Rachel Max is  looking forward to reading a new biography of Anni Albers, by Nicholas Fox Weber (Anni Albers: a life), which is coming out in April next year. “But,” she writes, “whenever I need a burst of inspiration, I dip into the Writings and Conversations, by Barbara Hepworth. I’ve always loved her work. Max also recommends Craftland by James Fox as a thoughtful and timely journey through Britain’s “endangered” crafts and heritage. 

“In a digital age where handmade skill is gradually being chiseled away by mass production and AI, Fox traverses both time and land to meet some of the people keeping our need for craftsmanship alive. As a maker, I am extremely conscious of techniques – not reviving them as such, but reviewing them to make something new. Admittedly, and perhaps because I live and work in a city, I take lots for granted – how agriculture, for example, has shaped our landscape with hedgerows and stone walls. I’ve always known that Sheffield is famous for its steel production, that Birmingham has a long history of jewelery making, and that Somerset is known for willow weaving. Each area has its own unique way of doing things – stone walls and baskets vary from region to region. I’ve walked past the British Library many times without considering who designed and carved the lettering on the facade. The bells of Big Ben toll across our screens every New Year, but, like many, I take for granted the skill and expertise that went into making and tuning them. 

Fox’s writing is poetic and contemplative but what comes acoss most in this book are the skills, dedication and determination of all the people he met along the way,” Max says. “Aside from the rush weaver, Felicity Irons, many names were unknown to me, but these names and their workmanship are hardly invisible, they are part of a far greater picture – our social and cultural history. So much so that once forgotten trades have become embedded in our own names and language. Fox reminds us to look around, to notice and to take note of crafts enduring legacy.”

“I can recommend What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory, by Brian Eno and Bette A.,” Randy Walker writes. “It’s a small book (literally 3” x 5”) consisting of 122 refreshing pages written and illustrated in children’s book fashion — just my style. I savor the thoughts, and only read a few pages at a time so I can contemplate them for a while.” The book is billed as “an inspiring call to imagine a different future.”

“My favorite book of the year was about photographer, Edward Curtis — Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan,” writes Polly Sutton. “I recently got to view photos at the Rainier Club in Seattle where he lived for many years and paid for his room and board with pictures.” 

According to the publisher’s notes, Curtis spent three decades documenting the stories and rituals of more than 80 North American tribes. It took tremendous perseverance  ​— ​ 10 years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him to observe their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Curtis would amass more than 40,000 photographs and 10,000 audio recordings, and he is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. The Ranier Club has an important collection of his works.

Exhibition catalogs often inspire recommendations; Europe was apparently the source for fiber exhibitions in the last 12 months, based on Heidrun Schimmel’s update. The expansive exhibition of Sheila Hicks: a little bit of a lot of things was a highlight this year In Germany, Schimmel writes. The exhibition was shown in Kunsthalle Düsseldorf from October 2024 to February 2025.  “A very good catalog of the same name was published,” she writes. It chronicles 50 years of the artist’s work and features a lay-flat sewn binding and an exposed spine, A Little Bit of a Lot of Things is designed to emulate Hicks’ playful, imaginative practice. 

“Another good exhibition, Soft Power, was shown in the Museum Das Minsk, Potsdam, Germany, in 2024, she says. You can order the exhibition catalog (112 pages) and take on line tour here: https://dasminsk.de/en/exhibitions/4478/soft_power.  A truly comprehensive exhibition, Textile Manifestos—From Bauhaus to Soft Sculpture, was displayed in Switzerland, in the Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich, she says. In addition to the fiber all-stars — Hicks, Tawney, Abakanowicz — the exhibition included intriguing artists Gunta Stölz, Elsi Giaque, Lia Cook, and Masakazu Kobayashi. In conjunction, the Museum recommends the volume, Textiles Manifestos.

