Book Lust: Penguin Books – Threads Deluxe Classics and Tie-ins

June 21, 2011 0 Comment

 

We love Penguin Classics.  The collection includes more than 1,000 classic titles from The Adventures and Memoirs of  Sherlock Holmes to Gulliver’s Travels to A Christmas Carol to Middlemarch and Dracula. This October, new versions, Penguins Threads Deluxe Classics, will be released with gloriously embroidered covers by Jillian Tamaki. You can pre-order the three titles commissioned to date, Emma, The Secret Garden and Black Beauty on Amazon now. You can also order a set of

100 Penguin Book Cover Cards from Amazon. And Penguin has released two versions of Book Cover Wrapping Paper. One, a collage of Penguin covers, is available from Bas Bleu, the other, an image of Penguin spines, can be found at Shiny Shack in the UK. Still not enough Penguin? You can obtain the entire line of Penguin Classics in one complete paperback collection, from Renaissance philosophy to the poetry of revolutionary Russia, from the spiritual writings of India to the travel narratives of the early American colonists, from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare to The Portable Sixties Reader, for $13,000+.

Dispatches: See the World’s Largest — or Nearly Largest — Ball of Twine

June 14, 2011 0 Comment

Who says you can’t learn things from watching television? in In a recent episode of Covert Affairs on USA, CIA operative Annie Walker and her sister discuss the world’s largest ball of yarn located in Lamar, Missouri. Got me wanting more information.  Turns out that the competition for largest twine ball (some call them yarn balls, but apparently, they are mostly really twine balls) is pretty fierce and Missouri has only two of several contenders.

Darwin World Largest Ball of Twine created by 1 man photo by Mykl Roventine

 

Darwin, Minnesota boasts a ball that weighs 9 tons and is 12-feet wide and was mentioned in Crazy Al Yankovic’s video for the song, White and Nerdy. It was rolled by one man, Francis A. Johnson, between 1950 and 1979 http://www.darwintwineball.com.  Darwin residents look down on a rival twine ball in Cawker City, Kansas.

Cawker City World Largest Twine Ball http://www.worldslargestthings.com/wllist.htm

 

 

World’s Largest Ball of Twine Cawker City, Kansas By jimmywayne http://www.flickr.com/photos/auvet/860982521/

While it was begun by one man in 1953, it was completed by townspeople in a Twine-a-Thon in 2003 http://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/Cawker/twine.html. A local artist, Cher Olsen, has integrated the twine ball into her paintings, reworking American Gothic and Mona Lisa and the like and these are on display at the Masterpiece Twine Walk http://www.getruralkansas.org/Cawker-City/61Explore/258.shtml. Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin has it’s own contender.

Created by James Frank Kotera who started in 1979, JFK estimates that it weighs 19,336 pounds, which may make it the heaviest twine ball.  Only one entry has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. That’s the one at Ripley’s Believe it or Not in Branson, Missouri that’s 41.5 feet in circumference http://www.ripleys.com/branson. (Though some say it shouldn’t qualify as it’s made of nylon twine.) As for the one in Lamar, Missouri –I couldn’t find it but there is an attractive multi-colored ball at the Pattee House Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri http://www.washburn.edu/cas/art/cyoho/archive/MidwestTravel/Patee and reportedly one made of postal string at the American Bowman Restaurant and O’Malley’s Pub in Weston, Missouri.  If you’re vacationing in the Midwest this summer — check ’em out.  You can get hats, start-your-own-twine-ball kits and great We-Were-There photos.

