Dopamine: The Brain’s “Love” Chemical Shell
The British neurobiologist Semir Zeki at University College London coined the term neuroaesthetics to define the intersection of brain and art. An interdisciplinary field, it’s a cognitive neuroscience that investigates the biological and neural foundations of aesthetic experiences, specifically how the brain perceives, processes, and responds to beauty, art, and creative works. It bridges psychology, art, and neuroscience to understand why certain sensory experiences trigger pleasure, emotion, and deep engagement.

One of the most striking findings in neuroaesthetics comes from Zeki’s brain imaging studies that showed that when people look at artworks they find beautiful, the same reward centers of the brain become active as when they experience romantic love. In both cases, there’s a rush of dopamine, the neurotransmitter tied to pleasure and desire. 

This means that staring at a Botticelli masterpiece or the unicorn tapestries or a breathtaking abstract isn’t just emotionally moving—it’s biochemically rewarding in a way that overlaps with the experience of being in love.

The Reward System and Emotional Engagement
When we fall for someone, multiple systems in the brain fire in concert: reward pathways, emotion centers, and memory circuits. Research suggests that engaging with art activates many of these same networks. Dopamine release, increased blood flow in pleasure-related areas, and even physiological reactions like relaxed breathing or a racing heart are all part of the picture. 

This isn’t just about liking something—it’s about deep emotional resonance. The brain’s reward system doesn’t discriminate between stimuli coming from a beloved person or a powerful work of art. That’s why great art can make us feel “high” or euphoric, much like early love does.

Another key aspect of neuroaesthetics is the investigation of how specific elements of art, such as symmetry, color, and composition, influence aesthetic judgments. For example, studies have found that symmetrical patterns are often perceived as more attractive, likely due to the brain’s preference for order and predictability. Similarly, color and contrast have been shown to significantly impact aesthetic preferences and emotional responses.

Emotion, Empathy, and the Social Brain
But neuroscience doesn’t stop at pleasure. Recent studies show that art activates regions associated with empathy and social cognition, the same areas involved when we form emotional bonds with others. Art draws us into imagined worlds, invites us to feel with its subjects, and resonates with our own personal memories and emotions. 

This might explain why a painting depicting a glance or a gesture can evoke feelings of connection, longing, or even heartbreak—mirroring the emotional investment we experience in real relationships.

Mirror Neurons: Feeling What We See
One fascinating mechanism behind this effect is the role of mirror neurons. These neurons fire not only when we perform an action, but when we observe an action. That means when we watch a figure in a painting weeping or embracing, parts of our brain simulate the experience—almost as if we were there ourselves. 

This neural mirroring deepens our emotional engagement and helps explain why art can evoke love-like responses: it’s not just cognitive—our bodies participate, too.

The Aesthetic and the Romantic: A Shared Neural Landscape
Love is complex—more than chemistry, it’s a neurobiological symphony involving reward, memory, emotion, and social cognition. What’s remarkable is how closely this symphony mirrors the neural response to intense aesthetic experience.

Art connects. It rewards. It moves us. And if the next time poetry makes your chest tighten or a sculpture catches your breath, you feel that all-too-familiar flutter—you’re not imagining it. Your brain might just be engaging in its own kind of romance.

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Residencies are prized by artists — they offer dedicated time, space, and resources for artists to focus on their creative work, often in a novel and inspiring environment.  “[B]y inserting artists into a different environment, a residency lifts them out of their ordinary routines and obligations, conferring new perspectives as a result, and potentially fostering new creative works.” (Katy Wellesley Wesley, “Sweet retreats: everything you need to know about artist residencies,” The Art Newspaper, May 27, 2022.)  Specifically, they offer time and space — dedicated periods free from daily distractions, allowing artists to immerse themselves in their work, experiment with new ideas, and develop their practice; new environments — Living and working in a new place can spark creativity and offer fresh perspectives. financial support — Residencies can provide financial assistance making it easier for artists to focus on their work without financial strain; professional development — Some residencies offer opportunities for mentorship, workshops, and networking; and opportunities to experiment and innovate — the freedom and resources of a residency can encourage artists to take creative risks, explore new mediums, and push the boundaries of their artistic practice.

