The first work we highlighted was Karyl Sisson’s Pepsi Faux Pot. For years, Karyl Sisson has been collecting things like sewing notions — buttons and zippers, womenʼs vanity items — bobby pins, hair pins, and curlers, and paper drinking straws like the straws in Pepsi Cola Faux Pot. “I like the idea and practice of recycling and am drawn to undervalued and overlooked materials,” Sisson says. “These common, manufactured objects, reminiscent of my childhood, are the building blocks of my sculptures and wall art, while simple interlocking techniques found in basketry and needlework are usually the method of construction.”

Our video of Simone Pheulpin’s Nova, part of the Eclipse series, gives viewers an opportunity to see up close the remarkable alchemy involved in this artist’s work. In Pheulpin’s hands humble strips of cotton become remarkable objects that evoke natural phenomena. She uses a method of her own devising, using neither glue or stitches. “I’m very, very interested in the roots, the layers, everything that is natural,” Pheulpin says. “The concretions, the accumulations, I love that, that’s the basic nature, the basis of my inspiration. I really like everything that is linear, everything that is repeated, piles of wood, walls. I love the walls, also by the sea, for example, the flowing water, the marks in the sand, the desert, the dunes, all that.” Pheulpin’s work will be part of a deep dive into materials in our upcoming exhibition, Transformations: dialogues in art and materials (May 9 – 17, 2026). 

Barcelona-based artist Aby Mackie also approaches “humble” material in innovative ways — in her case, discarded textiles and household remnants are repurposed as fine art. Sourced from the streets of Barcelona, in works like Between Order and Chaos, she reimagines overlooked materials as powerful reflections on memory and value. In Barcelona, the contents of entire homes are often either thrown into the streets or auctioned off at Encants Vells market. The creation of Mackie’s work is driven by the selection and repurposing of objects and textiles from these sources in order to explore ongoing cultural themes, including materialism and consumerism. Mackie’s work will also be included in Transformations in May.

The inspiration for Lizzie Farey’s work comes from the inherent qualities found in the natural materials around her Scotland location. Using willow, birch, heather, bog myrtle, and many other locally grown woods, her work ranges form traditional to organic sculptural forms — much of it pushing the boundaries of traditional technique.  In Willow Ball – 2 and Pussy Willow Bowl, willow seems to have been plucked unchanged from its natural surroundings, yet, with shape and color, the artist adds more. The works achieve Farey’s aim, to create baskets as reminders of the intense pleasure of nature – taking viewers to a place and a time that is universal.

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette was a noted Quebec-based Canadian tapestry artist who pioneered innovations in fiber art during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Rousseau-Vermette created weavings in which she experimented with scale, form, material, and color, which became known as tapestry-paintings. In Verticles dans le bleu the artist incorporates metal tubes wrapped in wool to create dimension and interest. Rousseau-Vermette’s work mixing optical fibers and wool will be included inTransformations in May.

In Charred Black 2, part of his Seven Baskets series, John Garrett fashions welded wire mesh into a vessel shaped by conflict and renewal. Inspired by images of war-torn landscapes, layers of paint, metal leaf, and bound wire evoke structures scarred and rebuilt, holding both destruction and resilience within their forms. “I had seen many pictures of the destruction of wars in Sudan, Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza,… Piles of debris littered landscapes,” Garrett says. “My painted paper baskets looked to me like structures distressed and damaged and covered in dust.”  Forms were painted and repainted and became new again while speaking of horrors between the layers. Shiny metal leaf covered the interiors and exteriors of others. Charred Black 2 was wrapped with rings of plied wire and tied down with more wire or fabric, bringing to mind a structure awaiting more layers of concrete or plaster. 

In the 1970s, when she was in her 40s and early 50s, Dorothy Gill Barnes taught herself basketry through books, independent study, occasional classes, and connections with traditional makers, also drawing inspiration from contemporary artists and emerging developments in the field. Within a decade, her strikingly original works—crafted from natural materials—gained national and international recognition. Barnes delighted in revealing the ingenuity of nature, from animal-made forms to processes of growth and decay. Her work invites viewers to slow down and truly notice. In Spalted Maple Looking Glass, she has created an interactive experience: a glass lens, frames a small twig, magnifying both the object and its hollow. Through the lens, the tiny scene appears vast — refashioning something ordinary into a moment of wonder.

Marion Hildebrandt studied at the University of California, where she received degrees in the decorative arts and home economics. The artist lived and worked in Napa Valley, California, where she collected the plants — grasses, branches, pine needles, and bark — that she used to make her baskets. She employed the same materials that Native Americans used when they inhabited the area. Like them, Hildebrandt appreciated the natural materials that surrounded her, utilizing her artistic vision to create artistic art forms into structural objects like #r165.

