Tag: Ferne Jacobs: Building the Essentials

Artist Focus: Ferne Jacobs

Installation Photo of Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs
Installation Photo of Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs. Photo: Madison Metro, Craft in America

At the forefront of the revolution in fiber art, Ferne Jacobs has been creating innovative work since the mid-60s. At her retrospective in 2022 in Los Angeles, Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs, the Craft in America Center noted that Jacobs is recognized for her mastery of material and process. Reinventing and advancing traditional techniques used for basketry, including knotting, coiling, and twining, Jacobs has generated an entirely new language of sculptural art. Her acute sense of color melded with her poetic and intuitive approach set her work apart. You can order a copy of the catalog at browngrotta.com.

Ferne Jacobs Portrait
Portrait by Carter Grotta

Ferne Jacobs began as a painter, exploring the possibilities of three-dimensional painting in the mid-1960s, before moving to weaving after workshops by such avant-garde fiber artists as Arline Fisch and Olga de Amaral. After the American Craft Museum (now Museum of Art and Design) exhibition Sculpture in Fabric (1972), Jacobs gained national attention for her work. Jacobs has taught and lectured on fiber arts and design since 1972. She received her M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University in 1976 and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists, and in 1995 she was named a Fellow of the College of Fellows by the American Craft Council. 

Red Sculpture by Ferne Jacobs
3fj Interior Passages, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined waxed linen thread, 54” x 16” x 4”, 2017.
photos by Tom Grotta

Jacobs’ work is meticulous, intensive and personal. She felt particularly close to Interior Passages, “as though we are one and the same.” She says that “[t]his has never happened so completely to me before. It has caused me to ask why, and to try to find a way to explain it to others. In the world I find myself today, feminine values are often desecrated. I am beginning to understand that there is no such thing as a ‘second class citizen’ — anywhere, anytime. There are aspects of world culture where weak people try to control others; because that is the only way they feel their own existence.” Interior Passages emphatically resists that approach. “Interior Passages knows she exists,” Jacobs notes. “She needs no one to tell her who she is or what she is. She knows her value, and I expect the world to respect this inner understanding. When it doesn’t, I think it moves toward a destructiveness that can be devastating.”

Green Basket sculpture by Ferne Jacobs
4fj Open Globe, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined wax linen thread, 13” x 13”, 2001. Photo by Tom Grotta

Open Globe reflects Jacobs’ reaction to the environment. “The title Open Globe came from experiencing the piece as I was making it,” Jacobs explains. “In my mind, it was the earth. The colors green, brown, blue, grey are the elements on our planet. Open came because there is no bottom or top. The piece is open, so can we see the earth as a globe/ball and open/unending.” The undulations in Blue Wave operate on numerous levels, conjuring ancient Greek pottery, wave froth and water, and the female form among other references.

Detail of Blue and white Ferne Jacobs wall sculpture
5fj Blue Wave detail, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined waxed linen thread, 19” x 17.5” x 6”, 1994.
Photo by Tom Grotta

Jacobs’s work is found in many public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California and the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. 

Ferne Jacobs’ work will be included in browngrotta arts’ spring 2023 exhibition Acclaim! Work by Award-Winning International Artists. You can order a copy of the catalog Ferne Jacobs: Building the Essentials at browngrotta.com.

Ferne Jacobs Building the Essentials catalog

Books Make Great Gifts, Part II

More great book reading ahead. This week, fiction and philosophy and recommendations from browngrotta arts and our artists.

Cloud Cuckoo Land Black Water
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr and Black Water by Kerstin Ekman

In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Wendy Wahl writes, “Anthony Doer takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic ride that is expansive and intimate. His characters include those from the past, present, future, and multi-species beings bound together on a journey about the love of books in general and one in particular. I was drawn in from the beginning by the thought of young girls tied to needle and thread embroidering liturgical garments. Each of the storylines brought up unexpected emotions. I will return to this novel again and again. Learn more about this amazing tale from this NPR review: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/28/1041004908/anthony-doerr-cloud-cuckoo-land-review

Both Gjertrud Hals and Jane Balsgaard are fans of Swedish writer Kerstin Ekman. Hals says Ekman is her favorite autjor. She just read Löpa Varg, (only in Swedish, for now) and her big book about the woods Herrarna i slogan, from 2007. The Free Online Library says of Herrarna i slogan, “Appropriately, the title is ambiguous. Ekman is writing about the forest (skogen); more precisely, about the vast Swedish acreage of forested land, a forest paradigm as good as any. The first word in the title (herrarna) means either “the men/ gentlemen” or “the masters/lords.” These are the men, real or fictional, who have lived with the forest and known it and turned it into what it is today, be they masterful industrial foresters or crouching botanists, lumberjacks or poets, Sir Olof in a sad medieval folksong or Dr. Astrov in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanja.”  Balsgaard read Blackwater (in English) a thriller by Ekman that gave her“the feeling of the soul from old Sweden.” 