Many of the artists who work with browngrotta arts have used residencies for just these purposes — to explore, experiment and engage in a new environment. Sue Lawty of the UK took part in the highly selective International Artists Studio Programme In Sweden (IASPIS). Occupying nine visual art studios + a dance studio in an old tobacco factory in Södermalm, Stockholm, a 50/50 bunch of diverse Swedish and International practitioners met, lived and worked alongside each other for three wonderful creative months. “I approached the opportunity with a completely open mind –– no agenda –– simply to be available to what Sweden had to offer and to my response to that,” Lawty says. “I found myself standing back from my work, an observer, assessing.” The north northern hemisphere had its effect, “SO good and now lodged deep in my soul …” In the west she found inspiration in: “keen winds and the intense low sunglow of the winter solstice across icy slabs of rock – visceral experiences of living within feet of the ocean on the tiny outcrop island of Rörö at the north of the Gothenburg archipelago.” In the east: “bright/ low/north light/ greys and blues, textures of snow/ ice/ water/snörök and the crumpled frozen Baltic Sea stretching towards the horizon.”

Location impacted Neha Puri Dhir, too, who travelled from India to Latvia for a residency at the Mark Rothko Art Centre. In her case it was aesthetic proximity and contact with the natural environment. What Dhir realized studying in the environs of the legendary artist was that Rothko was expressing essential human emotions that are invariably layered and multifaceted like his work. “The layering of colors and mixing of oil and egg-based paints for expression — have all left an indelible mark on my art,” she says. Dhir’s resist-dyeing based art practice also involves extensive interplay of colors brought in by layering and multiple levels of dyeing, but in her case the genesis is one thought or emotion, which has been triggered by some experience or conversance.  “The works that I created at the Mark Rothko Art Centre were solely influenced by the environment, the emotions which were triggered by the abundance of maple leaves in the glorious fall.”

“The time we spend in a residency always adds up to a new result,” Baiba Osite says. Osite travelled from Latvia to the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós. The Centre has extensive facilities: a weaving room with looms and a professional specialist who helps residents realize ideas, a large workshop space with tables and a beautiful view of the sea, another workshop space in a smaller building across the yard, with yarn-dyeing capabilities, where digital looms are located. Osite pursued her own projects, offered a workshop on silk painting to local artists, and traveled to northern Iceland and Reykjavik. “The Icelandic landscape has not directly influenced my work. But the harsh northern nature of Iceland with its open spaces, mountains, sea and strong winds left a deep impression.” It’s trite, but true, she concludes, travel broadens horizons.

For Christine Joy, it was less a change of surroundings than the “quiet and uninterrupted time to think and work and weave” that she found at a solitary residency in Willow Creek, Montana. “I am still trying to capture the movement of nature,” she says. There were two pieces she worked on while there. “I think just getting out of my studio and looking at them in a new place and with new perspective helped me see the direction they needed to go. I really found the direction for 3 Circles at Willow Creek. I love the movement it developed. Now it is like weaving on a big knot and trying not to lose the looseness.”

Misako Nakahira found her residency an opportunity to learn new techniques. “Last year, I stayed in Melbourne, Australia, as an artist-in-residence at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. ATW is one of the leading tapestry studios in Australia, and I became deeply interested in their work,” she says. “I was particularly influenced by their high level of technique and use of color. Since returning to Japan, I have been incorporating the methods I learned from them into my own work.” 

During  the month of February, María Dávila and Eduardo Portillo were Artists in Residence at the Glass Pavilion of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. The Museum invites artists who work in other mediums to experiment in glass. “We had an extraordinary time getting to know a fascinating material and amazing process,” the artists wrote. “We had the support from great artists and specialists of the Glass Pavilion team and we were able to make some pieces that link our textile practice and glass.”

Paul Furneaux’s experience underscores how impactful a residency can be. He ventured north from Scotland to Norway, near Stavanger and the work that resulted transformed his art practice. In Norway, he had a pivotal day. “I was surrounded by huge fjords, full of magic, with colors that were intensified by rich sunlight. I observed the immense powerful nature that surrounded me, looking from one side of an enormous fjord to the other and down towards the sea,” he says. “That evening, I worked on a small series of prints, simple prints about that physical, yet abstract step of land into sea; I worked and worked, slightly frantic and frustrated.  It was two o’clock in the morning and I decided to wrap and paste one of the small prints around the oval date box from which I had been snacking. I went to bed exhausted but early in the morning I ate more dates for breakfast so that I could wrap another print around another box. There I found a conceptual shift in my work.” Furneaux returned to Scotland and decided to try to work full time as an artist and began to wrap other objects in mokuhanga (Japanese wood block prints) in earnest. “The immense overpowering fjords, the shadow casting and echoing of one side of the fjord to the other, was what I was trying to reflect in this new artistic dialogue,” Furneaux says.

