Click here to read Kim’s observations on art in situ in Tsurugi, Japan.
photos by Kim Schuefftan
Guest Post Alert: Kim Schuefftan to Post in September
Beginning Sunday, September 4, 2010, arttextstyle.wordpress.com will feature a series of weekly guest posts by Kim Schuefften. Schuefften has lived in Japan since 1963. A former editor at Kodansha International, he worked on some 100 books there including:
![4641e03ae7a09ff3a8f13210.L._SL500_AA300_.jpg](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870113003?ie=UTF8&tag=arttextstyle-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0870113003"><img border="0" src="no-img-sm._V192198896_SL160_.gif"></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=arttextstyle-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0870113003" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;")
Schuefften is currently a freelance editor and writer. The topics of Schueffetan’s posts will be wide ranging, including popular public art, viewing art in nontraditional settings and clay digging in Japan. “We are delighted to have Kim Schuefftan as our next Guest Blogger,” says Tom Grotta of browngrotta arts. “He’s an exceptional writer and an insightful observer of Asian culture and contemporary arts.”
Between the Lines: Drawings by Craft Artists
Flight by Lissa Hunter
As I noted in an earlier post, we thoroughly enjoyed Different Lines: Drawings by Craft Artists at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, which explores the lesser-known creative abilities of artists known for their work in ceramics, glass, jewelry, wood or textiles. Lissa Hunter’s drawings were a surprise and a delight, Vivian Beer’s and Dan Dailey’s are an interesting variations on the works for which they are better known. We took several photos, but rather than play the spoiler, we thought we’d offer you some images of other artist drawings — you have until February 27, 2011 to see the Fuller exhibit for yourself.
Bad, Bad, Bad
For Norma Minkowitz, whose work is part of the Fuller exhibit, drawing has always been fundamental to her work. ” As a student in 1958 at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City,” she explains,” my primary focus was on drawing with pen and ink, and sketching with pencil. Early in my art, I experimented and worked with various combinations from soft sculpture to large wall hangings that were done in relief, at times utilizing the linear elements of thread. In 1983, I crocheted around a shoe, removed the shoe, and discovered that I had created a transparent form. I felt that I was still drawing, but with fiber instead of pen and ink.”
Our Stall, Tanforan, ca. 1942-1944 / Kay Sekimachi Stocksdale, artist. Drawing : 1 item : graphite ; 24 x 32 cm. Bob Stocksdale and Kay Sekimachi papers, 1937-2004. Archives of American Art.
Kay Sekimachi studied drawing and painting at the Tanforan relocation center (for Persons of Japanese Ancestry) when she was a teenager in World War II. The Smithsonian Archives of Art include this drawing by Sekimachi of Tanforan.
Portfolio by Ed Rossbach
For Ed Rossbach, sketches sometimes presaged new work and other times were incorporated into collages or transferred onto directly onto baskets.
Drawings by Lilla Kulka
Here is Lilla Kulka’s sketch of her works as she envisions them hanging in space as a group installation.
Flower by Lenore Tawney
Lenore Tawney created geometric drawings in the 1960s, that preceded Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings. Years later, Tawney made three-dimensional sculptures of thread in plexiboxes based upon the “Drawings in Air” series.
Dispatches: Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
- Fuller Museum
We finally made our first trek to the Fuller Craft Museum last weekend. A chance to see The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft and Different Lines: Drawings by Craft Artists in a single visit was a part of the attraction. It was the break in the summer heat and a chance to drive up the coast, however, that made the trip irresistible. We grabbed our dog-eared copy of New England’s Favorite Seafood Shacks, by Elizabeth Bougerol and we were off. First stop, Harbourside Lobstermania in East Greenwich, Rhode Island for fried clams and a lobster club. Tom, the fried clam connoisseur, rated the fry batter appropriately light and rated the proportion of belly clams high. We left well fueled for more cultural pursuits.
