum. The show will run through February 3, 2008. (photo by Jacqueline Marque)

This Sunday at the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, at 2 p.m. artist Wendy Wahl will speak about her works of recycled encyclopedias and industrial paper. Wahl is one of 31 artists whose work is included in Paperworks: material as medium at the Flinn, curated by Kelly Eberly, Barbara Richards and Rhonda Brown and Tom Grotta of browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut.

26ww SEEDS(of knowledge) WB vol.18/19 Wendy Wahl World Book encyclopedia pages on inked panel 21.25″ x 34.25″ x 1.625″, 2011

“I love the materiality of books,” says Wahl. Her “branches” of encyclopedia pages reference a medium in transition. Wahl began working with encyclopedias in 2005, though she had created works of industrial paper before that. Her works of repurposed encyclopedias address a set of ideas including accessibility and accumulation, synthesis and sustainability. Installations from this series have appeared at the Newport Art Museum and the Bristol Art Museum in Rhode Island and the Fuller Craft Museum of Art in Brockton, Massachusetts.

FlinnGallery installation of Paperworks: material as medium

“Digital media has led such artists as Wendy Wahl to re-evaluate the potency of the printed word,” Akiko Busch wrote in an essay in the catalog The 10th Wave III, “Wahl finds different ways to reconfigure the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica; the leaves may be stacked into forms that suggest an alternative forest of knowledge or tightly scrolled and packed within a frame, making for a composition that suggests a cabinet of hidden knowledge, those archives of information that are at once visible and concealed, at hand and remote.”

26ww Seeds(of knowledge) WB vol.18/19, Wendy Wahl, World Book encyclopedia pages on inked panel, 21.25” x 34.25” x 1.625”, 2011, photo by Tom Grotta

Wahl ‘s work can be found in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (New York, NY) and the American Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (through the Art in Embassies Program). She has exhibited throughout the world at venues such as the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco, CA), the Newport Art Museum (Newport, RI), the University of Wollongong (Australia), and the International Textile Convention (Kyoto, Japan). Her work is regularly reviewed on the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog.

PAPERWORKS Installation at the Flinn gallery

The Flinn Gallery is open daily from 10 – 5 pm on Monday – Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10-8 on Thursday and 1-5 on Sundays. The Gallery is sponsored by the Friends of the Greenwich Library. It is located on the second floor of the Greenwich Library at 101 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT 06830. For more information contact the Gallery, 203-622-7947; email: curator@flinngallery.com or browngrotta arts, 203-834-0623; email: art@browngrotta.com.

Area Art Scene: Three Events in Greenwich

May 25, 2012 0 Comment

Art Greenwich exhibit

Three art events worth visiting in Greenwich, Connecticut: Docked at Delamar Greenwich Harbor this weekend is the floating exhibition, Art Greenwich on the luxury yacht, Seafair http://www.expoships.com.

Marko Remec’s tower of Bible pages at Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery

We attended the Art Greenwich opening last night and got an eyeful. The participating galleries feature work by contemporary artists in all media including paintings, photography, sculpture, installations and video. Among the artists whose work is displayed are Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson and Chuck Close.

Lin Yan Gray City #4, Amy Simon Gallery

We’ve got works  of paper in our sites for obvious reasons and we found several interesting works, including Chris Perry’s Ripple, at the the Brenda Taylor Gallery, Marko Remec’s intriguing tower of Bible pages at Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery and Gray City #4 by Chinese artist, Lin Yan, who has been inspired by Obama’s call to rebuild America “…block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand,” at the Amy Simon Gallery. The Seafair is open until 7 p.m. on Monday.

 

 

Chris Perry’s Ripple, at the the Brenda Taylor Gallery

Paperworks: material as medium, which features more than 80 works, remains open today at the Flinn Gallery in the Greenwich Library just up the hill from the Seafair,   until 5 p.m.,and again beginning next Tuesday, May 29th through June 21st. For more information, call: 203-622-7947. Finally, as you travel Greenwich Avenue between these exhibitions, check out the retail locations featuring works by 131 artists as the city celebrates its 15th Art to the Avenue.

PAPERWORKS: Material and Medium at the Flinn gallery

Exhibition News: Sourcing the Museum at the Textile Museum in DC through August 19th

May 14, 2012 0 Comment

Sourcing the Museum Lia Cook inspired by Syrian 6-7th century and Egyptian 550-625 coptic textile

For Sourcing the Museum, 11 artists (Olga de Amaral, James Bassler, Polly Barton, Archie Brennan, Lia Cook, Helena Hernmarck, Ayako Nikamoto, Jon Eric Riis, Warren Seelig, Kay Sekimachi, and Ethel Stein) were invited by renowned textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen to artists explore the Museum’s historically and culturally varied collections. The resulting exhibition includes 12 new artworks that the artists created, displayed alongside the fabrics that inspired them. The historical textiles highlight the wide scope of the Museum’s collections, ranging from rare Pre-Columbian and Late Roman weavings to Japanese kimono and Central Asian ikats.

 

Sourcing the Museum Helena Hernmarck re-envisiones this 9th-century Egyptian fragment

Helena Hernmarck, for example, re-envisioned a 9th-century Egyptian fragment in an abstract, loose weave. “It was the color that won the day,” she says,”and getting to closely study what an 1100-year-old thread looks like woven in a carpet. There is pile in the carpet, and that made me think, in this case I would weave a looser structure to capture the illusion of pile. This is an oxymoron, since pile is the fiber being seen into its cut, and I am letting the fiber, lying down flat, carry that message. A challenge: but to me, this kind of time-consuming, visually intimate study of something greatly enlarged, is rewarding. I find the advantage of making the plastic strips carry the structure, means I am allowed flexibility how I weave the wool weft — it feels more like sketching than weaving. And it has volume, the volume of puffy wool threads, lending an extra dimension. In other words, this is a double weave, with the lower layer made with the plastic strips; and the upper, plain weave and soumak layer, made with wool, linen and cotton threads. It is the first time I have tried loosening the surface structure like this, still aiming to give an illusion of depth.”

Ethel Stein inspired by a 19th century robe , central asia, Uzbekistan and Bukhara, photo by Tom Grotta

According to the Washington’s Post (“At the Textile Museum weaving tradition into art,” Danielle O’Steen, 3/24/12), Sourcing the Museum “feels fresh and raw…” O’Steen describes the connections that the artists made between old and new as, “loose, and maybe fleeting in the grand scheme of a textile tradition. But the strength of Sourcing the Museum lies in its premise, as it challenges contemporary practitioners to consider a history of traditions, and maybe even embrace lost legacies.” The exhibition continues through August 19, 2012. The Museum is at: 2320 S Street, NW, Washington, DC 20008-4088;Phone: (202) 667-0441.