Last December, in our who’s-reading-what survey, artist Kyomi Iwata selected Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 
as the best book she read in 2010. (Lena McGrath Welker also selected Haruki Murakami, in her case, Kafka on the Shore 
, as her favorite read for 2010.) At the time, 1Q84 had yet to be translated into English, but there’s good news. A massive volume (944 pages) will be released in an English translation on October 25, 2011. http://www.amazon.com/1Q84-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0307593312. From Amazon, the book is: “A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.”
Update: Books Make Great Gifts 2010
All Hicks/All the Time — Check Out the Sheila Hicks Wiki at the Mint Museum
Colored Alphabet by Sheila Hicks 1982
The third incarnation of Sheila Hicks’ retrospective opened at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC on October 1st and runs through January 29, 2012. In its previous two venues, Sheila Hicks: Fifty Years, was well reviewed and the book that accompanies the exhibition contains beautiful photos. http://www.
browngrotta.com
/Pages/b39.php The Mint’s Wiki on Hicks, however, raises the bar — adding another component to the retrospective and extending the exhibition’s impact beyond it’s closing date. http://mintwiki.
pbworks.com/w/page/
33119575/Sheila Hicks:
Fifty Years Extraordinarily comprehensive, the wiki provides considerable detail about Hicks’ early education and career and features links to everything from a 1971 review in Design Journal of her exhibition of reinvented rugs in Rabat, Morocco to a video tour of her work as an “art treasure” of Nebraska and her 2004 Oral history interview with the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian. Wandering from link to link offers an art textile historical and world tour (Macchu Picchu to King Saud University to Cour de Rohan, Paris; the Ford Foundation to the Fuji CIty Cultural Center to Target Headquarters). Be sure to take a look.
Sheila Hicks: Fifty Years
Mint Museum Uptown at the Levine Center for the Arts
500 South Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28202
704-337-2000; http://www.mintmuseum.org/upcoming-exhibition.html
September Site-ings from New York to LA and Como to Cheongju
rush-hour-shanghai, photo by Grethe Sorensen
September offers an abundance of exhibition openings of interest. On Sunday the 11th, Connecting opened at the Ostrobothnian Museum in Finland (Museokatu 3 – 4, 65100, Vaasa, Finland; +358 (0)6 325 3800; http://museo.vaasa.fi/w/?lang=3&page=9. Ending on November 27th, the exhibition features 40 artists from Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Germany, including Grethe Sørensen.
Serino_japan society
On Friday the 16th, it’s Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers at the Japan Society in New York (333 East 47th Street, (212) 832-1155; http://www.japansociety.org/gallery, through ). Six artists represented by browngrotta arts — Kiyomi Iwata, Naomi Kobayashi, Kyoko Kumai, Hisako Sekijima, Naoko Serino and Hideho Tanaka — are included. (We’ll have more on the opening and the exhibition next week).
Aerie by Lizzie Farey, photo by Tom Grotta
On Wednesday September 21st the Cheongju Biennale opens in Korea (through November 30th; http://eng.okcj.org/home/contents/view.do?menuKey=277&contentsKey=137) which includes Randy Walker, Chang Yeonsoon and Lizzie Farey. On Saturday the 24th, Energhia — 2011 Miniartextiel Como opens in Italy.
Lightwear 2006 by Anda Klancic
Installed through November 20th, the exhibition features dozens of international artists, including Anda Klancic and Gyöngy Laky (former Church of San Francesco and other locations, Como, Italy; 011-39-31-30-56-21; http://www.miniartextil.it.
PRESENCE/ABSENCE: IN THE FOLDS by Lia Cook photo by Tom Grotta
The ambitious International Kaunas Biennial, Textile 11: Rewind-Play-Forward takes place from September 22nd to December 4, 2011, in Kaunas, Lithuania The Biennial offers a rich programof diverse events – collective and individual exhibits, performances, workshops and a series of conferences organised by the European Textile Network (ETN) – aimed at examining the conceptual evolution of visual and textile arts. On the 23rd, in “Rewind into the Future” several speakers, including Lia Cook, Cynthia Schirra, Reiko Sudo and Chunghie Lee, will discuss how to empower textile culture for the future, why it is important and what is to be done for the upcoming generation. Lia Cook will also show work from her latest research project in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine including jacquard weavings and a video, in a satellite exhibition About Face. http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?p=375&lang=en Elsewhere, the Fondation Toms Pauli, which played an important role in the International Tapestry Biennials of Lausanne (1962-1995), will exhibit the works of some of the artists represented in its collection of twentieth-century textile art, such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jagoda Buić, Kati Gulyas, Ritzi and Peter Jacobi, Jean Lurçat, Maria Laszkiewicz, Wojciech Sadley and Mariyo Yagi http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?p=391&lang=en. For more information, visit the Biennial’s website http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?page_id=2&lang=en or ETN’s http://etn-net.org.