 

Art into Text: Naomi Kobayashi’s Work Inspires a Plot Twist

June 7, 2011 0 Comment

KAKU 2000/106 & 104 Naomi Kobayashi, paper and thread, 17” x 13.5” x 2”

William Bayer, author of The Dream of the Broken Horses, Switch, Peregrine and Punish Me With Kisses, among other titles, has woven Naomi Kobayashi’s art into his upcoming novel – working title, In the Weave. Bayer is a collector of Kobayashi’s art work — weavings of thread and strips of washi paper on which she has written calligraphy. For his new book, Bayer envisioned a character with a secret recorded on paper that she protects by cutting the pages into strips and incorporating it into a weaving, which is then unraveled so the paper strips can be steamed and pieced back together to reveal the secret. When contacted for her advice, Kobayashi agreed that a weaving of paper strips and thread could be de-constructed and de-coded as Bayer planned; the paper strips would survive steaming and unraveling, she wrote, because handmade washi paper is strong. She worried, however, that the ink might blur during steaming and suggested that Bayer’s character use oil-based ink. We’ll let you know when the book is ready to hit  bookstore shelves. In the meantime. We’ve gotten Bayer’s permission to share a snippet of what’s to come:

From In the Weave, by William Bayer:

Kate and I are up in the A.I.R. loft. Liv’s weaving is spread out before us, reminding me of that T. S. Eliot line “like a patient etherised upon a table.” In fact, we have set TPR on the apartment dining table, and beside it have set out our instruments: scissors, needles, tweezers. Surgery is about to commence.

Kate smiles. “Nervous?”

“How can I not be?”

“I think you should make the first cut,” she says.

I nod, gaze down at the weaving, so beautifully finely made. And then I take the scissors in hand, and begin.

We’ve discussed this deconstruction process at great length, and though we’re not certain if we’re right, we’ve decided to start by scissoring off the top selvage, snip the cotton warp in numerous places to try and loosen the weave, then pluck out the first several washi paper wefts. It’s our hope that if we steam these wefts, they’ll open up and flatten out. Then and only then will we be able to determine if there’s writing on them. If there is, we’ll repeat the process hundreds of times until we’ve removed and steamed open all the strips, and then try, as puzzle solvers, to reassemble these strips until we’ve reconstructed the original sheet of paper. Only then will we be able to read whatever Liv may have written on it. We know this process  will be laborious, will take us many hours, and may, in the end, come to nothing. In which case we will have destroyed her amazing work of art. But what choice do we have? If Liv did in fact “conceal my pain in the weave,” we must uncover it. And if she didn’t, we’ll be left with nothing but a heap of cotton thread and marked up paper strips, and a tremendous amount of remorse.

Who Said What: Roman Kraeussl

May 19, 2011 0 Comment

“In strictly financial terms, art investing is unattractive. Its risks include attribution errors, fakes, forgeries, thefts and physical damage. Furthermore, it involves high transaction, insurance, maintenance and restoration costs, and it has no current cash flow––money comes only when works are sold. Artworks are heterogenous, illiquid and sold on the subjective, segmented and almost monopolistic market in which no valuation guidelines exist. Investors must perform their own due diligence. But art works, unlike stocks, bonds, real estate and certain funds, provide aesthetic returns as well as financial ones. It is when these aesthetic aspects are combined with the financial behavior of the assets that it gets interesting.” Roman Kraeussl, Professor at VU University Amsterdam, specializing in research on art investment.

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/.

Quiz: Sleight of Hand: Can You Identify these Remastered Materials?

May 10, 2011 0 Comment

Sleight of Hand, currently on exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, celebrates artists, including Lia Cook and Norma Minkowitz, who create works of art that challenge viewers’ perception, through their innovative use of materials and textile techniques. There are a several other artists represented by browngrotta arts who do the same. Inspired by the concept, we created a quiz.  See if what you can guess about the materials and methods used to create the works in these images. The short answers appear at the end. You can click on each answer to see a larger version on our website (but not until you’ve made a guess!).