“A new beginning, a unique voice, an undiscovered method,” what Paul Furneaux found in his residency aptly summarizes the appealing potential of an artist’s residency.

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Moon Landing: an immersive textile and musical collaboration
Through August 31, 2025
Canterbury Cathedral
Cathedral House 
11 The Precincts
Canterbury, CT1 2EH
United Kingdom
https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/whats-on/events/moon-landing

This summer, the medieval splendour of Canterbury Cathedral will complement a stunning free-to-view modern art installation inspired by the little-known story of the women who wove the integrated computer circuits and memory cores which enabled the 1969 moon landing. The breathtaking installation moon landing – a duo work created by British textile artist and designer of woven textiles, Margo Selby, and award-winning composer, Helen Caddick – comprises a vibrant 16-meter hand-woven textile suspended from the ceiling near the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel, created in response to the moon landing score, an original musical piece scored for strings. It is a celebration of the mathematical and technical possibilities of weaving and the crossovers of pattern, tone and rhythm found in both music and woven textiles.

Digital Weaving Norway
From August 12 – 15, 2025
Solgaard Skog 132, 1599 
Moss, Norway
https://digitalweaving.no

Lia Cook’s work will be featured in the exhibition of Digital Weaving – Innovation Through Pixels in Norway — a conference and exhibition celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the TC-Looms with Digital Weaving Norway (August 12–15). 

Banners of History: An Exhibition of Original Revolutionary War Flags
Through August 10, 2025
Museum of American Revolution
101 South Third Street
Philadelphia, PA
https://www.amrevmuseum.org/exhibits/banners-of-liberty-an-exhibition-of-original-revolutionary-war-flag

A significant use of fiber throughout the world is in the creation of flags. In preparation for the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States, the Museum of the American Revolutionary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has mounted an expansive exhibition of flags from the early part of the Nation’s history. The exhibition, dispalyed in the Museum’s first-floor Patriots Gallery, features the largest gathering of rare and significant Revolutionary War flags in more than two centuries. This one you see online!

Willow Woven
Through August 6, 2025
Studio Gallery
Hennebery Eddy Architects’
109 N Rouse 
Bozeman, MT
https://downtownbozeman.org/summer-art-walks

Willow Woven, by Christine Joy, part of Bozeman, Montana’s Art Walk is on view in the window of Hennebery Eddy Architects’ Studio Gallery until August 6th, 2025.

On public display in the studio’s storefront window, the gallery is about making connections — with neighbors, friends, clients, and colleagues. The alternating exhibits at the Studio Gallery feature curated staff and visiting artist displays that spark new ideas and promote a shared sense of place.

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread
Through February 1, 2026
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives (BAMPFA)
215 Center Street 
Berkeley, CA
https://bampfa.org/program/lee-shinja-drawing-thread

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread at BAMPFA in Berkeley, California is the first North American survey of the captivating work of the under-recognized Korean artist Lee ShinJa (b. 1930, Uljin, South Korea; lives and works in Seoul). Lee ShinJa worked throughout the five decades of contemporary fiber arts’ history, from the 1950s to the early 2000s, the exhibition showcases the artist’s bold innovations in fiber through 40 monumental textile works, woven maquettes, and preparatory sketches. Like artists from Eastern Europe working in that time period, Lee’s artworks from the 1950s incorporate everyday objects and found materials, such as grain sacks, mosquito nets, and domestic wallpaper; notably, she used yarn salvaged from secondhand sweaters and bedding to make her earliest tapestries

Kunstbygningen/Vrå Udstillingen
Museum for Contemporary Art in North-Jylland
Højskolevej 3A
9760 Vrå, Denmark
Through July 27 – August 31, 2026
https://www.kunstbygningenvraa.dk/vraa-udstillingen]

Jane Balsgaard will hang a several-part relief in an exhibition at the Vrå-Udstilligen in North Jylland, Denmark through August 31st. The opening party is July 26 at 2:00 pm. The exhibition is supported by the Danish State Art Foundation.

Liz Collins: Motherlode
Through January 11, 2026
RISD Museum
20 North Main Street
Providence, RI
https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/liz-collins

On July 19, the RISD Museum will open the first U.S. survey of artist Liz Collins’ genre-defying work. As the Museum explains, “For more than three decades, Collins has moved fluidly among the realms of fine art, fashion, and design, pushing material and technical boundaries to create works that evoke a depth of emotion, energy, and individual expression. The exhibition, titled Liz Collins: Motherlode, will feature more than 80 objects, capturing for the first time the full arc of Collins’ career from the 1980s to the present day. Motherlode includes important examples of her immersive textile installations and wallworks, intricate and monumental woven hangings, fashion, needlework, drawings, performance documentation, and ephemera. In keeping with the RISD Museum’s commitment to centering makers and broadening perspectives, the exhibition vividly showcases the trailblazing nature of Collins’ work as well as the artist’s deep commitment to illuminating Queer feminist creative practice and environmental activism.” Liz Collins: Motherlode will remain on view at RISD Museum through January 11, 2026. The exhibition is curated by Kate Irvin, RISD Museum’s department head and curator of costume and textiles.

