Tag: Hisako Sekijima

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Hisako Sekijima

April 10, 2012 0 Comment

Intersection IV detail by Hisako Sekijima, photo by Tom Grotta

Japanese artist Hisako Sekijima is one of the 25 that browngrotta arts will promote at SOFA New York this year.   Sekijima has led the sculptural-basketry movement in Japan through her experimentation. She has expanded beyond her mastery of traditional techniques to offer new approaches to volume, mass, and space and new insights on the work of earlier times and ancient peoples. As Nancy More Bess has observed, Sekijima  is one of a distinguished few fiber artists, like Arai, Larsen, Liebes, McQueen, Rossbach–  who can be acclaimed as having changed perspectives on fiber.( “Hisako Sekijima: Explorer of Fiber Boundaries,” Nancy Moore Bess, Fiberarts, Summer 2002), “Sekijima has moved against popular current for more than 20 years…” Bess wrote.

523hs Intersection IV, Hisako Sekijima, walnut, plaited14.5″€ x 19″€ x 3.75″€, 2006, photo by Tom Grotta

“She was the exception–in Western terms, the renegade. Although now respected by many in Japan, sought after as adviser and authority, she remains outside the formal hierarchy of traditional basketry there. Her recognition, for now, comes from other highly regarded artists, her former students, collectors who earnestly vie for her newest work, gallery owners, and art authorities (including Jack Lenor Larsen, Rupert Faulkner, and Janet Koplos).” Sekijima’s work was included in the Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers exhibition which traveled from Japan to the Japan Society in New York last year.  Sekijima’s work has also been exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England; Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, Germany; Wakayama Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; Academy of Design, Kuopio, Finland and the Bellevue Art Museum, Washington.

 

The Next Big Thing: Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers

November 17, 2011 0 Comment

Jiro Yonezawa bamboo Bridge and Kay Sekimachi Leaf bowl. photo by Tom Grotta

We’ve had a busy fall season at browngrotta arts. First was Stimulus: art and its inception, which you can still see in the catalog http://www.
browngrotta.com/Pages/c36.php and online through the end of the month http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/StimulusOnlineExhibit.php. Next up, is Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers at the Wayne Art Center, Pennsylvania http://www.
wayneart.org/exhibition/green-from-the-get-go-international-contemporary-basketmakers which runs from December 2, 2011 to January 21, 2012.  Green from the Get Go is curated by Jane Milosch, former curator of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with browngrotta arts. The exhibition features an exciting compilation of more than 40 works by artists who take inspiration from nature and the history of basketry. Since prehistoric times artists and craftspeople have been highly attuned to the beauty and resources of the natural world, whether depicting a pristine landscape, untouched by man, or harvesting plants and minerals for pigments and brushes. Sustainability is part of the design and craft process, which requires a heightened sensitivity to materials, one that honors the caring for, replenishing and repurposing of materials. Artist Dorothy Gill Barnes captures this eco-friendly position well when she explains, “my intent is to construct a vessel or related object using materials respectfully harvested from nature.”

CROSSING OVER Dona Anderson bamboo kendo (martial art sticks), patterned paper, thread 15″ x 94″ x 30″ 2008. photo by Richard Nicol

 

Some of the sculptural baskets in Green from the Get Go are made from both flora and fauna, from bamboo, pine, sea grass, and willow to emu feathers and bayberry thorns. The tactile nature of these fiberous works stimulates all of the senses—sight, smell, touch and even sound. Each maker brings his or her own conceptual approach and expression to the design and fabrication process. Some works are small enough to nestle in the hand or rest table-top, while others are monumental or hang on the wall. Green from the Get Go stretches our imagination in terms of what materials and forms constitute a basket and how art bespeaks the interconnected relationship of man and nature.

The exhibition includes artists from Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, Scandinavia and the US, featuring innovators in the genre of 20th-century art basketry as well as emerging talent: Dona Anderson, Jane Balsgaard, Dorothy Gill Barnes,Dail Behennah. Nancy Moore Bess, Birgit Birkkjaer, Jan Buckman, Chris Drury, Lizzie Farey, Ceca Georgieva, Marion Hildebrandt, Kiyomi Iwata, Christine Joy, Virginia Kaiser, Markku Kosonen, Gyöngy Laky, Dawn MacNutt,  John McQueen, Mary Merkel-Hess, Norma Minkowitz, Valerie Pragnell, Ed Rossbach, Hisako Sekijima, Kay Sekimachi, Naoko Serino, Klaus Titze, Jiro Yonezawa and Masako Yoshido.

PILLOW, Norma Minkowitz, fiber, wood, paint, 2011

 

The preview party for Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers and Craftforms 2011, juried by Elisabeth Agros of the Philadelphia Art Museum, takes place on the evening of December 2nd and we’ll be there. For more in formation, contact the Wayne Art Center: http://www.wayneart.org/events/?id=48.

Exhibit News: Contained Excitement – Pleasures of the Void

December 19, 2010 0 Comment

Jiro Yonezawa, Nancy Moore Bess, Hisako Sekijima at Cavin-Morris Gallery Exhibit photo courtesy of Cavin-Morris Gallery

Through January 22, 2011, the Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York is exhibiting a remarkable grouping of eclectic  cross-cultural, multi-genre objects.  The exhibition, entitled, Contained Excitement – Pleasures of the Void, includes work  by several artists represented by browngrotta arts,  including Dorothy Gill Barnes, Nancy Moore Bess, Lizzy Farey, Mutsumi Iwasaki, Jennifer Falck Linssen, Hisako Sekijima, Kay Sekimachi, Jiro Yonezawa and Masako Yoshida, deftly combined with ceramics, boxes, bowls, books and furniture and more.