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Light can also impact a viewer’s experience — influencing the narrative, highlighting focal points. In the works pictured here, light influences the viewer’s experience, creating one — or more —  works when light is shown on the art and a very different second work when shown without a light source. Straight on, light may turn a metallic-tinged work a brilliant white. When light is indirect, the highlight dim and new qualities emerge.

In Adela Akers’s Night Pyramid, a mountainscape comes into sharp focus when illuminated. The image is formed from small strips of foil integrated into the weaving. In Serene Countenance by Polly Barton, the artist uses metallic monofilament and metallic thread to create a subtle glimmer in shadow that transforms into a glowing orb when a light source is introduced. The weft’s metallic thread is brass wrapped around a nylon core, while the warp is a striped combination of silk and metallic-coated monofilament. Other examples of works incorporating metallic threads are Baiba Osite’s Lauks (Field in Autumn) and Animal by Lija Rage.

While living in Japan in the 1980s, Glen Kaufman developed a unique and complex technique in which light provides the finishing touch. He began by weaving a twill pattern in silk, composing collages of photographic imagery and silk-screening those images onto the cloth. He then further abstracted the imagery by applying metal leaf. “When I began using … photography, photo silk screen, metal-leaf application,” Kaufman said, “[it] was a unique use of those materials.”

Yeonsoon Chang also employs metallic materials, developing a method to adhere gold leaf to fibers. Her striking works blend innovative technique with references to classical Eastern philosophy. In works such as The Moon, the Stars, the Sun, light reveals shifting perspectives and diverse experiences. In one video, illumination transforms an already intriguing piece into something entirely new, bringing the metal leaf into sharp focus and casting compelling shadows through the mesh structure

In Kyoko Kumai’s hands, stainless steel mesh appears infused with light, an effect heightened when an external light source is added. Agneta Hobin’s works pull glimmers of light through stainless steel mesh and the unexpected use of mica.

Optical fiber provides an exciting medium for artists Wlodzimierz Cygan and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette. In Totems, a complex weaving takes on a new character when the optical fiber is lit and shifts in color. In Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s Élégante, a slash of shimmering optical fiber creates subtle intrigue when unlit and serves as a dramatic counterpoint when illuminated. 

Several works for which light is an element or an enhancement will be included in browngrotta arts’ upcoming exhibition, Transformations: dialogues in art and materials (May 9 – 17). 

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Some 60 years ago, artists begn making works that transcended our existing concept of textiles. While based on traditional techniques, these works, collectively known as fiber art, incorporated metals, minerals, and many other materials in addition to natural and synthetic fibers. For the first time, textiles came off the wall, expanded from two to three dimensions and into the surrounding space. The five artists we will include in Field Works, were not just pivotal in the emergence of contemporary fiber art in the  60s and 70s, but significant contributors to the art form’s current popularity. 

Kobayashi’s work was the subject of a major retropsective at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan in 2024 and Hicks’s work was, most recently, featured in a major exhibition in two German museums, Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, earlier this year. Rousseau-Vermette’s work will be the subject of major retrospective at the Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec (MNBAQ)  in Canada in 2026. And, you can see works by Hicks, Rosshbach, and Sekimachi in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the Museum of Modern Art in New York beginning next week and work by all five in Field Notes: an art survey, at browngrotta arts in Wilton, CT, May 3rd through the 11th.

Renowned fiber sculptor Sheila Hicks began creating innovative textile works in the 1950s. She studied painting with Josef Albers at Yale, and studied weaving in Mexico and Chile. Ball-like forms and “boules” are a motif to which Hicks repeatedly returns. The core of these forms, as in the case of Family Evolution, featured in Field Notes is often formed from garments that have previously belonged to the artist’s friends or family. They hold memories for Hicks, who refers to them as her memory balls. The personal aspect is intentional. 

Masakazu Kobayashi, (1944-2004) was an early actor in contemporary fiber art.  He first studied lacquerware at Kyoto City University of Fine Arts (later Kyoto City University of Arts) but, according to the Kyoto Musuem of Modern Art,  “it was “Encounter with a Single Thread,” which he made while working at Kawashima Textiles Company, that spearheaded a series of works in which he dangled, stretched and unravelled yarn to create three-dimensional pieces.”  Bow ’86 is featured in Field Notes. Made of silk, rayon, aluminum, and wooden thread spools, the work continues the artist’s exploration of the bow — a shape he created by bending aluminum bow space wilth tension held  with silken thread. The bow explorations embody the equilibrium he sought in his work between his capacity as a creator and the energy of the world around him.