Detail of Anxiety by Shaun Bullens and Memories of Reading by Tim Tate
Lawrence LaBianca and Lia Cook at the Fuller Museum
The Museum’s setting is tranquil, on 22 wooded acres on the edge of Upper Porter’s Pond. The galleries are housed in a large (21,000 square feet) attractive contemporary building. As you walk between the larger exhibition spaces, art can be seen indoors and out. More than 130 ceramic fish from Nancy Train Smith’s Migration populate the courtyard moat and the adjacent pond (through October 31st).
Caravan by John Garrett
John Garrett’s multilayered Caravan, fills a large wall in one passageway. Inspired by textiles created by the nomadic peoples of the Middle East and West Africa, the installation is made of everything from LPs and buttons to crushed aluminum cans and sports trading cards (through March 27, 2011). Mariko Kusumoto’s extraordinary metal sculptures, which feature myriad doors and drawers and moving parts, was visible from the Museum’s gift shop (Mariko Kusumoto: Unfolding Stories), but needed to be examined up close to truly be appreciated. And in another passageway, furniture from the permanent collection is displayed (through September 26th). Importantly, the contents of the main galleries did not disappoint. For glass fans, there’s a large grouping of Josh Simpson’s kaleidoscopic works (through November 28th) and the drawing exhibition offers interesting glimpses into several artists’ varied abilities (through February 27, 2011) (more on that in an upcoming post). The highlight, however, was The New Materiality, curated by Fo Wilson, which features 16 artists, “working within established craft disciplines or with traditional craft materials who are treading compelling territory between their mediums and emergent technologies” (through February 6, 2011). From Lia Cook, an early adopter of the digital Jacquard loom, there are digital portraits, though Wilson asks, if Cook is trying to take us somewhere beyond textile or portrait, somewhere “where the textile itself takes on an added subjectivity?” In Anxiety, Shaun Bullens uses a virtual parakeet in combination with two pieces of elegantly rendered furniture to address issues of freedom and personal space. By incorporating video of rolling tree trunks into a wooden table, in Table I: Murmur, E.G. Crichton and Susan Working ask viewers not to take for granted the living materials that become functional objects in our homes. There is much more: Tim Tate’s reflection on the obsolescence of books and Brian Boldon’s glass works that confound the viewer’s perception and a smart catalog. The result is a thought-provoking grouping that avoids any sense of the gimmickry that sometimes accompanies works that claim to integrate technology but in fact include it as no more than embellishment.
The Place in Guilford, CT
The Museum is 30 minutes out of Boston; 4.5 hours from New York and Newark; 3.5 hours from southern Connecticut. For us there was also a stop at Ward’s Berry Farm just up the road in Sharon, Massachusetts and, not to be missed, The Place, in Guilford, Connecticut for roasted clams, mussels and corn for dinner. All well worth the trip.
Technorati Tags: Museums
Who Said What: Gregory Cerio
In the summer 2010 issue of Modern, Editor Gregory Cerio, makes an interesting observation about work at SOFA (the Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art exposition) and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Design Triennial. In Surprised by Sincerity, Cerio admits that he was skeptical of both (despite some fine pieces at the first SOFA he attended, “a voice in the back of my mind kept whispering words like ‘macrame’ and ‘patchouli oil’ “), but writes that his “travels through the leafy glades of the high-end design market have forced a reassessment.” At “fashionable fairs” and “tony galleries” he has seen works “done with a smirk, or of design by irony.” Cerio says that he has to come to realize that at SOFA and the Cooper-Hewitt, by contrast,”they are presenting work made with honesty and conviction.” To read the entire editorial, get a copy of Modern at http://www.idealmodern.com/2009/11/modern-magazine-is-available-at-below.html.
Artist News: Yasuhisa Kohyama
Yasuhisa Kohyama Ceramics, photo by Tom Grotta
Among the artists whose work browngrotta arts will feature at SOFA West 2010 in Santa Fe this July 7th-11th is ceramicist, Yasuhisa Kohyama of Japan. Kohyama, a renowned Shigaraki potter who uses ancient techniques to explore new forms, gained widespread attention in Japan in the 60s when he built one of the first anagama kilns since medieval times. The Tokyo exhibition of works from the first firing of the anagama created widespread interest in Kohyama’s work, with famous potters such as Shoji Hamada visiting the exhibition. Collectors and museums were quick to acquire his works, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Gardiner Museum of Art in Toronto, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and Craft in Hamburg and the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Shiga, Japan.