State Fair: Growing American Craft
August 22 – September 7, 2026
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC
https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/state-fairs

Polly Adams Sutton‘s work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and will be featured in the Smithsonian’s upcoming exhibition, State Fair: Growing American Craft, which includes exceptional examples of American craft, highlighting personal stories and regional and cultural traditions.

We Will Sing
Through November 2, 2025
1A Aldermanbury
Bradford, UK
https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/we-will-sing

We Will Sing is a work of memory and imagining. Drawing on the origins of the textile processes that once filled the huge Salts Mill textile works built in 1853, a site-responsive installation by Ann Hamilton weaves together voice, song and printed word in a material surround made from raw and woven wool sourced from local textile companies H Dawson, based at Salts Mill, and William Halstead, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025. We Will Sing is the first major work created by Hamilton in the UK for more than 30 years, and the first time all three spaces on the vast top floor of Salts Mill have been combined to present a single artwork. (We’ve been big fans of Hamilton’s immersive installations since she transformed our neighborhood museum, the Aldrich, in the 1990s.)

Human Affects
Through October 4, 2025
Visions Museum of Textile Art
2825 Dewey Road
Suite 100
San Diego, CA
https://vmota.org/human-affects

Human Affects is a one-person exhibition at the Visions Museum of Textile Art featuring work by 
Laura Foster Nicholson. From 2020-2023, Nicholson made three related bodies of work about climate change: flooding in Venice, container ships, and the landscape and architecture of industrial agriculture and energy. A selected grouping of these themes comprises the exhibition at VMOTA, plus a few that focus more on the hope of renewable energy, careful farming, and a less destructive way of life.

And continuing:

Olga de Amaral
Through October 12, 2026
Institute of Contemporary Art
61 NE 41st Street
Miami, FL
https://icamiami.org/exhibition/olga-de-amaral

ICA Miami, in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, presents a major retrospective of the work of Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, bringing together more than 50 works from six decades, and featuring recent and historical examples, some of which have never been presented outside of her home country.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
Through September 2, 2025
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
San Francisco, CA 
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/ruth-asawa-retrospective

This first posthumous retrospective presents the full range of Ruth Asawa’s work and its inspirations over six decades of her career. As an artist, Asawa forged a groundbreaking practice through her ceaseless exploration of materials and forms.

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
September 13, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
https://press.moma.org/exhibition/woven-histories

An in-depth exhibition featuring 150 works that delves into the dynamic intersections between weaving and abstraction.

Magdalena Abakanowicz – Everything is made of fiber
Through August 23, 2025
TextielMuseum
Goirkestraat 96
5046 GN Tilburg, the Netherlands
https://textielmuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/Abakanowicz

The complete story of Abakanowicz’s work, life and legacy will be told at three locations in Brabant this spring. Abakanowicz was fascinated by the texture of textiles and the structure of natural fibres. She used this fascination as a basis for her weavings, but also to depict the human body.

Almost too many to choose from — fiber art continues its time in the spotlight!

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In recapping those intriguing offerings, we begin with Keiji Nio’s captivating Cat’s Eyes. Nio is captivated by these enigmatic animals. “When I suddenly feel a gaze and turn my eyes, I sometimes find a cat staring intently at me,” he says. “Especially quiet cats, who do not meow much, whooften keep their expression unchanged, gazing without blinking, as if trying to convey something unknowable. When I return the gaze, there are moments when we slowly exchange blinks.” Nio sought to confront his memories and emotional response to cats through images he silk-screened onto aramid fabric, with which he created a wall work edged in sand.

Polly Barton finds solace in following the thread, which she calls “a kind of wayfinding.” She creates a surface to rub color in a variety of forms; dye, pigment, pastel, ink. “Working at the loom where my threads are in order and my fingers work with what feels real, chaos is temporarily kept at bay,” she says. No Strings Attached began as a small watercolor sketch — a memory of petroglyphs — field notes from the past carved into basalt stones found while hiking paths in canyons. “My sketch,” she says,”like a voice from the past, beckoned to be woven as a fluid path forward into our spinning world. In my studio, Sheryl Crow sings: ‘Everyday is a winding road.I get a little bit closer … to what is really real.’