Born in Trois-Pistoles, Québec, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (1926 – 2006) received her training at both the École des beaux-arts du Québec and at the Oakland College of Arts and Crafts, in California where she worked in Dorothy Liebes’s studio in San Francisco. She married Claude Vermette in 1952. The couple travelled extensively in Europe and Asia, allowing Rousseau-Vermette to broaden and deepen her understanding of different tapestry techniques. For four decades, she created luminous tapestries and sculptures for collectors and commissions throughout Canada and the US, including for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Chancery, Exxon Corporation and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC (a curtain gifted by the Canadian Government). Reflets de Montréal, included in Field Notes, is a sumptuous early work from 1968 made of wool that Rousseau-Vermette sourced for its lustrous qualities. 

All three of these artists, Hicks, Kobayashi, and Rousseau-Vermette, exhibited works at several of the prestigious International Tapestry Biennials in Lausanne, Switzerland which were organized from 1962 to 1995.

Ed Rossbach and Kay Sekimachi were both living in Berkeley, California in the 60s and 70s, which was an incubator for contemporary fiber arts. As a faculty member at the University of California, Ed Rossbach (1914 – 2002) was a major force spurring these explorations. The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, New York described Ed Rossbach’s importance: “Rossbach was an imaginative and adept weaver, mastering ancient techniques and innovating with new and unorthodox materials, such as plastics and newspaper. He is considered by many to be the pre-eminent influence in the rise of basketry as a sculptural art form. In addition, Rossbach is known for incorporating unconventional imagery, including pop culture references.” Numerous artists from Diedrick Brackins to Marvin Lipofsky to Gyöngy Laky claim him as an influence. In Field Notes, Punt, one of Rossbach’s pop culture-inspired works will be exhibited. A resale work, Punt features a football kicker in bright colors. The other works included, Poncho and  Wyoming, also feature intriguing — South American textile patterning and an image of gravel from the West.

Kay Sekimachi is recognized as a leader in the resurrection of fiber and weaving as a legitimate means of artistic expression. She is known as a “weaver’s weaver” for her unusual use of a 16-harness loom in constructing three-dimensional sculptural pieces. In the early 1970s she used nylon monofilament to create hanging quadruple tubular woven forms in an exploration of space, transparency, and movement. She attended the California College of Arts and Crafts (CA), where she studied with Trude Guermonprez, and at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (ME), where she studied with Jack Lenor Larsen. In Field Notes, very significant early works that Sekimachi made in the 1950s while studying with Trude Guermonprez, Samples: Summer Session with Trude Guermonprez, will be on view. Sekimachi credits Guermonprez with empowering her through her style of teaching, which emphasized individual creativity and curiosity. 

As Aby Mackie, another artist in Field Notes, observes: “The field of fiber art is currently experiencing a profound shift, gaining recognition as a respected medium within contemporary art. This growing appreciation affirms textiles’ versatility and expressive potential, establishing it as a powerful medium for storytelling and innovation in the current art world.”

Join us May to explore that potential!
SCHEDULE YOUR VISIT 

Exhibition Details:
Field Notes: an art survey
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Rd
Wilton, CT 06897
May 3 – 11, 2025

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, May 3rd: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, May 4th: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 5th through Saturday, May 10th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 11th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)

Safety protocols: 
Reservations strongly encouraged.
No narrow heels please (barn floors)

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In January, the Metropolitan Museum of Art launched a new short-session game, Art Links, that invites players to identify common threads and intriguing connections between works of art from The Met collection. 

We thought we would give arttexstyle readers a chance to make material Links between works from artists who work with browngrotta arts.

Materials to match: A) IRON – B) WOOL – C) STEEL – D) LINEN – E) COTTON – F) PAPER – G) LIGHT – H) SILK

There are 16 images in this post — 8 pairs. Based on the major materials utilized, match two art works to create a pair based the material they share. Note — We’ve cheated a bit on the names in some cases to preserve the mystery.

There are artworks by fourteen artists for you to match.

Here are the final two.

Here is the LINKS Key:
IRON:   3 and 15 
STEEL:  10 and 13
SILK: 14 and 16
WOOL:  8 and 12 
LINEN:  5 and 11 
COTTON:  1 and 9 
PAPER:  2 and 7 
LIGHT:  4 and 6 

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Fiber art is having a moment. It’s “the new painting” according to Art in America and a trend that Artsy says will “take hold across the contemporary art world in 2025.”  Exhibitions of art textiles are on view across the US and Europe, including Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction which will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in April. 

In Field Notes: an art survey (May 3rd -11th), browngrotta arts will provide a high-level view of the fiber medium, informed by the gallery’s 30+ years specializing in the promotion of art textiles and fiber sculpture. 

In art and science, field notes generally consist of a descriptive element, in which the observer creates a word picture of what they are seeing — the setting, actions, and conversations; combined with a reflective portion, in which one records thoughts, ideas, and concerns based on their observations. In Field Notes, viewers will be able to observe a varied group of art works, reflect on the creators’ thoughts about their art practice, and generate their own questions and conclusions.