On Sunday the 25th, Golden State of Craft: California 1960 -1985 opens at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Boulevard (at Curson), Los Angeles; 323.937.4230; www.cafam.org. The exhibition, which runs through January 8, 2012, surveys an extraordinary, innovative artistic period that blossomed in post-World War II California.
The-puzzle-of-Floating-World-#2 by Katherine Westphal
Working in a range of materials and forms—from furniture, ceramics, and metals to textiles, jewelry, and glass—artists such as Sam Maloof, Katherine Westphal, Ed Rossbach, Lia Cook, Arline Fisch and Marvin Lipofsky defined the ethos of the era and the West Coast way of life through their creations. The message that these artists presented resounded across the country, shaping how people perceived their homes and instilled art into their daily lives; it made people see the fabric of their environments in a remarkably new light. The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time, http://www.pacificstandardtime.org, a series of exhibitions, involving 60 cultural institutions, mounted in conjunction with the Getty, which celebrates the birth of the L.A. art scene.
Don’t Miss: Winged Weavers
Photograph by Johan Swanepoel/Fotolia via Princeton University Press.
38sp ÉCLOSION
Simone Pheulpin
cotton
4.5″ x 7″ x 7.25″, 2011
Exhibition News: Flora and Fauna, Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Rhonda’s friends from high school in Arizona visited New York from LA and Philadelphia in early August. We talked up the Museum of Arts and Design and the High Line as must-see sites and met them at the Museum and had a terrific time. We were all Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities (through September 18, 2011), which features artists constructing small-scale hand-built depictions of artificial environments and alternative realities, either as sculpture or as subjects for photography and video. These are worlds of “magic realism” conceived and realized through intense engagement with materials, attention to detail, and concern for meaningful content.
Dorothy Gill Barnes UNTITLED 1995
Gyöngy Laky Red Birds
Mary Merkel-Hess Tall Grass
Tom & Connie McColley Along the Path
There were also some remarkable pieces in A Bit of Clay on the Skin: New Ceramic Jewelry (through September 4, 2011). Flora and Fauna, MAD about Nature (through November 6, 2011), however, was less successful. There were individual works that we liked, including Steffen Dam’s Marine Forms, Wayne Higby’s Mesa Gap and Beth Katelman’s Folly and the works pictured here (two of which were sold to collectors by browngrotta arts, and the Gyöngy Laky work that lead us to contact her about representation back in the 90s). But by mixing works featuring motifs from Nature, like fish and flowers and butterflies, with works made of branches and bark and other natural materials, the curator has created a bit of a mashup — two exhibitions with very different sensibilities installed as one. Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019, 212-299-7777, http://www.madmuseum.org/see.
Eco-Art News: Chris Drury’s Carbon Sink Creates Controversy in Wyoming
photo by Chris Drury
An installation at the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie by British land artist Chris Drury has heated up the debate over coal in that state http://uwartmuseum.blogspot.com/2011/07/land-artist-chris-drury-begins.html. Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around, is 36 feet in diameter, took three weeks to create and at its center features logs from trees killed by beetles, surrounded by lumps of coal. Drury had learned from students and faculty in the fall of 2010 about mountain pine beetles that have infested and killed more than 100 million acres of forest in Wyoming and other mountain states in the last decade. Scientists attribute
photo by Chris Drury
photo by Chris Dury
the infestation to the warming of the planet, which has reduced the frequency of the well-below-zero temperatures that would otherwise kill the insects. Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are a major cause of rising temperatures; a primary contributor to greenhouse gases is the burning of coal. Two state legislators from coal-centric Campbell County were not impressed by Drury’s work. According to the Green blog of The New York Times, Representatives Tom Lubnau and Gregg Blikre, Republicans from Gillette, wrote to the University of Wyoming to complain about the sculpture, Lubnau telling a local newspaper, “…every now and then you have to use these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from,” which includes, of course, tax revenues from coal and other energy industries. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/coal-themed-sculpture-annoys-lawmakers “I just wanted to make that
photo by Chris Drury
photo by Chris Drury
connection between the burning of coal and the dying of trees,” says Drury. “But I also wanted to make a very beautiful object that pulls you in, as it were.” The work “has certainly generated a big debate,” he says, “which is good.” To see Drury’s photos of the work and the West, visit his blog at http://chrisdrury.blogspot.com/2011/07/carbon-stink.html. “Art is free to speak its truth,” he writes there, “and in the case of Carbon Sink all I am trying to do is to make many and multiple complex connections in as striking and beautiful way as I am able.” Watch for an interview with Chris Drury, filmed by the museum it will eventually be posted on its You Tube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/uwartmuseum.
Dispatches: All Things Considered IV and More at the Fuller Craft Museum
We traveled to Brockton, Massachusetts this weekend to see juried works by members of the National Basketry Organization at the Fuller Craft Museum http://www.fullercraft.org/exhibitions.html#Basketry.