Peak in the Clouds, is the first of a short series of “landforms,” that Christine Joy started in 2022 when she was on Washington Island, Wisconsin at a willow-gathering retreat. (You can read more about Joy’s willow-gatherine process in an earlier arttextstyle post.) She picked up the rock on the shores of Lake Superior noting that it was very different rock there than in Montana where she lives. “It was so black, sparkly, and geometric with a sharp point,” she says. “It occurred to me that rocks are just small landscapes. I started weaving around the rock during the retreat. Then, I let it sit for over a year; I just didn’t have the right color willow to work on it.” Eventually, she added more yellow. “I really like the color, like sunset in the clouds. The yellow changes colors slowly as it dries, losing some of its vibrancy, but blending better with the brown willow.” 

Caroline Bartlett explores the historical, social, and cultural associations of textiles, their significance in relation to touch and their ability to trigger memory, in her work. She Imprints, stitches, erases, and reworks cloth, folding and unfolding, and often integrating textiles with other media such as porcelain. Her new work, Juncture, she says, “suggests ‘a point of time, especially one made critical or important by a concurrence of circumstances’ while disjuncture suggests ‘a disconnection between two things. The language of textiles speaks of entanglements and connectivity, of continuity and severance, and pink might be considered as a field for nurture. Blocks of intersecting color are revealed through a manipulated surface and hold firm with concepts of control. Simultaneously, they become squeezed and threads displaced as notions of old certainties and understandings fall away. The whole becomes a metaphor for the personal or for the wider social, ecological, and political sphere.”

Thanks again to all the artists we work with who continually send us such marvelous work. Keep watching; we’re committed to showing and sharing more art online and in person.

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The holiday season is upon us. Beginning with Diwali, winding its way through Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, and probably others, we’ll arrive at the promise of a New Year. We wish you many celebrations, satisfying meet-ups with family and friends, and moments of cozy comfort and joy over the next few weeks.

Many of those festivities will include food and drink and maybe games and they’ll take place around a table. On many of those tables there will be a centerpiece of some kind — flowers, candles, and often a work of art. In that spirit, we present several artworks that can grace a a table as well as a pedestal or shelf.

A browngrotta arts, we’ve been considering the transformative power of objects all Fall, their capacity to invoke memory and meaning. Our An Abundance of Objects exhibition can be seen in a Viewing Room on Artsy beginning November 22nd. Like those in The Domestic Plane: a New Perspective on Tabletop Art at the Aldrich Museum in 2019, the items in Abundance celebrate “the hand as means of creation, a formal frame of reference, and for the viewer, a source of both delight and tension …” And sometimes, they enhance our lives just by being beautiful. We wish you a season of as much beauty as you can muster.

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1) Christine Joy and Sara Mast: Passage 
Yellowstone Art Museum 
Billings, MT 
through July 16, 2023

https://www.artmuseum.org/project/christine-joy-and-sara-mast-passage/

Christine Joy and Sara Mast explorethe mystery of nature through the transformation of materials, texture, and form.

The large, twisted willow forms by Christine Joy are the result of a rhythmic process beginning with the hunt and harvest of willow in autumn — followed by sorting, bunding, and storing. Joy began rug braiding in the 1970s. Over time, Joy moved on from rug braiding, leading her to a period of experimentation, and ultimately to reclaiming and reorienting her love of gathering and process with willow, grounding her to the earth. Sara Mast, a descendant of miners from Cornwall, England, resides on the site of Storrs, Montana, an early Anaconda Company mining town. Today, she incorporates PEM (plasma enhanced melter) glass into her work. PEM is a byproduct of plasma gasification, an advanced waste management technology that turns any kind of trash into inert, non-toxic glass and clean fuels. Mast writes, “PEM glass is not just another art material, but represents a profound paradigm shift in using technology to heal our environmental dilemma by keeping waste out of landfills and greenhouse gases out of the air. My use of PEM glass is one way I am able to reclaim a healthy relationship with the earth.”

2) International Linen Biennial in Portneuf (BILP)
Heritage sites throughout Deschambault-Grondines 
Quebec, Canada
June 18 – October 1, 2023
https://biennaledulin.com/

Anneke Klein (the Netherlands) Blair Tate (United States of America) Stéphanie Jacques (Belgium), Carole Frève (Québec) will all participate in the upcoming biennial of Linen — the 10th in Portneuf. The biennial will feature two exhibitons; the work of 20 professional artist; 20 emerging artists; multiple mediation activities and a day of converences. 

