Tag: Jane Milosch

Press News: Green from the Get Go – browngrotta arts’ 44th catalog is now available.

GreenCover-1We are excited to announce that our 44th catalog, Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers, is now available at browngrotta.com. The catalog, photographed by Tom Grotta, contains 132 full-color photos of artwork from browngrotta arts’ current installation, Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers, on exhibit at the Morris Museum, in Morristown, New Jersey through June 26th. Green from the Get Go showcases more than 75 works by 33 artists from Canada, Europe, Japan, Scandinavia and the US — innovators in the genre of 20th-century art basketry as well as emerging talents. These artists take their inspiration from nature and the history of basketry but their inventive works challenge our conceptions of what a “basket” can be. In Naoko Serino’s Generating 12.2, for example, cylinders of spun jute, of varying degrees of transparency, stand in rhythmic, ethereal balance. The artist hopes that “an expression and dialogue will be produced, that the space would be created/generated in which there is a comfortable energy, expressions that will continue to exist in balance with the surroundings.” In Stéphanie Jacques’s Wall / Mur, we get not one basket, but a honeycomb — nearly a dozen basket spheres made of willow. Jane Balsgard’s Barkbaden boat shape is more literal — a willow frame covered in handmade paper — but the result is unexpected.

Naoko Serino Generating 12

The artists in Green from the Get Go, “have a strong connection to the land, whether cultivated fields or wild prairies, marches, or forests,” writes Jane Milosch in her essay, The Entanglement of Nature and Man. “Several cultivate, harvest, and prepare the materials from which they construct their work. They have a respectful awareness of the origin of things, and of the interconnected aspects of nature and ecosystems, which are both fragile and resilient.” In 2011, Milosch, Director, Provenance Research Initiative, Smithsonian Institution and former curator, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, approached browngrotta arts about mounting an exhibition featuring artists working in basket forms. Discussions quickly coalesced around designing an exhibition that would highlight these artists’ processes and techniques and shed light on their intimate connection to nature. Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers, the exhibition and catalog, featuring dozens of baskets, vessels and related objects of natural materials — bark, twigs, willow, cedar and bamboo, was the result.

Dona Look Basket #976

The work in Green from the Get Go reveals a heightened sensitivity to the physicality of materials, one that honors the stewardship of nature by the artists’ choice and use of materials. That practice is under challenge, however. For Dona Look, collecting and preparation of the birch bark for her work is weather dependent and labor intensive. That process has grown more difficult as white birch trees, once prevalent in northern Wisconsin, have become harder to find due to climate change. Christine Joy has begun collecting a great amount of red mountain maple, as her neighbors in Montana remove it to protect their homes from forest fires. Mountain maple in it’s first year of growth is a beautiful burgundy and not too branchy, she says, but she did not use it until it was seen as a fire hazard. “The environmental factor of fire affected my material choices,” says the artist.

ChristineJoy.Greenfromthegetgo“These baskets feel complete, and at the same moment they invite human interaction and interpretation,” writes Milosch. Explore them in the catalog (www.browngrotta.com/Pages/c40.php.) and at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey from now until June 26th; www.morrismuseum.org/current-exhibitions/.


This Month’s Don’t Miss Exhibitions

through January 20, 2013
High Fiber: Recent Large Scale Acquisitions in Fiber
Racine Art Museum
Racine, Wisconsin

Ahnen Galerie by Françoise Grossen

Ahnen Galerie by Françoise Grossen

High Fiber transforms RAM’s largest gallery space with larger-than-life size sculpture by significant contemporary artists who have established reputations working with fibers such as fabric, metal wire, and cedar. Created with techniques like weaving and knotting––and touching on a variety of subjects including metaphysics, the human condition, and the natural world––the works featured in this exhibition delight the eye and engage the mind. The artists whose work is included are: Nancy Hemenway Barton, Carol Eckert, Françoise Grossen, Jan Hopkins, Michael James, Ruth Lee Kao, Nancy Koenigsberg, Gyöngy Laky, Rebecca Medel, Linda Kelly Osborne, Barbara Lee Smith, Jean Stamsta, Merle Temkin, Dawn Walden and Claire Zeisler. For more information, call: 262.638.8300 or visit: http://www.ramart.org/sites/default/files/userfiles/exhibitions/2012/HighFiber/High Fiber Notes.pdf.