Exhibition catalogs were also the inspiration for both Karyl Sisson’s and Gyöngy Laky’s recommendation: the Ruth Asawa retrospective — first in San Francisco, now in New York. (If you are on the East Coast, you have until February 7, 2026 to see it at MoMA.) “The breadth of her work is astounding,” Karyl Sisson says. Gyöngy Laky also recommended the retrospective catalog, Ruth Asawa: Retrospective. She and her husband Tom Layton were friends with Ruth Asawa. “Thinking about Ruth Asawa reminds me that the US has overcome threats to our Democracy before,” Laky writes. “During another time challenging our democratic values, in World War II, the Asawa family members were sent to internment camps. The terrible and misguided 1942 Executive Order eventually incarcerated 120,000 people of Japanese descent. It was, however, as a child in those wretched concentration camps, that the talent and creative interests of Ruth Asawa were nurtured. In 1946, at the age of 20, Ruth went to Black Mountain College where she met her future husband, architect Albert Lanier. At Black Mountain College her drawing teacher, Ilya Bolotowsky, connected her drawing with her wire work describing it as drawing in space. She began her looped-wire sculptures there after being introduced to basketry techniques in Mexico”. The following year Asawa’s work was shown at SF MoMA for the first time — only to be the subject of an extensive retrospective nearly 75 years later.

Asawa left her mark on cultural history in other ways. She married her husband Albert in 1949 in San Francisco when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the US. The partnership lasted 59 years!  Asawa left a legacy within the larger Bay Area community, too. She co-founded the Alvarado Arts Workshop for elementary school children in 1968 – – now the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. She was deeply devoted to arts education. Laky writes that an Imogen Cunningham photo from the 1950s greeted visitors to the SFMoMA exhibition accompanied by a quote: “An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.” And, Laky says, Asawa did just that. 

Stéphanie Jacques is looking forward to visiting Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Fabric of Life through April 12, 2026 at the Bourdelle Museum in Paris. “I love this museum and I’m excited to experience the works of Magdalena Abakanowicz. The catalog looks fascinating.” https://www.bourdelle.paris.fr/visiter/expositions/magdalena-abakanowicz-la-trame-de-lexistence In additional to exhibition attendance, Jacques has an ambitious reading list planned for next year. “Books are there to recharge us and open us up to other perspectives,” she writes. There are five books she’d like to read in early 2026:

To learn more about the path Rodin took to create his sculpture of Balzac: his approach, his doubts, his relationship to the real body, etc, Jacques is going to read Dérobades: Rodin et Balzac en robe de chambre by Marine Kisiel — only available in French. “Phyllida Barlow is an artist whose work I admire,” she writes. “I haven’t yet had the chance to see her pieces in person, and this book, In the Studio: Phyllida Barlow , text by Frances Morris, seems like an opportunity to discover more about her work and her creative process. Reading about other artists’ work is enriching and often prompts me to reflect on my own practice.” Three books on basketry in all its complexity and variety are also on Jacques’ list. She describes these as, “an inexhaustible source of inspiration and wonder; skills where the universal and the unique meet.”

They are Contemporary Basketry: New Directions from Innovative Artists Worldwide by Carol Eckert and Janet Koplos, Kishies and Cuddies: A Guide to the Traditional Basketry of Shetland, by Lois Walpole, and The Material Culture of Basketry: Practice, Skill, and Embodied Knowledge, eds. Stephanie Bunn and Victoria Mitchell. And Jacques may return to The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, since she has done so regularly since first reading it over two years ago. “I have even opened it at random just to hear her voice,” she says. “It has everything: history and the upheavals of personal lives, political engagement, love, men, women, creation…” 

Gizella Warburton recommended three books about our relationship to nature: Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You, eds. Nick Hayes and Jon Moses, The Language of Trees: a Rewilding of Literature and Language, by Katie Holten and Is a River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane. Wild Service calls for mass reconnection to the land and a commitment to its restoration. A national bestseller, The Language of Trees invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. MacFarlane has been called “the great nature writer … of this generation.” The publisher says that Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. They are not textile-related, says Warburton, but each offers “a hopeful and meaningful read.” Amen to that!

Next Week:
More book recommendations— this time from browngrotta arts …

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As June draws to a close, join us in recapping our featured artists from the New This Week series, including Norma Minkowitz, Rachel Max, Sue Lawty, and Hisako Sekijima. Let’s dive in!

Starting off the month, we featured the work of artist Norma Minkowitz. Renowned sculptor Norma Minkowitz has dedicated years to exploring the potential of crocheted sculptures, intricately interlaced and hardened into mesh-like structures.