More than two dozen accomplished international artists will share what’s on their minds, what’s on their looms, and what’s inspiring their art process, just as the art form’s popularity crests, including Sung Rim Park, and a few other artists whose work we have not shown before. Works by fiber art pioneers, Kay Sekimachi (US), Sheila Hicks (US), and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (CA), will also be part of the exhibition, providing insights about the medium’s evolution.

“Textile art is strong in Norway today,” says Åse Ljones. “It has gained a higher status, and is often purchased for public decoration.” In her work, she is “looking for the shine, the light and the stillness in the movement that occurs in the composition of my pictures,” she says. “I embroider by hand on linen fabric.” The viscose thread she uses adds glow and shine in the composition. “With different light sources,” she says, “the image changes all the time. As a viewer, one must be in motion to see and experience the changes.” 

Aby Mackie, who works in Spain, combines existing materials with the tactile intimacy of textile techniques. “By blending these elements,” she says, “my work challenges perceptions of craft and sustainability, offering new ways to perceive the familiar and celebrating the beauty of reinvention.” Mackie agrees with Ljones about the evolving role of fiber. “The field of fiber art is currently experiencing a profound shift,” says Mackie, “gaining recognition as a respected medium within contemporary art.” 

Fiber is “a powerful medium for storytelling and innovation in the current art world,” Mackie concludes. Join us in May as we highlight those stories and celebrate fiber art’s resurgence!

Exhibition Details:
Visit Field Notes: an art survey at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897 from May 3 – May 11, 2025. 

Gallery Dates/Hours:
276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 06897

Opening & Artist Reception
Saturday, May 3rd: 11am to 6pm
Sunday, May 4th: 11am to 6pm
(40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 5th – Saturday, May 10th: 10am to 5pm
(40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 11th: 11am to 6pm
[Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)

Safety Protocols: 
• No narrow heels please (barn floors)

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The changeable, fluid nature of water has often been an inspiration for artists. Artists use water to convey a variety of meanings. Some are moved by water as a natural force, for others there is a more spiritual connection, and still others are interested in how humans are impacting our oceans and rivers — in each case the results are thought provoking and intriguing. 

Artists in The Art Aquatic exhibition reflect that diversity of approaches. Some have made imaginative uses of water-related materials. There are patchworks of fish skins by Annette Bellamy, who spends part of each year fishing commercially and compositions of fish scales by Marian Bijlenga. Keiji Nio photographs sea scenes, uses the images in ribbons that he plaits and edges with beach sand. Jeannet Leenderste creates baskets of seaweed she forages in Maine and works with the Rockweed Coalition. “Seaweed not only creates a habitat for countless species, it sequesters carbon,” she says, “and protects our shoreline as our sea levels are rising.”

Other works in The Art Aquatic offer more abstract references to life in the deep, including Ulla-Maija Vikman’s “painting,” Biagga (Sea Wind), made of viscose threads in marine colors.  Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s Blue Water II, made of woven tubes of beachy blue, grey, white, and yellow, evokes a sunny day at the water’s edge. Masakazu Kobayashi’s assemblage of silk-wrapped bows reflects an ocean horizon.

A third series of works offer watery imagery, like Judy Mulford’s Aging by the Sea which incorporates a conch shell and a tiny boat covered in knotless netting, Ed Rossbach’s Fish Trap Basket, with a whimsical fish motif, the mermaid in Norma Minkowitz’s sculpture, My Cup Runneth Over, and Karyl Sisson’s Flight III, a sea-creature-like sculpture of vintage zippers.

More literal still, there are the nautical object interpretations included in the exhibition, like Mercedes Vicente‘s shell of cotton canvas. Jane Balsgaard’s Relief floats alongside Merja Winqvist’s gridded boat – both are made of paper. Text from Moby Dick is etched on Call Me Ishmael, Lawrence LaBianca’s ivory-colored boat sculpture. La Bianca has created a body of work that engages aquatic environments. “The tools we apply to nature—to contain it, shape it, understand it and categorize it also have a profound impact upon it,” he says. LaBianca references the impetus to measure, understand, contain, and manipulate nature that animates his art – that impetus is one that can animate collectors of art as well.

Join us at Ways of Seeing and learn more.

Exhibition Details:
Ways of Seeing
exploring ways individuals envision and curate art collections
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road
Wilton, CT 06897

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, September 21st: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, September 22nd: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, September 23rd through Saturday,September 28th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, September 29th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)
browngrotta.com

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This Fall, browngrotta arts at 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, Connecticut, will explore the many ways individuals envision and curate their contemporary art collections. From September 21st to the 29th the gallery’s Fall 2024 “Art in the Barn” exhibition, Ways of Seeing, will sample different types of art selection criteria — by theme, by artist, by size.