Things I don’t want to Know by Deborah Levy and Power of Gentleness; Meditations on the Risk of Living by Anne Dufourmantelle

A few of the recommendations are more philosophical. Things I Don’t Want to Know, by Deborah Levy is recommended by Stéphanie Jacques, who read it in French, and also the other two volumes in her Cost of Living series. “Great books,” says Jacques. “I loved her voice, her writing, the way she looks at life. She talks about creation and how to continue but not only that.” Jacques also recommends Power of Gentleness; Meditations on the Risk of Living by Anne Dufourmantelle. “Also a great author, and a book that helps us through life.” Yeonsoon Chang is rereading the Asian classic, Book of Changes (The I Ching). “This book inspires me,” she says.

Book of Changes (The I Ching) and Forest Breathing: How Trees Can Bring You Health and Happiness

Nancy Moore Bess has been pursuing an interest in Shinrin Yoku, or Forest Breathing. “It was formulated by a Japanese government agency in the early 1980s,” she writes, “but I feel there’s a strong connection to Shintoism and its respect for and connection with nature. Practicing Shinrin Yoku is a form of meditation that draws calmness from being in nature. I have often experienced this sense of peace and calm when alone in a bamboo grove. I guess this is a good time in my life to remember those moments. Wish I could capture them again.” Want to know more? Amazon lists Forest Breathing: How Trees Can Bring You Health and Happiness as having 4.5 stars from 777 reviewers. 

At browngrotta arts we also have a group of recommendations — all of which are found on our website. First, our most recent book, Gyöngy Laky: Screwing with Order — assorted art, actions and creative practice with text by Mija Reidel, David M. Roth, and design by Tom Grotta. At 328 pages, it is the first comprehensive monograph on the work of this exceptional artist. It looks at her life from three perspectives: “Laky’s personal story of immigration and education is narrated by arts and culture writer, Mija Reidel. An assessment of the evolution and impetus for Laky’s work is given by David M. Roth, editor and publisher of Squarecylinder, a San Francisco Bay Area online visual art magazine. Finally, images of forms, vessels, and wall works provide insight into Laky’s studio practice, activism, and philosophy of sustainable art and design, original thinking, and the value of the unexpected.” (“Celebrating Gyöngy Laky,” Selvedge Magazine, July 17, 2022).

Gyöngy Laky: Screwing with Order — assorted art, actions and creative practice and Ferne Jacobs: Building the Essentials

An expansive catalog was also created in conjunction with the retrospective of Ferne Jacob’s work at the Craft in Americagallery in Los Angeles. You can obtain a copy of Ferne Jacobs: Building the Essentials on our website. Jacobs has been at the forefront of the revolution in fiber art since the 1960s, She has pioneered ways to create a new category of sculpture. Transforming materials and pushing boundaries, she builds solid structures with coiled, twined, and knotted thread. This exhibition was the first to survey more than 50 years of Jacobs’ pivotal and timeless work through the present. Jacobs’ intimate drawings and collage diaries, which had never been publicly displayed, were included providing an additional lens into her vision, inspiration, and philosophical perspective. 

Crowdsourcing the Collective. a survey of textile and multimedia art and Allies for Art: work from NATO-related countries

Two of our 2023 exhibition catalogs are available from our store. Crowdsourcing the Collective. a survey of textile and multimedia art (148 pages) features 42 international artists whose work illustrates the vitality of art textiles, ceramics and mixed media. The artists come from four continents and work in a wide varity of materials and techniques: tapestries of silk and agave, sculptures of seaweed, seagrass and willow, wall works made of sandpaper, hemp and horsehair, and ceramics of Shigaraki clay. Our most recent catalog, published in October is Allies for Art: work from NATO-related countries (148 pages). It showcases work by nearly 50 artists from 21 countries made from the 1960s through the present. The diverse fiber works and sculpture in the exhibition were created by artists who fled repressive regimes, who have worked under and around government restrictions and who have been influenced by current political instability in Europe. The catlog includes 132 photos and an essay by Kate Bonansinga, Director, School of Art, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Good gifting and good reading!!