Her artworks seamlessly blend structure and surface, offering profound reflections on themes of enclosure and entrapment. Minkowitz frequently contemplates the cycles of life and renewal, leaving twigs and branches embedded within her sculptures. These elements peek through the exterior, evoking comparisons to human skeletal or circulatory systems.

We are lucky to be able to work with her, and we hope everyone else enjoyed her feature as much as we did!

Next, we featured the talented artist Rachel Max, known for her innovative approach to contemporary basketry from her London base. Max’s artistic journey explores the intricate interplay between lace and traditional basketmaking techniques, resulting in finely woven sculptural pieces designed for interior spaces.

Her creative process involves meticulous refinement, exploration, and development of delicate openwork structures, where the juxtaposition of precise patterns with more relaxed weaves emerges as a recurring motif. Throughout her work, color plays a pivotal role, serving as a unifying element essential to Max’s artistic expression.

We then turned our spotlight to artist Sue Lawty; renowned for her extensive experience as an artist, designer, and educator, with works displayed in prestigious collections worldwide, including a notable residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Lawty’s creative practice delves deep into emotional, spiritual, and physical connections with the land. Through intuitive and meticulous exploration of materials and construction techniques, she constructs unique textual languages. It’s no surprise her contributions are revered across the art world.

Last, but certainly not least, we featured the work of artist Hisako Sekijima. Sekijima is known in the art world for her sculptural baskets created with diverse materials including cherry, hibiscus and cedar bark, kudzu, and bamboo.

She describes herself as a perpetual experimenter, fascinated by concepts of order and disorder, connection and disconnection. Her artistic pursuits encompass a wide range of techniques and themes, from binding and wrapping space to exploring spheres, handles, and the interplay of materials.

We look forward to continuing this exploration with you in the months ahead. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories and artists featured in our upcoming series!

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Color: the eternal appeal of blue
“One trend in particular is emerging as clear as the sky is blue,” says The Spruce, an interior design blog(“The 2024 Colors of the Year Point to One Trend You Need to Know,” Megan McCarty, November 7, 2023). Each fall, paint brands unveil their colors of the year, and for 2024, many of them declared shades of blue as the color to consider, including Skipping Stones by Dunn-Edwards, Blue Nova 825 by Benjamin Moore, Renew Blue by Valspar, Thermal by C@ Paints, Bay Blue by Minwax, and Bluebird by Krylon. Blue, as any of you who followed our 2018 exhibition Blue/Green: color, code, context know,  is elemental…sky and sea, infinite in hue, tone, intensity and variation…indigo, azure, sapphire, ultramarine. As metaphor, it connotes integrity, tranquilty.  It’s no wonder that it never really falls out of favor. The designers interviewed by The Spruce gave a number of reasons for including the color in one’s space. It’s calming and relaxing, subtle and subdued, and has a connection to nature. The Spruce quotes Chelse Thowe, the lead designer of Forge & Bow, sees a common thread in the paint brands’ colors of the year:  each is reminiscent of clear skies and calm waters. “Blue is trending because it connects us with nature and feels rejuvenating,” Thowe says. “It brings a sense of stillness and creates a sanctuary from our busy lives.” 

Many artists who work with browngrotta arts use indigo and other shades of blue to evince natural themes.  In Totem aux Millefleurs Bleues, Micheline Beauchemin chose blue, turquoise and green to create a calm atmosphere of forest and leaves. “…[T]he color, though dark,” she said, “will be brilliant and beautiful.” Still others, choose it for its metaphorical power.

Rachel Max’s work, Continuum, explores the artist’s ambivalence about blue. “It is cold yet often warm and comforting. It is a color of depth and distance, of darkness and light and dawn and dusk.” Blue is linked closely to the sea and sky, and Max says, like our lives, she says, they seem infinite yet each has a beginning and an end. Continuum is like a Mobius strip, illustrating the contrasts and opposites, the finite and infinite.