Each work in The Art Aquatic, a theme-related collection, exists at the intersection of the artist’s fascination with a variety of nautical themes and the artmaking process. In The Art Aquatic, viewers will find imaginative uses of water-related materials: baskets incorporating shells by Birgit Birkkjaer, kayak and paddle sculptures by Chris Drury wrapped in salmon skin, Marian Bijlenga’s composition of fish scales, and Jeannet Leenderste’s baskets made of seaweed. Other works in The Art Aquatic offer more abstract references to life in the deep, including Ulla-Maija Vikman’s “painting,” Biagga (Sea Wind), made of viscose threads painted in marine colors and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s Blue Water II, made of woven tubes of beachy blue, grey, white, and yellow. A third series of works in The Art Aquatic offer watery imagery, like Judy Mulford’s  Aging by the Sea, that features a conch shell and tiny boat, Ed Rossbach’s Fish Trap Basket, with a whimsical fish motif, and the mermaid in Norma Minkowitz’s sculpture, My Cup Runneth Over. 

Impact: 20 Women Artists to Collect, another of the exhibitions within Ways of Seeing, will examine collecting by specific artist. Impact will present sculptures, tapestries, and mixed media works made from 1976 to 2024 by artists of significance and renown, including Kay Sekimachi, Yeonsoon Chang, Simone Pheulpin, and Carolina Yrarrázaval. Each of these artists demonstrates a knowledge of traditional and experimental techniques, while redefining the perception of textiles as fine art.

A third exhibition within Ways of Seeing will be Right-Sized, which considers collecting within specified parameters. Diversity is the hallmark — in materials, techniques, and approaches. In Right-Sized, viewers will find embroidery by Diane Itter, sculpture in sisal, paper, and willow by Mia Olsson, Noriko Takamiya, and Lizzie Farey, ceramics by Claude Vermette, and spheres, boxes, and baskets by Hideho Tanaka, Polly Sutton, Naoko Serino, and others, worthy of collecting in multiples.

“Ways of Seeing will celebrate the passion and individuality that spark and shape collections,” says co-curator Tom Grotta, “while offering collectors at all levels a wide selection of works to appreciate and possibly acquire.”

A full-color catalog will accompany the exhibition.

Details:
Ways of Seeing
exploring ways individuals envision and curate art collections
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road
Wilton, CT 06897

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, September 21st: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, September 22nd: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, September 23rd through Saturday,September 28th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, September 29th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)

Schedule your visit on POSH.

browngrotta.com

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Dorothy Liebes (1897 – 1972) was an influencer before the term was coined. Known as the “mother of modern weaving,” and initiator of “The Liebes Look” she served as a national arbiter of interior design and fashion trends reaching thousands of people through print magazines, television, film, and significant collaborations with architects and corporations from Frank Lloyd Wright to Dupont. Liebes created luminous, jewel-toned fabrics, often incorporating nontraditional materials and metallic threads.

Her influence extended well beyond influencing consumer trends. She impacted the careers of numerous artists – some who only met her and studied her work and others who worked in her studios in San Francisco and New York.

Ed Rossbach met Dorothy Liebes only in passing, but her influence on his work was marked. In 1940, after he had finished college, he visited an International Exposition at Treasure Island in California and saw the decorative arts exhibit that Dorothy Lieber had installed there. “I didn’t know anything about Dorothy Liebes, naturally,” he told Harriet Nathan in 1983. (Charles Edmund Rossbach, “Artist, Mentor, Professor, Writer,” an oral history conducted in 1983 by Harriet Nathan, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1987, p. 14.) “I saw these contemporary textiles and weavings and wrote in my diary that I would like to learn how to weave so that I could weave upholstery.” Years later, when Rossbach had moved to the Bay Area, he visited Liebes’s studio. He recounted being awestruck by the things she inserted into her warp, by her whole personality, and how she interacted with those who worked for her. (Lia Cook, “Ed Rossbach: Educator,” in Ed Rossbach: 40 Years of Exploration and Innovation in Fiber Art, Lark Books and Textile Museum, 1990.) Liebes “had a sense of [her] own importance,” he said later, in an interview with the Archives of American Art. (Oral history interview with Ed Rossbach, 2002 August 27-29. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.) Like Liebes, Rossbach would become known for incorporating non-traditional materials into his work.

Three other artists whose work is shown by browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut – Sherri Smith, Glen Kaufman, and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette — were among Liebes’s studio alumni  — their experiences with the designer were evident throughout their artistic careers

Artist and educator, Sherri Smith, went to work in Dorothy Liebes’s studio after she completed MFA in weaving and textile design at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1967. From there she went to Boris Knoll Fabrics, where she headed the Woven Design Department. Smith was well situated for her first major museum success — the inclusion of her piece Volcano No. 10, 1967 in MoMA’s Wall Hangings curated by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen in 1969.