Kohyama’s work graces the cover of Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century
collectors Alice and Halsey North and curator Joe Earle.
SAI by Yasuhisa Kohyama, photo by Ikko Nagano
“…[F]orm is the aspect of Kohyama’s work that most impresses the viewer,” Robert Yellin wrote in the Japan Times. “Some pieces are curled up slabs with an ‘inner sanctum.’ Others are broad expanses with wavy sides where their creator sliced them like a wedge of cheese. In these pieces we can see the radiance of Shigaraki clay: one side pitted with quartz stones, the other face matte, sharkskin-textured. A few do balancing acts, looking as if they might topple over at any time; others resemble clay wings, in which we can ‘feel’ the wind. His sake flasks are in a kamo-dokkuri (duck form), although they actually look more like turtles. They also make the most fabulous ‘tok-tok-tok’ sound when sake is poured from them, and as any sake vessel connoisseur knows, such an accent is of utmost importance.
The artist will attend the opening of SOFA West 2010 on July 7th.
Technorati Tags:
Yasuhisa Kohyama, Japanese Pottery, Shigaraki potter, SOFA West
Artist News: Randy Walker
browngrotta arts is excited to present the work of sculptor Randy Walker at SOFA West 2010. Walker, who studied architecture, is known for his large-scale commissions using fiber and found objects to explore wrapped and woven three-dimensional space.
Shimmer Frames by Randy Walker
His most recent public artwork, Woven Olla, was unveiled in Santa Fe on June 26th. The City of Santa Fe Arts Commission, in collaboration with the Santa Fe Public Library and New Mexico Arts, a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, commissioned Walker in 2008 to create the three-dimensional, suspended steel and fiber artwork to hang under the main exterior entry canopy of the Southside Branch Library. The sculpture references a traditional Pueblo water jar, or olla, and reinterprets it on a scale appropriate to the community and the Library. Woven Olla marks the entry as a gathering place. The piece is an analogy for the Library as a container of knowledge, a resource no less precious than water.
Construction and shipping of Randy Walker’s “Woven Olla” to Santa Fe
Walker’s work is found in public and private collections around the country, including in Minneapolis, St. Louis and Connecticut. He was a recipient of a Pollock Krasner grant in 2008. In creating his work, the artist seeks out or constructs frameworks that act as looms. These frameworks can be found in objects like saw or they can be architectural spaces. In Saw Piece No. 4 (Autumn), which is featured on the cover of the Summer issue of The Journal of Wealth Management, a salvaged bucksaw creates the armature for a web of nylon thread.
“I am ceaselessly fascinated by the possibilities posed by a single strand of thread held in tension,” Walker explains. “My work straddles precariously on several boundaries: solidity and transparency, structural stability and collapse, visibility and invisibility. I strive to create work that primarily engages our sense of sight by contemplating how light can define structure, surface and color.”
Walker’s dramatic Shimmer Frames, a series of five pieces each 6 feet tall, will grace the entrance at SOFA West 2010.
Technorati Tags: Randy Walker, Santa Fe Public Art, Santa Fe Public Library, Public Art
Exhibit News: Opportunities to see the work of artists represented by browngrotta arts abound this summer from New York to New Jersey to the Netherlands
Information Revisited: the Encyclopedia Britannica Project
Belskie Museum of Art & Science
280 High St
Closter, New Jersey 07624201.768.0286
Museum hours – Sat and Sun 1-5; other times by appointment
Wendy Wahl Detail
extended through August 1st, 2010
Thirty-one international artists, including Wendy Wahl (US), transform books of words into works of art.