opened January 12th

Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers
Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, Visitor Center GalleryGrosse Pointe, Michigan

FordEdsal.Install.1

Green from the Get Go: Contemporary International Basketmakers installation at the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, photo by tom grotta

Green from the Get Go: International Contemporary Basketmakers, curated by browngrotta arts and Jane Milosch, former curator of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, opens at the Visitor Center Gallery of the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and runs through March 9th. The Edsel & Eleanor Ford House is at 110 Lake Shore Road, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 48236. Hours are 11 a.m to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. For more information call: 313.884.4222 or visit: http://www.fordhouse.org/calendar.html?month=&year=&cat=&cid=8691.

opened January 12th
Aleksandra (Sasha) Stoyanov: Warp and Weft Painting
Tefen Open Museum
P.O.B. 1
Migdal Tefen, Israel 24959
Art Gallery: 04-9109613; Visitors Department: 04-9872022; 04-9109609

AleksandraStoyanov.TefenOpen.Installation

Aleksandra Stoyanov Tefen Open Museum Installation, photo courtesy of the Tefen Open Museum

The Tefen Open Museum exhibition features a large grouping of Stoyanov’s painterly weavings, whose subjects feel like dream fragments or half-forgotten memories. There is a catalog for the exhibition, which is open through August 2013, http://store.browngrotta.com/aleksandra-sasha-stoyanov-warp-and-weft-painting/. It features an essay by Davira Taragin and will be available through browngrotta arts. Stoyanov’s work, From the First Person – Number II, has recently been added to the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

opening January 17th
Lenore Tawney: Wholly Unlooked For
University of the Arts
Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Book of Foot by Lenore Tawney, photo by Tom Grotta

Book of Foot by Lenore Tawney, photo by Tom Grotta

The University of the Arts presents an exhibition by late artist Lenore Tawney (1907–2007), a leading figure in the contemporary fiber arts movement. Presented in conjunction with the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, the exhibition, which runs through March 2nd, will feature her paper-focused pieces. For more information, visit: http://www.uarts.edu/.The Maryland Institute College of Art, Tawney’s alma mater, is hosting a complementary exhibition, http://www.mica.edu/News/Multi-Venue_Exhibition_Honors_Legendary_Fiber_Artist_Lenore_Tawney_H92_(1907–2007)_This_Winter_.html under the same, title featuring her line-based objects.

Opening Reception: January 24, 5 – 7:30 p.m.
University of the Arts
Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Panel Discussion: January 24, 2 – 4 p.m.
The Legacy of Lenore Tawney
University of the Arts
CBS Auditorium, Hamilton Hall
Panelists: Jack Lenor Larsen: dean of Modern Textile Design, founder of LongHouse, Honory Doctorate, University of the Arts; Kathleen Nugent Mangan: director of the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation; Dr. Suzanne Hudson: assistant professor, University of Southern California; Warren Seelig: artist, distinguished visiting professor, University of the Arts; Moderator: Sid Sachs: director of exhibitions, University of the Arts.

opening January 22nd
MFA Book Arts and Crafts/Fibers Exhibition
Gallery 224 & President’s Office
University of the Arts
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
This exhibit features work by University of the Arts students in the MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking and Crafts/Fibers programs, who have each created a piece in response to Lenore Tawney’s work. The students researched an extraordinary collection of objects from the Lenore Tawney Foundation, including old books and parts of old books, wood containers, small bottles and thread, which they incorporated and used as inspiration for their exhibition pieces. The exhibition runs through February 8th. For more information, visit: http://www.uarts.edu/.