Ed Rossbach, Axel Russmeyer, Sue Lawty, Adela Akers, Karyl Sisson, Kazue Honma, Tomiko Kawata, Kate Hunt, Dani Marti, Merja Winqvist, Heidrun Schimmel, Wendy Wahl, Toshio Sekiji, Simone Pheulpin, Heidrun Schimmel

 

Answer Key:
a) Ed Rossbach – plastic tubing
b) Axel Russmeyer – bobbins with thread
c) Sue Lawty – woven lead
d) Adela Akers – linen, horsehair, paint and metal wine foil
e) Karyl Sisson – cloth measuring tapes
f) Kazue Honma – Japanese strapping tape, tannin
g) Tamiko Kawata – safety pins on canvas
h) Deborah Valoma – woven copper
i) Dani Marti – marine rope — polypropylene and nylon
j) Merja Winqvist – florist paper
k) Kate Hunt – newspaper, gold leaf, burnt plaster
l) Wendy Wahl – industrial paper and yarn
m) Toshio Sekiji – newspapers from Japan. China and Korea
n) Simone Pheulpin – folded cotton
o) Heidrun Schimmel – heavily stitched cotton, large sewing needle

 

Exhibition News: “Sleight of Hand” at the Denver Art Museum through December 31st

May 9, 2011 0 Comment

Curated by Alice Zrebiec, Sleight of Hand features 14 contemporary artists whose work  challenge our powers of perception. The artists in this exhibition are among those who push time-honored textile techniques, including embroidery, quilting, weaving, netting, crochet, coiling, and ikat, to unexpected extremes and who invent new methods to achieve their creative vision.The exhibition includes sculptures, paintings and imagery produced over the last 30 years. Zrebiec calls the artists in the exhibition — Magdalena Abakanowicz, Olga de Amaral, Arlette Gosiewski, Tracy Krumm, Jane Mathews, Rebecca Medel, Norma Minkowitz, Cindy Hickok, Gugger Petter, Carol Shinn, Polly Barton, Lia Cook, Carol Eckert and Kay Khan — “alchemists” for their ability to change materials as diverse as cotton, newspaper, sand, and gold leaf into astonishing works of textile art.
If you are able to visit DAM before July 10th, you can also see Shape & Spirit: Selections from the Lutz Bamboo Collection which showcases more than 200 woven bamboo baskets, carved figures, and everyday tools that capture the spirit and cultural character of their makers.

Denver Art Museum
100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Denver, CO 80204-2788
(720) 865-5000 ‎

Exhibition News: “Lady Sings the Blues: Ane Henriksen” at the Design Museum in Denmark, through August 7th

May 4, 2011 0 Comment

Spread of Plates from Henriksen’s exhibition in Design Museum Denmark

Ane Henriksen’s work is the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Danish Museum of Art & Design in Copenhagen through August 07, 2011.  Henriksen “possesses a very rare degree of insight into how to utilize and master her medium.” observes Bodil Busk Laursen, Director of the Museum in the exhibition catalog of the same name, Lady Sings the Blues: Ane Henriksen. “In her pieces, there is an internal coherence, where the choice of materials, technique, and structure constitutes a most significant aspect of the work’s ultimate expression.”  Henriksen has been creating pictorial wall tapestries for 25 years. In doing so, the artist  “…with sensitive seismographic precision, has caught hold of painful nodes in the world, in nature and in human existence. Through these pieces, she has managed to redeem experiences that nobody evades,” Laursen observes.

BLACK & BLUE Ane Henriksen, silk warp, linen weft, weaving, 94.5″ x 72.75″; 246.5cm x 185.5cm, 2003

Henriksen “is building a bridge between personally endured pain and what has been learned from an existential and universally human experience,” writes Louise Manzanti, another of the catalog’s essayists.  Henriksen’s work, Black & Blue, is an example, as the artists explains: “A tie, a deep human intimacy, smashed to pieces. My aching, broken heart and body, drawn with a desperate line, like a bad tempered umbilical cord. Or alternatively an expression of hope, the fluttering of a butterfly, out into the intangible new space.”