3) Couples in Craft
Craft in America Museum
Los Angeles, CA
through September 24, 2023
https://www.craftinamerica.org/exhibition/couples-in-craft/

Couples in Craft highlights artist couples that specifically work in fiber and ceramics, either collaboratively or independently. While very different in their physical qualities—malleable and rigid, vegetable and mineral—both media require methodical construction processes that can take years to master. Many of these artist couples met during their formative educational years and thus share a lifelong dedication to each other and to their respective craft. These partners support and inspire each others’ extensive pursuit of mastering materials and continued exploration of their potential. Their intuitive knowledge of process allows for layers of meaning to become integrated into the works as they are made.

Among the artists included in this exhibition are Veralee Bassler and Jim Bassler. Veralee Bassler graduated from the UCLA Art Department with a concentration in ceramics. She shared her passion for creativity, teaching, and ceramics with the students of the Los Angeles School District for 25 years. Jim Bassler graduated from UCLA with an MA in Art in 1968 and later served there as professor and department chair between 1975–2000. Jim, recipient of the American Craft Council 2022 Gold Medal, is a renown weaver whose work adapts ancient Peruvian techniques and explores a range of materials and concepts. Veralee and Jim live and work in Palm Springs, CA.

4) At Own Pace: Włodzimierz Cygan 
7th Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial
Mentzendorff’s House 
Grēcinieku iela 18, Riga, Latvia
through July 27, 2023

https://www.lnmm.lv/en/museum-of-decorative-arts-and-design/news/programme-of-the-7th-riga-international-textile-and-fibre-art-triennial-quo-vadis-139

Baiba Osīte: Exodus
7th Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial
Art Station Dubulti 
Z. Meierovica prospekts 4, 

Jūrmala, Latvia https://www.lnmm.lv/en/museum-of-decorative-arts-and-design/news/programme-of-the-7th-riga-international-textile-and-fibre-art-triennial-quo-vadis-139

The 7th Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial,  QUO VADIS? unites 79 artists from 30 countries who were selected by an international jury from 237 submissions. Responding to the motto of the triennial, QUO VADIS? (Where Are We Going?), the authors, through their works, partake in conversations about the evolution of art and this particular field today as well as global geopolitical and social problems, engaging in self-reflection through the perspective of their time and art form. 

The Triennial features an exciting solo exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Polish guest-artist Włodzimierz Cygan at the Mentzendorff’s House in Riga and one featuring Latvian artist Baiba Osite.

5)  Ferne Jacobs: A Personal World
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art
Claremont, California
through September 24, 2023

https://clmoa.org/exhibit/ferne-jacobs-a-personal-world/

Ferne Jacobs: A Personal World at the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art presents the work of Ferne Jacobs, a pioneer in fiber arts who creates unique three-dimensional sculptural forms using ancient basket-making techniques. Ferne Jacobs: A Personal World features a broad selection of her sculptures as well as books of her psychological drawings and collage diaries. 

6) Jane Balsgaard
Galleriet Hornbæk
Hornbæk, Denmark
Summer 2023

http://xn--galleriethornbk-bmb.dk/category/jane-balsgaard/

Jane Balsgaard’s work is available this summer at Susanne Risom’s Galleriet Hornbæk in Denmark.

7) Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890 – 1980
Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
through July 23, 2023

https://mam.org/exhibitions/scandinavian-design/

Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890–1980 is the first exhibition to explore the extensive design exchanges between the United States and Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland during the 20th century.  It includes works by Helena Hernmarck who moved from Sweden to the US, and Lenore Tawney, who studied with noted Finnish weaver Martta Taipale at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

8) Indigo 
Denver Botanic Garden
York Street Location
Denver, Colorado
July 2 – November 5, 2023 

https://www.botanicgardens.org/exhibits/indigo

Rich and alluring, the striking blue color known as indigo has inspired weavers, dyers, designers, and sculptors across the globe. This exhibition, which  contemporary artists from the United States, Nigeria, Japan and South Korea Includes several works loaned by browngrotta arts  from artists Polly Barton, Eduardo Portillo and Mariá Dávila, Chiyoko Tanaka, Hiroyuki Shindo, and Yeonsoon Chang.

9) Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest
Bard Graduate Center Gallery
New York, New York
through July 9, 2023

https://www.bgc.bard.edu/exhibitions/exhibitions/117/n-a

Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest invites you to explore the world of Navajo weaving. This dynamic gallery and online experience presents never-before-seen textiles created by Diné artists. These historic blankets, garments, and rugs from the American Museum of Natural History are situated alongside contemporary works by Diné weavers and visual artists, such as Barbara Teller Ornelas and Lynda Teller Pete.

10) Expressing Cloths: Oceanian Modeling and Shigeki Fukumoto/Shigeko Fukumoto
Aomori Contemporary Art Center
Aomori, Japan
through June 14, 2023

https://acac-aomori.jp/program/2023-1/

This exhibition features Fukumoto, who has pursued an expression that can only be achieved through “dyeing” through his insight into the theory of craftsmanship in Oceania and Japan, and handcrafted fabrics that have been handed down since before textiles, such as tapa (bark cloth) and knitted fabrics from Melanesia in the South Pacific. In recent years Shioko Fukumoto has developed works using old natural fabrics that were made and used in rural life and labor. Three works. By group, we will think about the expression that can only be achieved with cloth, and the possibilities of cloth as a medium of expression. Both Fukomotos have visited Papua, New Guinea on more than one occasion.

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Despite some Covid cancellations, we’re enjoying good attendance to our Spring Art in the Barn exhibition, Crowdsourcing the Collective; a survey of textile and mixed media art this week. We had visitors in line on Sunday morning. We have had artists stop by, including Dawn MacNutt, Norma Minkowitz, Wendy Wahl, Nancy Koenigsberg, Jeannet Lennderste and Kari Lønning. We are hoping to see Blair Tate and Christine Joy later in the week.

We’ve had visits from groups from the Wilton Encore Club and Westport MoCA and a curator from the Flinn Gallery at the Greenwich Public Library. We are expecting more curators yet this week. 

The inspiration for the works in Crowdsourcing is of great interest to those attending. Lia Cook’s tapestries incorporate images of ferns from her California garden. Blair Tate experiments in visual layering based on frescoes interrupted by superimposed paintings and incised niches that she saw throughout Bologna. She rearranged separately woven strips to create windows on the wall — intentionally splintered, fragmented, unsettled as a reflection of our times. Dawn MacNutt’s works of seagrass and copper wire, The Last One Standing and Interconnected, are the last two works remaining from her earlier series, Kindred Spirits.

There are five days remaining — hope you can join us.

Remainder of the exhibition
Thru – Saturday, May 14th: 10AM to 5PM (40 visitors/hour)

Final Day
Sunday, May 15th: 11AM to 6PM (40 visitors/ hour)

Address
276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 06897
(203)834-0623

Safety protocols
Eventbrite reservations strongly encouraged • We will follow current state and federal guidelines surrounding COVID-19 • As of March 1, 2022, masks are not required • We encourage you to wear a mask if your are not vaccinated or if you feel more comfortable doing so. • No narrow heels please (barn floors)

Art for a Cause: A portion of browngrotta arts’ profits for the months of May and June will benefit Sunflower of Peace, a non-profit group that provides medical and humanitarian aid for paramedics and doctors in areas that are affected by the violence in Ukraine. browngrotta arts will also match donations collected during the exhibition as part of browngrotta arts’ 2022 “Art for a Cause” initiative. A portion of the artists’ proceeds for certain works will also go to Sunflower of Peace: https://www.sunflowerofpeace.com/. 

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This year we’ve gathered our art selections into a clickable lookbook format. Whether you are gifting yourself, a friend or family member, a work of art makes a truly unique choice. Our curated collection includes art for every location, including crowdpleasing centerpieces (Rocking the Table) and coveted items to set on a bookshelf (Boosting a Bookshelf) or counter top (Counter Balancing). 

We’ve included art suggestions to fill special spots — including those often hard-to-fill narrow walls (On the Straight and Narrow). Our choices include a pleated fabric work by Caroline Bartlett of the UK and a hanging of hand-painted threads by Ulla-Maija Vikman, known as “Finland’s colorist.” Or have you got your eye on an empty space? The one that makes you think — “I wish I could find just the right piece of art for that spot.” We’ve got a batch of ideas for you there — from embellished photographs by Gyöngy Laky(US) to an intricate embroidery by Scott Rothstein(US) to a newsprint and lacquer collage by Toshio Sekiji of Japan.

There are works at every price point, from the brightly colored abstract tapestry, Flow, by Jo Barker, a Cordis Prize winner from the UK to a basket sculpture of cottonwood by Christine Joy(US) to a new book about the innovative weaver Włodzimierz Cygan of Poland.