Holland Paper Biennial 2010
Museum Rijswijk
Herenstraat 67
2282 BR Rijswijk
070.390.36.17
CODA Apeldoorn
Vosselmanstraat 2997311 CL Apeldoorn055.526.84.00
http://www.museumryswyk.nl/hpb2010/hpb2010en.html
Noriko Takamiya Detail
from June 8th through September 12, 2010
The 2010 Holland Paper Biennial is an exhibition of work by international paper artists taking place in two museums. A special selection of papers and books will be added to the usual range of products in the museum shop for the duration of the exhibition in Museum Rijswijk. The traditional paper fair will be held in the courtyard at the front of Museum Rijswijk and in the Oude Kerk (Old Church) opposite on Sunday September 12th. Jewellry and collage made of paper get special attention at this biennial. Closely related to these jewellery pieces, is the work of Noriko Takamiya (Japan). Using the traditional Japanese craft of basketry as her starting point, she develops new forms and techniques. She winds layers of thin strips of paper around each other, interweaving them into Escher-like objects. Three artists, Desiree de Baar (the Netherlands), Christophe Piallat (US) and Birgit Knoechl (Germany), have been asked to create installations using the dramatic architecture of the CODA building.
The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft
Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street
Brockton, MA 02301
508.588.6000
Lawrence LaBianca Detail
through February 6, 2011
Curated by Fo Wilson, this exhibition steps beyond the boundaries that currently exist among technology, art, and craft. The New Materiality looks at a growing development in the United States toward the use of digital technologies as a new material and means of expression in craft. Contributing artists include: Wendy Maruyama (San Diego, CA), Nathalie Mieback (Brookline, MA), Brian Boldon (Minneapolis,MA), Shaun Bullens and Cat Mazza (Providence, RI), Sonya Clark (Richmond, VA), Lia Cook (Berkeley, CA), Susan Working (Snowmass Village,CO), Mike and Maaike, E.G. Crichton, Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca (San Francisco, CA), Christy Matson (Chicago, IL), Tim Tate (Mt. Rainier, WA), and Mark Zirpel (Seattle, WA).
(Re) Fashioning Fiber
Green Spaces NY
394 Broadway, 5th Flr
New York, NY 10013
646.783.8616
Ceca Georgieva Detail
through August 13, 2010
Curated by environmental artist Abigail Doan, the works in this exhibit offer up new ways of thinking about “fiber” as a basis for how we might (re)fashion our lives, our patterns of consumption, and our personal style. Among the Invited artists and designers include: Abigail Doan, Atefeh Khas, Brece Honeycutt, Abigail McEnroe, Kaori Yamazaki, Mackenzie Frere, Melissa Kirgan, Meiling Chen, Michelle Vitale Loughlin, Renata Mann, Sibyll Kalff, Tara St. James, Tara Goodarzy, Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard and Ceca Georgieva (Bulgaria), who has creted jewelry of vegatation.
On View: Artists In Residence and Toe River Potters
The Bascom
Atrium and Education Gallery
323 Franklin Road
Highlands, NC 28741
828.526.4949
http://www.thebascom.org/future-exhibitions/5-exhibitions/22-future-exhibitions
Lewis Knauss Detail
from July 24th through August 22, 2010
Artists in Residence: Matt Liddle, printmaker and bookarts; Holly Hanessian, ceramics; Lewis Knauss, fiber; Mira Lehr, mixed media; Tom Turner, ceramist; Phillip Garrett, painter. Toe River Potters: Norm Schulmann, Claudia Dunaway, Ken Sedberry, Mark Peters and Courtney Martin. Also at the Bascom: Stick Works: Patrick Dougherty’s Environmental Sculpture.
Faces & Mazes: Lia Cook
Textile Museum of Canada
55 Centre Avenue (Dundas St. W & University Ave., St. Patrick subway)
Toronto, Ontario
M5G 2H5
Canada
416.599.5321
http://www.textilemuseum.ca/apps/index.cfm?page=exhibition.detail&exhId=311
Lia Cook Detail
through October 17, 2010
Faces & Mazes is part of Person Place Thing, which also features exhibits of the work of David R. Harper and Steven Schofield. Cook, Harper and Schofield make work that is physically demanding and large in scale — wall-sized weavings of children’s and doll’s faces; sculptures of embroidered and taxidermied animals; and massive human figures made of textiles frozen in time. They draw the viewer into woven, embroidered and sewn narratives of nature, identity and history. As the faces in Lia Cook’s weavings fragment, a perceptual shift occurs, moving through a place of transition and ambiguity to reveal the physical, tactile nature of the constructed image.