a view from Ane Henriksen’s exhibition in Design Museum Denmark

Her installation work, A Swaddling Room, is “[A] holy communion consisting of 13 printed male chests constitutes a swaddling room for all the women who are searching and longing. A series of platters adds a kind of longing footnote from songs that creep in, remain — and resound, around and around…” Henriksen’s solo exhibition has been high on the Museum of Art & Design’s wish list for some time, according to Director Laursen. For those who cannot see it in Copenhagen, the exhibition catalog, Lady Sings the Blues: Ane Henriksen, is available from browngrotta arts. http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/b44.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

detail from Ane Henriksen’s catalog Lady Sings the Blues

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lady Sings the Blues: Ane Henriksen
Danish Museum of Art & Design
Bredgade 68 / 1260 København K
Phone 33 18 56 56
Email: info@kunstindustrimuseet.dk
http://designmuseum.dk/en/udstillinger/aktuelle-saerudstillinger/lady-sings-the-blues

Summer Stock: Artist Lectures, Classes, Workshops and Walkthroughs

April 29, 2011 0 Comment

Here’s a list of opportunities to connect this summer with the artists that browngrotta arts promotes and information on an interesting Archaeological Textile Course at Bryn Mawr:

 

Reflective Haze by Lewis Knauss, photo by Tom and Carter Grotta

Lewis Knauss
August 22nd to August 26th
Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO
http://www.AndersonRanch.org
“Advanced Fiber Workshop”

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda by Sheila Hicks, photo by Tom Grotta

Sheila Hicks
May 5th, 10:30 a.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
http://www.icaphila.orgWalkthrough: Sheila Hicks: 50 Years

Glacial Planes by Nancy Moore Bess, photo by Tom and Carter Grotta

Nancy Moore Bess
April 29th to May 10th
Snow Farm, Williamsburg MA
http://www.snowfarm.org
“Japanese Inspired Baskets”

June 5th to 11th
Snow Farm, Williamsburg MA
http://www.snowfarm.org
“Japanese Inspired Baskets”

June 24th to 28th
Peters Valley Craft Center, Layton NJ
http://www.petersvalley.org
“Japanese Packaging: Paper, Baskets & More”

July 9th and 10th
Garage Annex School (GAS), Easthampton MA
http://www.garageannexschool.com
“Japanese Packaging: Seeking a Narrative”

July 17th, 12 to 3 pm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA
http://www.mfa.org/programs
Artist Demonstration, “Bamboo and Tea”
Exhibition: “An Unspoken Dialogue with Japanese Tea”

August 12th
Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge MA
http://www.berkshirebotanical.org
“Wrapping Your Garden: Herbs, Flowers & Veggies”

Mandella by Pat Campbell, photo by Tom grotta

Pat Campbell
July 25th to July 29th
Waynflete School, Portland, ME
http://www.waynflete.org/podium/default.aspx?t=124856“Weaving Works” for Grades 3-8

Kayak by Chris Drury, photo by Chris Drury

Chris Drury
May 3rd
Tagore Festival, Dartington, Devon, UK
http://www.tagorefestival.com
“Artist’s Talk”

Big Question, By Gyöngy Laky, photo by Tom Grotta

Gyöngy Laky
May 26th, 6 p.m.
The Textile Museum. Washington D.C.
http://www.textilemuseum.org/green
Lecture: “Geometric Disturbances”

July 17th to July 29th
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine
http://www.haystack-mtn.org/workshops.php
Visiting Artist

Tall blue tapestry

AZUL Y NEGR by Carolina Yrarrázaval Photo by Tom Grotta

Carolina Yrarrázaval
August 15th to August 21st
Santiago/Valparaiso/Ilsa Negra, Chile
http://www.yrarrazaval.com
“Pre-Columbian Textile Techniques Workshop”
click for details

 

For extra credit, at Bryn Mawr
June 5th to June 11th
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA
cipstextiles@gmail.com
“Textile Archea: CIPS Archaeological Textile Course”
(Centers on the tools and techniques employed in the analysis of
archaeological textile materials of ancient Peru and introduces students to the archaeology of the Andes.)

Eco-Art News: Green: the Color and the Cause at the Textile Museum in D.C.