Biophilic Design/Return to Nature
Interior designers predict that homeowners will seek to create calming and harmonious environments in the coming year. Biophilic design, with its emphasis on incorporating natural elements into interiors, will continue to flourish, bringing the outdoors inside through the use of plants, natural materials, and organic textures, says ZDS, (“Exploring the biggest interior design trends 2024“). This trend is one also predicted to have a parallel in the art world. Artsy interviewed 15 curators on defining art themes for 2024 (“15 Leading Curators Predict the Defining Art Trends of 2024,” Artsy, Maxwell Rabb, January 12, 2024), including Amy Smith-Stewart, Chief Curator, at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut. Materials and methods carry meaning, Smith-Stewart told Artsy, “I predict we will see more artists incorporating organic materials or materials collected, grown, and harvested from the natural world into their work,” she said. Artists will seek to comment and address legacies of colonization, she predicts, as well as on issues of environmental justice and land use.

At browngrotta, James Bassler’s use of agave in Things Past is part of a project to use the plant waste created by the making of tequila. Bassler’s friend, the artist Trine Ellitsgaard, organized an exhibition of works made from agave. She has worked with artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico to create fibers and spun thread from agave waste to spin into rugs and bags and art. 

In Reserve, Ane Henriksen used material covered with oil spots, found washed up on the west coast of Denmark. Fishermen use the material on the tables in the galley, so the plates don’t slide off when on the high seas. The work highlights ecological peril. “Nature is threatened,” Henriksen says. “I hope this is expressed in my image, which at first glance can be seen as a peaceful, recognizable view of nature, but when you move closer and see the material, it might make you uneasy, and stir thoughts of how human activity is a threat against nature.” John McQueen has created provocative sculptures from twigs, branches and bark for many years. More recently, he has begun to add recycled plastics to highlight humans’ tenuous connection to nature. He illustrates this conflicted relationship in Arm & Hammer with a man stepping precariously on a snake made from recycled plastic bottles of detergent.

Celebrating the 70s and Icons
Each year, 1stDibs, the e-commerce interior design and fine art marketplace, aims to quantify subtle shifts in designers’ taste with its Designer Survey (“The 1stDibs Guide to 2024 Interior Design Trends,” Introspective, Cara Greenberg, December 19, 2023). This year’s survey drew responses from more than 600 industry professionals. The results report what excites designers at this point in time, “what they’ve had quite enough of and what they anticipate sourcing to conjure sublime living spaces in the months to come.” 1st Dibs reports a fresh enthusiasm for the 1970s, which 27 percent of designers in the US and 29 percent in the UK cited as the era they’ll draw upon for inspiration in 2024. “[E]expect to see an updated version of 1970: “a curated, earth-toned Laurel Canyon look, if you will — organic, relaxed, and comforting.” The survey also found that iconic design has lasting power. “Iconic designs are revered for a reason. Their forms are so pure, their function so unimpeachable that their lasting popularity should come as no surprise.”

We find the same purity in works from the 1970s by the icons of art textiles. Abbot’s Mantle made in 1971 by Glen Kaufman, reflects the experience in rug making and design that he gained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, during a Fulbright in Scandinavia, and while working at Dorothy Liebes’ New York Design Studio. 

Puzzle of the Floating World (1976), by Katherine Westphal, who authored The Surface Designer’s Art: Contemporary, Fabric, Printers, Painters and Dyers (Lark Books,1993, Asheville, NC) contemporizes quilting. 

Sherri Smith’s Linde Star is an imaginative stitched-and-plaited work, that was included in the seminal 1970s book, Beyond Weaving: the art fabric. Ritzi Jacobi, who was also featured in Beyond Weaving, 

was known her heavily textured works, like Exotica Series  made with Peter Jacobi in 1975, in which the couple used unusual materials such as sisal, coconut fibers, and goat hair. 

 In Peruvian Tapestry (1972), Ed Rossbach, an influential artist, author, and teacher, continued his experiments re-envisioning traditional techniques. Peter Collingwood, knighted by the Queen of England, developed a practice that he called shaft switching to create complex and elegant works.

Conclusion:
The design and art trends of 2024 suggest ways to create spaces that are not only visually appealing but also deeply reflective of your personality and lifestyle. We are happy to help you source works from browngrotta arts to enable that process.

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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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This complex and detailed art comes from talented Dutch fiber artist, Jeannet Leendertse. Having grown up on the Dutch shore and migrating to the rugged coast of Maine in the states – her fiber work often finds sculptural form in landscapes she’s familiar with.