13th International Triennial of Tapestry, Łódź 2010
Central Museum of Textiles
ul. Piotrkowska 282, 93 – 034
Łódź, Poland
042. 683.26.84
through October 31, 2010
Among the artists invited to participate are Nancy Koenigsberg (US); Aleksandra Stoyanov (Israel) and Anda Klancic (Slovania), whose work was “highly commended: by the interntional jury that includes artist Kyoko Kumai (Japan).
Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection
Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
New York, NY 10019
212.299.7777
http://collections.madmuseum.org/code/emuseum.asp?style=browse¤trecord=1&page=seealso&profile=exhibitions&searchdesc=Current Exhibitions&searchstring=Current/,/greater than/,/0/,/false/,/true&action=searchrequest&s
through September 12, 2010
Intertwined provides an international look at contemporary basket making, offering insight into the evolution of the basket from a useful object to a work of art and challenging the notion of what defines a basket. The exhibition includes more than 70 traditional and non-traditional baskets. Among the artists whose work is included are: Ed Rossbach, Katherine Westphal, Sally Black, Kiyomi Iwata, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Carol Eckert, John McQueen, John Garrett, Ferne Jacobs and Norma Minkowitz.
Newsflash: Eco-Art extended through June 22nd
Eco-Art Installation at the Artifact Design Group
Our current exhibition, Eco-Art: Materials, Recycled, Repurposed and Re-Envisioned at Artifact Design Group, 2 Hollyhock Lane, Wilton, Connecticut, has been extended through June 22, 2010. For more information call Artifact at 203.834.7757 or browngrotta arts at 203.834.0623. Make a day of it and visit The Dressmaker’s Art and Andy Warhol’s Flowers at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich or Tom Molloy at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield through June 13th; assorted exhibits after that.
Eco-Art News: Eco-Site-ings
Environmental aesthetics have come a long way from Birkenstocks and macrame. The web features a wealth of sites that feature ecological conscious design. Here are several we like: HAUTE*NATURE is an eco-guide to creative ideas, art and green products that blend high style with sustainability like the Sit Bag Suitcase chair by maybedesign. http://hautenature.blogspot.com Then there’s treehugger.com the Earth Mother of all eco-sites. The site has regular sections on Design & Architecture, which highlighted Gyöngy Laky’s environmental architecture in 2008. Also a Fashion & Beauty section, which this week covers the (Re)Fashioning Fiber: New Horizons in Environmental 
Art and Fashion exhibition http://abigaildoan.blogspot.com at Green Spaces Gallery, which includes work by Ceca Georgieva and Abigail Doan. You’ll also find eco-news, games, green buying guides and lots of How-Tos. Ranked by the Times Online as one of the 100 Best Blogs of 2009, treehugger.com also offers the occasional odd take on the topic, from the photo essay: Clouds that Look Like Boobs (yeah, these do) to the celebrity report: Football Player Leaves NFL, Starts Interning At a Small Organic Farm to eco-pop quizzes like: Is Your Sex Sustainable? Fair warning You can start out looking for a local place to recycle batteries and find yourself an hour later still engaged. Also enjoyable is http://www.ecouterre.com/about which is devoted to the future of sustainable fashion. It was there that I learned about a “sweat shop” in Paris where you can rent sewing machine time by the hour and sip coffee or tea while you work, got a first glimpse of “vegan style” and learned about the FEED projects great looking Guatemalan ikat totes that provide nutrition for malnourished kids.
Then you may want to bookmark the Sustainability and Contemporary Art blog http://artandsustainability.wordpress.com which aims to cover the deepening relationship between contemporary art and notions of environmental sustainability which can include everything from eco-critique to a report on sustainability summer school. If you want to do more than just read about ecology and art. Then the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Art website http://www.sustainablepractice.org should be your next stop. The Executive Director is Ian Garrett who teaches Sustainability in the Theatre Department at CalArts University.The site covers conferences, grants and exhibitions and offers book suggestions, too.