Hisako Sekijima and Jiro Yonezawa at Cavin-Morris Gallery Exhibit photo courtesy of Cavin-Morris Gallery

Mutsumi Iwasaki at Cavin-Morris Gallery Exhibit photo courtesy of Cavin-Morris Gallery

photo courtesy of Cavin-Morris Gallery

photo courtesy of Cavin-Morris Gallery

The exhibition focuses on the way the artists control the sensual expectations of space in an object, which may or may not take leave of its utilitarian purpose. The exhibition features Art Brut, ancient and contemporary ceramics, New Basketry, and other media. Included are Chinese ceramic reliquaries for keeping wrapped sutr as, the transformation of Native American Sweetgrass into deconstructions of molecular perfection in Debora Muhl’s work; the nervous and dark recycling in the forms made by Jerry Bleem and John Garrett; the beckoning toward initiatory revelation in Susan Kavicky and Lissa Hunter; the brooding presence in the lithops-like ceramic sculptures of Kenji Gomi; the Zen poems inscribed in the early ceramics of the Buddhist nun Rengetsu; hidden books of healing and magic from the tribal peoples in Southern China; the incredible repression and resultant freedom in the ceramics boxes of Shuji Ikeda where the clay is woven like bamboo; the opening of soul to the elements of wind and light in the sweeping bamboo constructions of Charissa Brock met by the dark compression of clay into Place and Mortality in the ceramics of Tim Rowan; the erotic beckoning of release through restraint and role-play in the bondage bed made by Sullivan Walsh; the New Baskets of JoAnne Russo and Nancy Moore Bess; and the ancient feminism of the ceramics of Avital Sheffer. A special inclusion will be an installation of Choson-period tea bowls from Korea and two intricate and rare woven rattan shields from early Kongo.

Also included are: Emogayu,  Jill Bonovitz, Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Deirdre Hawthorne, Mei-Ling Hom, Kentaro Kawabata, Gerri Johnson-McMillin,  Shozo Michikawa, Drew Nichols, Akira Satake, Hyungsub Shin, Polly Adams Sutton, Akiko Tanaka, Tyrome Tripoli, and Shannon Weber. The Gallery is at 210 Eleventh Avenue, Suite 201, between 24th and 25th, For more information contact: Shari Cavin, Randall Morris, or Mariko Tanaka: 212-226-3768 or email: mtanaka@cavinmorris.com; www.cavinmorris.com.

Knitted, Knotted, Netted at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, NJ

October 25, 2009 2 Comments
Hunterdon.jpg

We attended the opening of Knitted, Knotted, Netted at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, New Jersey last week. The Museum is a picturesque venue, presenting changing exhibitions of contemporary art and design in a 19th century stone mill that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The town of Clinton offers speciality shops featuring antiques, quilts, country furnishings and, intriguingly in one case, “Things We Like.”

Norma Minkowitz, Kazue Honma, Noriko Tanikawa, Hisako Sekijima

Norma Minkowitz, Kazue Honma, Noriko Tanikawa, Hisako Sekijima

Knitted, Knotted, Netted includes work by 12 artists. The techniques highlighted in Knitted, Knotted, Netted have ancient lineages and have seen a resurgence through their use by contemporary artists. Each of these methods involves the looping of a thread or cord, differentiating them from braiding and weaving, in which elements may interlace but not necessarily loop through each other. The artists in this exhibit employ the techniques of the title in diverse ways and in widely differing materials, varied in size, shape and color. The two- and three-dimensional artworks in the exhibit use not only plant and animal materials but also industrial and synthetic materials, creating looped structures never envisioned in earlier contexts. The highlights for us: the work by the four artists represented by browngrotta arts, of course — three strong works by Norma Minkowitz and a work of edgeworthia bark by Hisako Sekijima, grouped with works by two of her students, Kazue Honma and Noriko Takamiya — and also, The Crowded Planet series by Carol Westfall. Westfall says that the series is composed of hundreds of tiny “men,” the stick figures we drew as children. “If you take the top two arms and pull them together you create the kanji character for man, nin or jin or hito,” she explains. “I compress all these tiny ‘men’ together and form the ball which is This Crowded Planet.”

Carol Westfall's The Crowded Planet Series

Carol Westfall’s The Crowded Planet Series

The exhibit, at 7 Lower Center Street, Clinton, NJ, 908-735-8415, continues through January 24, 2010.

 

10th Wave III: Online– The next best thing to being there

October 23, 2009 0 Comment
Jazzy-10th-wave.jpg

Our first online exhibit, the10th Wave III: Online, opens today. The exhibit is a carefully curated selection of works presented in installation shots, images of individual works and detail photos. Approximating the in-person experience, viewers can “walk” through 26 images of the exhibit installed; click to view each of the 125 works in the show more closely, focus in on images of dozen of details and click to read more about each of the artists in the exhibition. “Images of individual works of art online are commonplace,” says Tom Grotta, president of browngrotta arts. “We have tried, instead, to give viewers a sense of the work in space, combined with the option of looking more closely at the pieces that interest them, just as they would have if they were visiting the exhibit in person.”

The artists in the 10th Wave III are experimenting with forms and techniques in novel and surprising ways, exploring new relationships among structure, design, color, and pattern.” They work in a wide range of materials from silk, stainless steel and rubber to recycled raincoats and linen to tree bark, safety pins and telephone books. Among the artists in the online exhibition are Lewis Knauss, Lia Cook, Gyöngy Laky from the US, Sue Lawty from the UK, Ritzi Jacobi from Germany, Jin-Sook So from Sweden, Carolina Yrarrázaval from Chile and Hisako Sekijima and Jiro Yonezawa from Japan.

The 10th Wave III: Online runs through December 20, 2009.