She often explores the concept of belonging in her work by incorporating work that feels like home within the marine environment that surrounds her.

Up next we have art from internationally acclaimed Japanese artist, Toshio Sekiji. When creating pieces like Subcontinent, Sekiji often explores and merges cultures in his art, telling new stories atop of the old. His technique makes for pieces that are both contemporary and nostalgic.

Sekiji’s works are often made of lacquered newspapers from Japan, India, Korea and the US and are exemplary of the traditional Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi, a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.

A Day at the Beach comes from Californian artist, Judy Mulford. Mulford created groundbreaking art for over 50 years. She is known in the art world for complex creations that celebrate women and the family. When asked about her art and inspirations, Mulford said:

 “My art honors and celebrates the family,” said Judy Mulford. “It is autobiographical, personal, narrative, and a scrapbook of my life. Each piece I create becomes a container of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings: a nest, a womb, a secret, a surprise, or a giggle.”

Last, but not least, we have art from esteemed artist and sculptural basketmaker, Rachel Max. Max created Balance during the height of the pandemic for our Crowdsourcing exhibition. When creating this piece, Max discussed how she aimed to have her artwork reflect on the new found spatial awareness and of “sense touch” throughout society as the air between us and the surfaces we touch became dangerous.

“My aim was to distort the form, but still create something that is both finite and infinite,” said Rachel Max. “It’s rare that the title of a piece comes to me during the making process but as I was weaving this I became aware of its changing weight and stability, forcing me to rethink how I originally intended it to be seen. It became a subconscious reflection on the world we are in now: everything seems to be in the balance.”

If you enjoyed this series – there will be no shortage of new art that we’re bringing into our fold this summer. Be sure to follow along to see what other artwork and projects we will be launching!

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Rachel Max’s interest in basketry grew out of experiments with the tactile and the textile properties of metals. The UK artist’s work will be included in browngrotta arts’ upcoming exhibition Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textile and mixed media art.  A background in metal work that informs her work, while the materials and techniques used in basketry enable her to create a “fabric” with which to shape sculptural forms. The fabric is a delicate grid structure forming an intricate network of lines that are interlinked. Her pieces are often inspired by natural shapes. The unique shapes that result are endlessly engaging — each takes on a different appearance when viewed from varying vantage points.

The weave creates the foundation of all Max’s work. “I have developed a technique of layering to form structures that explore the relationship between lines and shadows and space,” she explains. The relationships between containment and concealment and movement and space are the constant rudiments in her works. “The materials used may vary; however, I have a particular penchant for fine cane, which has a delicacy that is pliable, with wire-like characteristics that suit the open weave compositions that I have been exploring. The contrast of very regular patterns with looser weaves is a recurring theme.” This weave has become her vocabulary, “a way of drawing in space that enables me to explore patterns and form through the interplay of lines, or light and shadow through density and color.”

Music is a large part of Max’s life and an important artistic influence. She has been exploring the ways in which musical terms, structure and composition can be translated into woven form. Both Endless and Tonal Fifths use, as a starting point, the fugue, a musical composition based upon one, two or more themes, which are gradually built up and intricately interwoven into a complex imitative form. “Elements of weaving are comparable to notes in music, a measure of time, a beat or a pulse. Rhythm is everywhere, in the movement of my hands as I weave, in the tension and spaces between each stitch, in the beat of our hearts and in the pace of our footsteps,” says Max.

Color, the final stage in Max’s work, does not appear as an afterthought, but as an integral element. Color is “a necessary ingredient that unifies the process; it is paramount in my work,” she says. Works like Continuum explore the temporal and spatial elements associated with color. The color blue Max describes, for example, as an “ambiguous” color — cold yet often warm and comforting. “It is a color of depth and distance,” in Max’s view,  “of darkness and light and of dawn and dusk. It is a color linked closely to the sky and sea, both of which seem infinite and finite. Blue is paradoxically continuous, yet like the sky and sea, has a beginning and an end. Our lives, too, are structured around the continuous cycle of beginning and end. Our perception of color constantly shifts as the light changes. My aim was to translate these seemingly abstract ideas into something concrete. Continuum is a piece about such contrasts and opposites. It is both infinite and finite. A Mobius strip forms the inner core of the piece and the structure gradually shifts, forming a piece with two very different aspects.”