Take a look here: http://www.browngrotta.com/digitalfolios/HolidayFlipBook/Hoilday FlipBook 2021.html

The small print:

Order for the holidays by December 13th and we’ll ship by December 14th for domestic delivery by the holidays (though due to COVID and other delays, we can’t guaranteed the shippers’ schedule). If you’d like us to gift wrap your purchase, email us at art@browngrotta.com, as soon as you have placed your order. To ensure we know you want gift wrapping, don’t wait to contact us — we generally ship as soon as the orders are received. Quantities are limited.

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Boats and ships and time on the water are potent metaphors for the highs and lows of contemporary life.

As FineArt America says of “boat art”:”… whether you own a boat, grew up by the sea, or dream of sailing the wide-open ocean, boats have a way of making us feel a unique combination of calm and adventurous.”.

Artists at browngrotta arts explore the artistic potential of boats and boat shapes in widely divergent ways. 

Some, like Lawrence LaBianca, Helena Hernmarck, Chris Drury and Annette Bellamy, have referenced them literally in their work. Lawrence LaBianca creates experiences in which water is an integral part. In Skiff, an antique telephone receiver links viewers to sounds of a rushing river. Twenty-four Hours on the Roaring Fork River, Aspen, CO, is a print created by Drawing Boat, a vessel filled with river rocks that makes marks on paper when it is afloat. Annette Bellamy has lived in a small fishing village called Halibut Cove right across the bay from Homer, Alaska and worked as a commercial fisherwoman. Off season, she reflects on her day job, creating porcelain, earthenware, raku-fired ceramic and stoneware boats, buoys, sinkers and oars that float inches from the floor.

Others, like Dona Anderson, Jane Balsgaard, Merja Winquist, Birgit Birkkjaer and Christine Joy, are moved to create more abstract versions. Boat is a part of new work of hers that is more angular, says Christine Joy. “The shape that occurs when I bend the willow reminds me of waves on choppy water, boats, and the movement of water.” Birgit Birkkjaer’s baskets contain precious amber that she has found washed up on the shore. The indigo-dyed baskets symbolize the sea that brings the amber to the shore – and a ship from ancient times, transporting the Nordic Gold to the rest of Europe. Boats and boat shapes conjure thoughts of water as a natural force, a spiritual source, or a resource for which humans are responsible — and not doing such a red hot job. 

in each case the results are imaginative and intriguing. Enjoy these varied depictions and see more on our website.

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“In these long days I have worked so much,” writes Federica Luzzi from Rome.  “I’ve always thought being an artist is an existential condition and therefore it is impossible not to express myself creatively with a few improvised and casual things or just thinking, imagining something. In fact, one sleepless night, I made a very short video during weaving. I am aware that textile involves many hours of work in solitude, but certainly in this difficult situation my mood is unstable and I need great concentration and mind control.

Fortunately, at home, where I have two types of vertical looms, I had some materials (silk, rayon, cotton yarn, and other threads that I managed to get just in time before shutdown) that allowed me to work. So I’m making loom-woven works. Others that I called ‘domestic landscapes’ are photographs of elements that have aroused my interest and particularly stimulated me.

For example, while I was preparing lunch in the kitchen I noticed the pistils of the courgette flowers that look like small trees or a small snail I found among the green leaves of the broccoli; in their purity they seemed to tell to me about something else. These elements joined part of a set in my room (as background the blanket of my bed that found them on that position that accidentally seemed to be part of a mountainous cross in a silent landscape with a water mirror, or a volcanic landscape). Without any my intention these landscapes are born from everyday life.”

In Sweden, Jin-Sook So has stayed busy in her studio and reports that all is well.

“I think it is tough for most artists to stay focused because so much is out of our hands,” writes Polly Sutton from Seattle. “Walking with birds and the garden give me a good relief. It has taken a lot longer to finish a piece and the scattered frame of mind definitely shows in the results! That’s my assessment of whether it’s of value.”

“Restrictions are starting to lessen here in Montana” wrote Christine Joy in May, “but not so much with Al and myself. Being part of the more vulnerable population we are staying isolated.  My studio is in the backyard but my time there has not been very productive in a creative way. I feel compelled to clean and reorganize and burn things in a fire pit I acquired just for that purpose. Maybe after the fire a new creative spark will occur.” Christine is staying active, too. “When not cleaning I am cooking and online grocery shopping and walking, lots of walking. Also I have discovered I like Zoom yoga classes just as much as going to the gym for them.”

Stay Safe, Stay Separate, Stay Inspired!

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