Glen Kaufman spent a year at Liebes’s New York studio from 1960 to 1961, after a Fulbright in Scandinavia. Kaufman was also a Cranbrook graduate. There he created handwoven pile rugs among other items. At the Liebes studio, he and Harry Soviak, a Cranbrook classmate, concentrated on carpet designs and created pillows in “wild colors.” The pair would try to “out-Dorothy Dorothy Liebes,” making pillows using Liebes’s daring color combinations and metallic yarn, Kaufman told Josephine Shea in an oral interview in 2008. He recalled that the designer “had this reputation of being the arbiter of interior taste. And she would put together things like red and pink and orange, which were absolutely out in left field,…”  (FN4 Oral history interview with Glen Kaufman, 2008 January 22-February 23, Josephine Shea.)

Kaufman’s work from the early 60s like Banner, paired vibrant colors. In others, like Herringbone, Odd Man In and Polymaze, Kaufman continued to explore carpet making techniques. Over time, however, he adopted a more muted palette. Liebes remained enthusiastic but bemoaned the color change. In her essay for Cooper Hewitt exhibition on Liebes and her legacy, Erin Dowding quotes a 1967 letter from Liebes to Kaufman in which the designer writes about seeing his works, “which I thought were wonderful. I missed color, though, and I’m sure you do too.” (Glen Kaufman essay by Erin Dowding, Cooper Hewitt Museum).

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s experience with Dorothy Liebes was perhaps the most formative. The details of the year she worked in Lieben’s California studio have been compiled and generously shared with us by Anne Newlands. Newlands is the author of Weaving Modernist Art: the Life and Work of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette and the guest curator of an upcoming retrospective of Rousseau-Vermette’s work at the Musée National des Beaux-arts du Quebec in Quebec City in 2025.  

After graduation from the École des beaux-arts in Montreal in 1948, Mariette, then Rousseau, later Rousseau-Vermette, looked to the United States to further her education, unlike fellow students who travelled to France. She was inspired by a 1947 issue of Life magazine in which an article titled “Top Weaver” introduced her to the innovative Dorothy Liebes studio in San Francisco. Years later, she described the impact: “The article blew me away — this magnificent woman was radically changing textiles in the United States, she was returning them to art. For her, textures, colours, techniques had no limits.” (Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, public lecture, Musée du Québec, 23 August 1992. Translation by Judith Terry. Cited Anne Newlands.) In addition to Liebes’s innovations with non-traditional weaving materials, Rousseau-Vermette said she was captivated by Liebes’s “prophetic instinct for trends in color.”

After graduation, despite the fact that she spoke little English at the time, Rousseau traveled to San Francisco for two reasons: to secure a job or an internship at the Liebes studio and to study at the California College of Arts and Crafts in nearby Oakland. Her mornings were spent at the college in Oakland, and in the afternoons she waited patiently in the reception area of the Liebes studio, her thick sample books from the École des beaux-arts on her lap, trying to convince the studio to hire her. With a determination that would become legendary, Rousseau-Vermette returned daily and finally Dorothy Liebes relented, saying that she could not pay her (although later she would), but that she would let her work. (Material on Mariette Rousseau-Vermette. Cited by Anne Newlands.)  “Try — Do not be afraid — Make ‘research’ a pleasure – Share with others. These are the ‘gifts’ I received during my stay in Dorothy Liebes’s studio.” Rousseau-Vermette wrote. “At the end of the 1940s, Dorothy Liebes’s endless energy and joie de vivre, and the friendship among her thirteen assistants, started me on the path that became my way of life.” (Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, “Fiber-Optic and Other Weavings,” in Wired, browngrotta arts, 2001.)

Like Liebes, much of Rousseau-Vermette’s career was devoted to creating textile works on commission to mediate architectural spaces, notably, The Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto, Exxon in New York City and Arthur Erikson’s Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Working with architects was central to Leibes’s practice. As Alexa Griffith Winton has noted, “Liebes encountered architectural blueprints and quickly learned to read them.” (“’None of Us is Sentimental’: About the Hand: Dorothy Liebes, Handweaving, and Design for Industry,” Alexa Griffith Winton,The Journal of Modern Craft, Volume 4—Issue 3, November 2011, pp. 255.) Rousseau would follow suit; her most preferred commissions would be those that involved collaborations with architects. Her files were thick with blueprints and architectural drawings. Where buildings were hard and cold, Liebes’s textiles were warm and soft says. Like Liebes, Rousseau-Vermette’s brilliance came from building and bridging a tension between textiles and architecture. (“How the Mother of Modern Weaving Transformed the World of Design,” Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian Magazine, July 19, 2023.)

Brilliant coloration also featured in Rousseau-Vermette’s work and she utilized unique materials as Liebes’ did. Canadian architect, Arthur Erikson, wrote of a series of color fields of luscious color and texture composed vertically or horizontally of combed wool that he commissioned for a building in Vancouver, B.C. “I found the simplicity of her work blended perfectly with the simple structural expression of the building, the building transformed through the artist’s eye.” (Arthur Erickson, “Introduction,” in Wired, browngrotta arts, 2001.)