Sunrise Artifact by Mary Giles
Woven Vessel by Jonathan Kline
Marked by a Sapsucker by Dorothy Gill Barnes
Among the highlights in our view: Sunrise Artifact by Mary Giles; Woven Vessel by Jonathan Kline; Marked by a Sapsucker by Dorothy Gill Barnes; Tipped by Nancy Koenigsberg a Basket Book #5 by Arlene McGonagle (of course, we’re suckers for anything related to books). Most impressive, however, were works that appeared to be diptychs. First, was a pair of large works, Cave and Snag by Linda Bills, made a year apart, but seamlessly echoing each other in shape and offering an intriguing contrast in volume.
Tipped by Nancy Koenigsberg
Basket Book #5 by Arlene McGonagle
Cave and Snag by Linda Bills
Second was a single piece, Wait, Weight by Jo Stealey, that seems to be two, interlocking basket/bowls of letters (yes, she had us at “A”). The show, which runs through December 11th, is worth seeing — with 85 pieces there is considerable variety in materials, technique and aesthetic. The exhibition would have benefited from more white space, however. The works are placed so close to one another it requires a second walkthrough to really focus on individual pieces.
Union by Christine Joy
Memories by Judy Mulford
Sidestep by Dona Anderson
Untitled 1985 by Kay Sekimachi
Kibiso III by Kiyomi Iwata
Wait Weight by Jo Sealey
CHAT by Jiro Yonezawa
Cradle to Cradle by Gyongy Laky
Calycanthus by Marion Hildebrandt
If you can get there before Loom and Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale closes on September 11, 2011, do. There are interesting works by Kay Sekimachi in this show that did not appear in previous exhibitions of these artists’ work. Although this exhibition also features a large number of pieces in a limited space, as a result of Stocksdale’s and Sekimachi’s minimalist aesthetic and muted color palette, the installation is more successful.
We missed Fold It: Deena Schnitman, an installation of cookbooks which is on view in the café because we didn’t know it was there. We didn’t miss the Flint Farm Stand, though, just down the road in Mansfield. Great fresh corn and ice cream that has people standing in line.
Dusk by Norma Minkowitz
All Things Considered IV includes 12 artists whose work is represented by browngrotta arts. Click any image to see more examples of these artists’ work.
Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street
Brockton, MA 02301
508-588-6000
http://www.fullercraft.org/home.html.
Who Said What: Josef Albers
Josef Jose“If one says Red—the name of color—and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.”
—Josef Albers
Summer Site-ings II: Exhibitions Abroad
Traveling outside the US this summer? If so, there are lots of places to see the work of the artists browngrotta arts represents. In France, 13 Scottish weavers all trained in the tapestry department of the College of Fine Arts in Edinburgh, including Sara Brennan and Linda Green are part of the Vive La Tapisserie exhibition from July 16th to August 18th at Galerie la Tour Montsalés, in Montsalès http://www.galerielatourmontsales.com. In Paris, you still have nine days to see Carte Blanche á Philip Hughes: 
Works by Chris Drury, Philip Hughes and Nicholas de Staël at Galerie Gimpel & Müller, 12 Rue Guénégaud,
http://www.gimpel-muller.com/
expositions.php, through July 26th. In Belgium, Marian Bijlenga’s work is included on the 7th International Triennial of Contemporary Textiles in Tournai, through September 25th,
http://www.triennaletournai.
be/?page_id=10.
In Denmark, Ane Henricksen’s solo exhibition, Lady Sings the Blues, continues at the Design Museum in Copenhagen through August 7th,
udstillinger/aktuelle-saerudstillinger/lady-sings-the-blues. 
Connecting: Contemporary Arts and Crafts from Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden is a travelling exhibition organized by the art and craft associations of Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) and its partner regions in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway http://www.connecting-artsandcrafts.com. Forty artists, including
Grethe Sorenson of Denmark, have presented 90 new works. The exhibition is at the Akershus Art Center in Lillestrom, Norway through July 31st and at the Pohjanmann Musuem in Vaasa, Finland from September 9th through November 27th. In Lladudno, Wales, Laura Thomas‘ resonate sculptures and works by 10 other artists are on display through September 1st at the retail space at Oriel Mostyn, in an exhibit entitled, 
Similar Threads: A Celebration of the Beauty of Thread.
Dispatches: Art in situ on Monhegan Island, Maine
artists’ studios open to the public and to appreciate the abundant plant life and bird population. One of our favorite sites, however, was not listed in any of the literature. We were delighted when we stumbled upon an art colony of tiny structures populating Trail 11. Reminiscent of the World Beach Project https://arttextstyle.com/2010/05/14/eco-art-news-world-beach-project, in which beachgoers create sculptures of stones, visitors to Trail 11 have created small sculptures of sticks, bark, pinecones, leaves and shells. Some are more accomplished than others, but it was the sheer
volume that impressed us. We stopped counting at 100, but until then, we had great fun looking behind tree roots, around rocks, in branches and creeks to find as many as we could. And, we couldn’t leave without making a contribution; Carter, our budding artiste, created the word “ART” out of large sticks.
Carter’s contribution to trail 11, Monhegan Island photo by Tom Grotta