April 20, 2011 0 Comment

Gyongy Laky 101L ALTERATIONS apple, grapevine, nails, wire, 58″ x 68″ x 3″ 2008

This Earth Day, visit the Textile Museum’s new exhibition, Green: the Color and the Cause, in person or the gas-free way: online http://www.textilemuseum.org/green. The exhibition includes 34 artists, including Gyöngy Laky and Jiro Yonezawa. These artists work in natural, eco-friendly and repurposed materials and/or create works that reference diminishing resources, species extinction and the like. Online, there is an image for each artist, along with a description and in some cases, links to videos in which the artists describe their work, show their process or their inspiration. You can browse by artist name or by theme: The Color, Nature, Global Choices, Interconnectedness, Repurposing, Sustainability or Adaptation. There’s also a slide show about the history of the Green Movement in this country. The exhibition runs through September 11, 2011. The Textile Museum is located at: 2320 S Street, NW, Washington, DC 20008. For more info call: 202-667-0441. Also, online at http://browngrotta.com/Pages/earthday.php, Eco-Art for Earth Day, through May 1st.

Textile News: Lia Cook’s Work in the Lab — Measuring Art’s Emotional Impact

April 11, 2011 0 Comment

Comparing the perception of a photo versus a woven image using E

Last week advocates were on Capitol Hill urging additional funding for arts programs with a series of subjective arguments — the arts enrich lives, enhance communities and assist at-risk kids struggling to stay in school. With the help of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, however, artist Lia Cook has been able to quantify that impact by obtaining an objective measurements of viewers’ reactions to her work. As an artist-in-residence at the University’s TREND program (Transdisciplinary Research in Emotion, Neuroscience and Development, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine) Cook was able to compare the emotional responses of viewers of a flat photographic image of a human face versus the reaction to her works, large woven faces that look photographic at a distance but dissolve into maze patterns up close and finally into visibly interacting threads. Cook’s original hypothesis was that the woven interpretation of the face would result in a different emotional response compared to a flat photographic print. “I wanted to explore the nature of people’s emotional connection to woven faces,” she explains. “I thought that the material and structural aspects of the textile, the physical evidence of the hand and the memories associated with these tactile experiences might intensify the reactions. Something about the textile engenders embodied emotional response beyond that of the two–dimensional photo.”

Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI)

To obtain the data necessary to test this hypothesis, Cook, in collaboration with scientists at TREND tried several approaches, including electroencephalography (EEG), Pupil Studies, EyeTracking and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The hypothesis was confirmed, Cook and the scientists could see noticeable differences in individual images from the fMRI data and in records of electrical brain activity from EEG when volunteers compared flat and woven images. Through the project Cook was not only able to answer her initial questions, but she began to create new work inspired by the experience. She noticed, for example that the fibers of the brain visible when using Diffusion Spectrum Imaging were similar to the interlacing fibers of textile constructions. She underwent this imaging on herself and then, using software from MGH/Harvard, Biomedical Imaging Lab, she was able to manipulate the images of these images as a starting point for her latest weavings, which combine faces and images of brain fibers. The result is in keeping with the aim of the TREND residency, which hopes that artists will encourage scientists to think in new creative ways while learning the tools of the scientist to develop their artistic ideas or to look at their art work in new ways. Cook’s description of her experiments. “An Investigation: Woven Faces and Neuroscience,” appeared in the December issue of ETN Textile Form http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/573/911/7936/2/44?dps=on.

Example of Lia Cook combing woven and brain images

From April 15 to October 22, 2011, a solo exhibition of Cook’s work, including some of the works created since the TREND residency, will open at the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh as part of the Bridge 11 Exhibition Series.  On May 5th,  Cook and Dr. Greg Siegle of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine will present a lecture,”Woven Faces, Mapping the Emotional Brain,” at 6 pm.  Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10—5 pm. For more information, visit www.contemporarycraft.org or call 412.261.7003 x 26.