In the 1990s, Rousseau created a series innovative weavings, like Elegante, that incorporate optical fiber. Another work from 2001, Hommage á Liebes, incorporates silk, leather and fluorescent tubes, some of it material that Rousseau-Vermette had sourced from Liebes. In its title, the student explicitly credits the mentor as an impetus for her work. Liebes also influenced the way in which Rousseau-Vermette would manage her studio. Like Liebes, Rousseau-Vermette created detailed cartons and maquettes for each of the 644 tapestries she created in her career. Her meticulous notes are now in the archives of the National Gallery of Canada. She was motivated by Liebes’s success as an independent owner-operator, holding as she did a singular place in the male-dominated business world.

Want to know more? Liebes’s life and design have received renewed attention in the past year as a result of the expansive exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in New York, with many resources available online. A lush volume accompanied the book, both entitled, A Dark, A Light, A Bright: the Designs of Dorothy Liebes.

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In curating our exhibitions, we develop an idea, then begin to compile art to build out the concept. We tweak the theme and design the installation in response to the what arrives. The process, and the artists we work with, always deliver surprises. 

The impetus for this Spring’s Discourse: art across generations and continents exhibition was formed by our hanging abstract weavings by Warren Seelig from 1976, one white and black, one red and black, next to a strikingly kindred work of black and red and grey and off-white by Blair Tate from 2023. The works seemed to have something to say to one another. We realized we had other works from different time periods and artists who approached the same material and techniques very differently. The result: Discourse, an exhibition inviting dialogue, discourse, comparison and contrast.

As we compiled work for Discourse, an unanticipated subtheme emerged. The color red featured in several works that would be included. There was Anneke Klein’s Dialogue that we wanted to include, for obvious reasons. Gudrun Pagter sent us Red. Lija Rage sent us Leaves. Jin-Sook So offered us three red bowls, Federica Luzzi a dramatic wall sculpture, Red Shell No. 4, and Mary Merkel-Hess a red-tipped basket. After much online research, we had discovered the maker of a work from the estate of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette that we also wanted to include. It was Margareta Ahlstedt-Willandt of Finland and again, the work featured a good amount of red.  

There are more than 100 works in Discourse and most of them are not red. But red has a way of making itself known — as the works in the exhibition do. As we were planning, a theory, “Unexpected Red,” hit Tik-Tok, and, as Tik-Tok sensations are wont to do, then hit The New York Times, the Washington Post and Elle Decor. “Splashes of red really do just make anything mysterious, sexy even,” the Washington Post, quotes an email from Colette van den Thillart, a designer in Toronto. “Red is so dynamic, dangerous, and commanding. It can set an environment alight, which is why this trend makes total sense to me.” (“Designers say ‘unexpected red’ really works. Here’s how to use it.The theory making the rounds on social media can add a little intrigue to any room,” Washington Post, Kathryn O’Shea-Evans, March 16, 2024.)

There’s a scientific basis for red’s preeminence, notes Ingrid Fetell Lee, who hosts The Aesthetics of Joy blog. In studies, red has been shown to capture and hold attention in emotional situations better than other colors and that exposure to red light increases blood pressure, respiratory rate, skin conductance, and eye blinking, all measures of an increase in what psychologists call arousal, a physiological measure of excitement. Many evolutionary biologists believe that our color vision evolved in large part to help our primate ancestors find ripe fruits and young leaves (which naturally appear red) among the green leaves of the treetop canopy. “So perhaps ‘unexpected red’ in a home functions more like seeing a bowl of ripe cherries than a cut to the finger,” Lee hypothesizes, like “a bright and exciting burst of joy.”

Bursts of joy is what we hope you’ll find at Discourse (May 4 – 12). Not just red; we’ve got works in shades of green, others in blue, beige, yellow and orange — lots of works in paper and natural materials, works by 50 artists from 18 countries. Schedule your visit to Discourse now.

Exhibition Details:
Discourse: art across generations and continents
May 4 – May 12, 2024
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897

Gallery Dates/Hours:
Saturday, May 4th: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, May 5th: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 6th through Saturday, May 11th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 12th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)
Schedule your visit at POSH.

Safety protocols: 
POSH reservations strongly encouraged • No narrow heels please 

Catalog:
A full-color catalog, browngrotta arts’ 59th, Discourse: art across generations and continents, with an essay by Erika Diamond, Artist | Curator | Associate Director of CVA Galleries | Chautauqua Institution, will be published by the browngrotta arts in May 2024 in conjunction with the exhibition.

