We were thrilled in January when Artsy reported that fiber art is experiencing a resurgence, a trend Artsy expects ” to take hold across the contemporary art world in 2025.” In its “Trends to Watch” item Artsy featured several artists, including Lia Cook, Adela Akers, and Sheila Hicks.  

Shortly after that, American Craft Magazine asked to do a profile on Tom, Rhonda, and browngrotta arts. We are excited that the article, “A World of Fiber,” by Deborah Bishop — out now — gave us the chance to showcase so many of the artists that we promote. We appreciated the care that Deborah Bishop took with all the details and her writing that, “Among the few decades of global and multi-generational fiber arts, browngrotta arts is revered for its beautiful documentation of the craft.”

browngrotta arts got a nice listing in Museums1. 

Our recent exhibition, Japandí Revisited: shared influences and aesthetics, at the Wayne Art Center in Pennsylvania got a nice review in artblog  

A nice photo of works by Ulla-Maija Vikman and Mia Olsson that we loaned to the Garrido Gallery for their exhibition at the Salon Art + Design show in 2023, appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Art & Object.

Meanwhile, artists we work with were getting good coverage for their artistic pursuits and more. Hali Magazine ran a detailed and beautifully photographed article about James Bassler, whose work will be included in our upcoming exhibition, Field Notes: an art survey. In “An artist’s life,” Elaine Phipps explores his work, “within the context of his time and place in the American cultural landscape of the 1950s to the present day.” Phipps tracks the nuances of his growth and development as an artist/weaver, and the expanded world view and deep appreciation of a wide range of historic and ethnographic textile traditions that “transformed his creative process into new working methods.”

In its Fall 2024 issue, Fiber Art Now ran an insightful profile of Dutch Artist Marianne Kemp, “Achieving the Perfect Balance,” by Noelle Foye. Kemp’s work will also be in Field Works at browngrotta arts in May. Foye writes that Kemp has two parts to her weaving process. “There is the creative, poetic side of weaving — the feel, the touch, the colors. Then there is the technical side, which involves the mechanical challenges of manipulating the loom to translate the creative vision into reality.”

The magazine also headlined Nancy Koenigsberg’s work, Copper Patches, in its Summer 2024 issue.

An article in the Fall 2024/Winter 2025 issue of basketry+ Magazine looked back at the first 10 years of the National Basketry Organization, illustrated with work by Jennifer Falck Linssen, Kari Lønning, and Nancy Moore Bess. Linssen’s work will be included in Field Notes.

Norma Minkowitz’s achievements as an athlete and an artist were described in “Runner’s World” by Sara Gaynes Levy, in the January 2025 issue of Westport Lifestyle. Levy writes, “The world-record mile time for a woman aged 85-89 is nine minutes, 45 seconds, 45 tenths of a second. And it belongs to Westport resident, Norma Minkowitz, 87.” The article notes that Minkowitz is a world-renowned artist as well whose work is in 35 museum collections worldwide. “There’s a connection between running and art the way I do it,” the article quotes Minkowitz as saying. “My work is in fiber, and the process is to do this crochet stitch over and over. It’s very repetitive, as is running.” Minkowitz’s work will be included in Field Notes at browngrotta arts.

Last, but not at all least, the passing of Hiroyuki Shindo, an exceptional indigo artist from Japan was noted by in the selvedge blog,”Lives Well-Lived: Horoyuki Shindo (1941-2024).” 

He was also remembered in Text, the Textile Society Magazine. Both remembrances were written by Jenny Balfour-Paul and each featured images of Shindo and his work by Tom Grotta.  

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Sara Brennan in both American Craft and Selvedge Magazines this month

Viewing Sara Brennan’s tapestries is to be immersed in a land- or skyscape. Brennan’s evocative weavings are featured in two different magazines this month, selvedge published in the UK and American Craft in the US. In selvedge, in “View,” Issue 73, pp. 92-93, Lesley Millar writes about the layering of history in Brennan’s tapestries, “At the centre of her work there is a stillness and a sense of being held, which is an echo of the experience at the centre of an ancient forest.” Millar notes that the artist uses a traditional Gobelin high warp technique which links her tapestries to the Middle Ages. She also uses yarns she has been given, old yarns, sometimes yarns she had inherited from her father’s studio in Edinburgh. Brennan admits to obsessing about the surface in her tapestries, the qualities of a specific yarn. “The surface texture,” Millar writes, “slows down our gaze through a series of subtle, textured intervals forming a visual interplay between our eye and the sensuality of the surface.”

American Craft and Selvedge Magazine Covers

The article in American Craft, December/January 2017, by editor in chief, Monica Moses is in a section called “Collective Unconscious: On the Horizon,” pp. 36-37, features five artists, includling Brennan, whose work envisions where the sky and land meet. Brennan reduces the landscape to its essence, “earth and sky, demarcated by horizon.”

Linen Tapestry with Broken Grey Line by Sara Brennan, linen, wool, and cotton, 42.5″ x 42″, 2014

Brennan’s work can be seen at browngrotta.com and, through January 2017, in Here and Now a touring exhibition curated by the UK’s National Centre for Craft and Design of contemporary British tapestry artists and weavers from Australia, Norway, Latvia, Japan and the USA. For more information visit: http://www.nationalcraftanddesign.org.uk.

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The last couple of months have seen browngrotta arts and the artists whose work we represent make the news in periodicals online and around the world.  Lia Cook’s work graced the cover of the December 2010 issue of Textil Forum, published in Germany, as part of a fascinating article by the artist, “An investigation: Woven Faces and Neuroscience”
http://www.
exacteditions.com/
exact/browse/573/
911/7936/2/44?dps=on (more on that project in an upcoming post).The January issue of the always striking online magazine Hand/Eye included a piece on our singular business/life model, “Living with Art,” by artist and writer Scott Rothstein

http://handeyemagazine.com/content/browngrotta-arts. The related slideshow features dozen of art works on display in our barn/gallery/home. (You can read more by Scott Rothstein on his blog, http://artfoundout.blogspot.com, in American Craft magazine and elsewhere.) Meanwhile, the January/February of the UK Crafts magazine includes images from Lizzie Farey’s solo exhibition at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/crafts-magazine/latest-issue.

The January issue of Artist Magazine from Taiwan has a several-page article about Norie Hatakeyama by Ming-Whe Liou, with photos by Tom Grotta. We can’t tell you what it says — but it looks good. http://www.artist-magazine.com.
Last, but certainly not least, the cover of the Spring 2011 issue
of The Journal of Wealth Management, features Tom Grotta’s photo
of Christine Joy’s willow sculpture, Bundle
https://www.pm-research.com.

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