If you find yourself in Trieste, Italy in the next month, don’t miss Slovenian artist Anda Klancic’s poster installed at via Monte Cengio. From the Gruppo78 press release: The coupling between man and nature is the basis of her thought. The materials that Anda uses in the implementation of her forms – natural fibers, palm bark, in a work of straw that leads to the dictates fiber-art — are as the old folk traditions. But the look against the sky, underlying thoughts and emotions aroused by the wonder of the universe, space / time without dimensions, by which man, reported to the finiteness of our planet, seems overwhelmed. The vortex of the sky, clearly obtained with the aid of computers, also alludes to the frenzy of contemporary life, as a projection on top of our daily convulsion. So in the work of Anda, converges a tumult of feelings, strong feelings, and passions that animate and through her thinking. broadcast in each case a positive impulse for life, love for life, despite its difficulties and contradictions.
The Street/Sky Continuum
Willow Talk
photo by Shannon Tofts
We visited London in May for the Collect show at the Saatchi Gallery. While there, we had a chance to speak with journalist Emma Crichton-Miller about the fiber art field for an article on the state of contemporary basket weaving – not just in the U.K., but also in Europe, the US and elsewhere. The article, Willow Talk, appeared in the July-August 2009 issue of Crafts magazine. and in it, Crichton-Miller offers a positive prognosis for the art of basketry in the U.K. In the article, Crichton-Miller tracks the growing appreciation in the U.K. for basketry as an art form, comparing artists like Ed Rossbach and John McQueen in the U.S., Markku Kosonen in Finland and Shouchiko Tanabe of Japan, with artists like Lizzie Farey of the U.K., Joe Hogan of Ireland and Dail Behennah, Lois Walpole, Shuna Rendel and Mary Butcher of the U.K., for whom recognition has been more recently won. “Basketry, in an artist’s hands, becomes as richly metaphorical as any craft,” Crichton-Miller observes. Listing a series of solo and group exhibits, including East Meets West: Basketry from Japan & Britain and European Baskets, Crichton-Miller predicts that basket-weaving in the U.K., as in America, Europe and Japan, seems ready to leave behind “its hobby status, its nostalgia for the past, to join the contemporary conversation.”