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Rothko’s work has been a potent influence for several of the international artists who have worked with browngrotta arts. Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s appreciation is perhaps the most literal. The Canadian artist saw an exhibition of the Rothko’s works in Italy in 1958. It was pivotal in inspiring her “to produce strictly artistic works in weaving,” Anne Newlands wrote in Weaving Modernist Art: The Life and Times of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, Ontario, 2023, p. 32). Throughout Rousseau-Vermette’s life, Newlands says, Rothko was a powerful influence, “triggering compositions with floating blocks of color, soft edges and her signature brushed wool technique to create a blending of colors and a sense of inner light.” Her interest in Rothko “marked her as a colorfield artist-weaver, fueling her ambition to create large-scale tapestries that would engulf the viewer and employ powerful chromatic contrasts of light and dark to evoke an emotional response.” 

Rousseau-Vermette’s work Hommage á Rothko was included in Three Canadian Fiber Artists at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada in 1981. In 1997, browngrotta arts exhibited Si Rothko m’ était conté une histoire, 1997 at the SOFA art fair in Chicago, Illinois. “With its large scale, densely brushed woolen surface and stacked blocks of color in velvety jewel tones of deep blues and shadowy reds,” Newlands notes, “it underlined the artist’s enduring admiration of Rothko and her lasting desire to create contemplative, atmospheric tapestries.” The tapestry was purchased at the exhibition and later donated to the Art Institute of Chicago. 

American artist, Sheila Hicks, who studied with famed color theorist, Josef Albers, also found Rothko’s use of color an inspiration. She was one of the artists included in the 2021 exhibition, Artists and the Rothko Chapel: 50 Years of Inspiration, at the Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. “Like music, color is the almighty mood determinant: It sets the stage for emotional depth and inspires an expansive range of responses from joy to despair, from a sense of wonder to an affirmation of life,” Hicks has said. “Rothko’s painting did this for me.”  (“5 Artists on the Influence of Mark Rothko,” Artsy Editorial, April 13, 2021).

Color is an important element of Lija Rage’s work, too. Rage is from Latvia, as was Rothko. In her one-person exhibition at the Mark Rothko Art Centre, Daugavpils, Latvia, entitled Colours, she described how she determines the colors she uses. “For digital printing,” Rage said in conjunction with Colours, “I use my own photographs. Real to begin with and taken in different seasons, they are processed until I’m left with blurred color fields. Color as a flash, an abstract field, a vision.” The color in her fiber works are drawn from nature. “Green – the woods outside my window; blue – the endless variety of the sea; orange – the sun in a summer sky; brown, grey and black – fresh furrows and the road beneath the melting snow; red – the roses in our gardens.”

The Mark Rothko Art Centre also hosted Indian artist Neha Puri Dhir. In 2016, she was chosen with eight other participants to participate in an International Textile Art Symposium. ” I was fortunate to attend an art residency at Mark Rothko Art Centre as part of Textile Art Symposium at Daugavpils, Latvia and got an opportunity to study the great artist in the environs of his birthplace,” Dhir writes. 

“What Rothko brought to the world was very unique and personal. He looked at his works as an environment in themselves, works which transcended emotions and he did not like any academic dissection of his art. At Daugavpils, understanding his world and spending hours trying to seek a glimpse of his mind, re-affirmed the beauty of a unique creative self-expression for me. I realized what Rothko was expressing was nothing but very basic human emotions which invariably will always be layered and multifaceted. The layering of colors and mixing of oil and egg-based paints for expression has all left an indelible mark on my art,” Dhir says. 

Gizella Warburton of the UK and Gudrun Pagter of Denmark also reference Mark Rothko as a influence. “He manages to create a great image-based experience with his clean and focused divisions and distinguished color schemes,” Pagter says. UK artist, Rachel Max, read From the Inside Out by Rothko’s son, Christopher. Max says the artist’s meditative sensitivity and use of color inspires her. She was particularly interested in the chapter on the emotional power of Rothko’s paintings and its parallels to music. Christopher Rothko draws similarities between Mozart’s melodies and his father’s transparent textures, clarity, and purity of from in order to give what he calls greater expression  – for both artist and composer alike nothing was added unnecessarily. “I grew up surrounded with music,” Max writes. “The relationship between music and weaving is something I have been exploring and this particular essay resonated with me.” 

While Rothko is best known for his paintings, he also created nearly 3,000 works on paper (the subject of the National Gallery exhibition). He mounted them similarly to how his canvases would be hung. “They’re attached to either a hardboard panel or linen, and wrapped around a stretch or a strainer to give them this three-dimensional presence,” says curator Adam Greenhalgh said. Another parallel to contemporary fiber art work, in which dimension is often an element.

Rothko’s son, Christopher, has said something about viewing his father’s works that applies to anyone for whom Rothko is an influence. “I often think about going to Rothko exhibitions,” he told CBS News. “It’s a great place to be alone together. Ultimately, it’s a journey we all make ourselves, but so much richer when we do it in the company of others.”

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