Max was eager to participate in Crowdsourcing. “The way in which we are all currently living is one of the biggest adjustments I have ever had to make and one none of us could ever have imagined,” she wrote. “I would like to make something in response to the situation. At the moment it all feels uncontrollable, weighty and fragile. But the words ‘ together and apart’ keep coming to mind and I remember writing them down back in March. There is a huge sense of solidarity and compassion. We’re looking out for each other, we’re closer than we ever were but we cannot touch, hug or meet up. Our spatial awareness and of sense touch has become heightened as the air between us and the surfaces we touch have become dangerous. I would like to make piece which reflects this.” The result is Balance, which explores notions of infinity and time. “My aim was to distort the form, but still create something that is both finite and infinite. It’s rare that the title of a piece comes to me during the making process but as I was weaving this I became aware of its changing weight and stability, forcing me to rethink how I originally intended it to be seen. It became a subconscious reflection on the world we are in now: Everything seems to be in the balance.”

See Max’s work at Crowdsourcing the Collective: a survey of textile and mixed media art (browngrotta arts, May 7 -15, 2021). https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crowdsourcing-the-collective-a-survey-of-textiles-and-mixed-media-art-tickets-292520014237

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Here’s part 2 in our series on how are artists are coping and creating in the time of COVID.

Last month, Lia Cook was interviewed by Carolyn Kipp in California in a Social Distancing Studio Visit blog (http://carolinekipp.com/social-distancing-studio-visits/2020/5/4/3-lia-cook-san-francisco-bay-area-ca). Lia agreed with Jo Barker who we mentioned last week, on artists’ relative comfort with contemplative time. “I do think that artists are used to knowing what to do with private time; how to keep engaged with the moment, experiment with new ideas,” she told Kipp.  “The good part of this experience is that it has given me more time to do what I feel like doing at the moment. I don’t have so much pressure to produce, i.e. finish a piece for an upcoming exhibition, ship it, or even paperwork.” Lia also told Kipp that, “Right now, in my practice I am experimenting with new work. Moving from my focus on faces using neurological brain imagery to integrating the fiber connection I see in plants from my garden with the structural woven fibers of the brain. I am repurposing older work by reweaving the imagery back into the new work. Rediscovered work I wove as samples as part of my neurological emotional studies are now becoming material basis for new work.”

Bacteria-fighting tips came from Gyöngy Laky, also in California, who has been sharing her thoughts about art in these challenging times with the Shelter Chronicles and other blogs. “I wanted to tell you about something discovered along the way dealing with food in these virus times.  I put all boxes or bags of new food coming in on the landing up on floor 3.  Then I put soapy water in a large bowl or in the kitchen sink.  I wash everything! except for bread!,” says Gyöngy.   “I wash raspberries… super delicately!  I wash lettuce leaves, broccoli, onions, etc.  The trick is to rinse everything very carefully and thoroughly.  Then you need to let things dry on a towel for a bit.  To store berries, I put layers of paper towel between rows, one berry high, in a container and then in the fridge.  We just ate raspberries 4 weeks old and in perfect shape (a few go by the way, but almost all are perfect after all that time). We have blueberries going on their 5th week and still fine!  (To last that long they need, of course, to be nice fresh berries to begin with, if possible.)  The lettuce I lay out on paper towels and then roll them up gently and put them in a plastic bag.  Some heads of lettuce, especially little gems and cabbage, I do not take apart, but rinse well.  They are often so firmly closed that it’s easy to rinse the soap away.  I then roll them in paper towels and put them in a plastic bag in the fridge and, again, they can last 3-4 weeks.”

Gyöngy has a theory about why this works, hypothesizing that washing with soapy water removes a lot of various bacteria that normally leads to spoilage.  “You’ll be amazed how dirty the water gets!” she writes. “Disinfectants are tricky because some of them have to be on the surface of what you are cleaning for some minutes and then wiped off.  Some directions say… clean surface first!  Not good.  We handle mail and then wash our hands thoroughly.  Any things questionable we leave for 10-14 days untouched and assume they are ‘clean’ by then.”

Rachel Max reports from the UK, “Never have I been more grateful to focus on making than in these difficult times. It has kept me going and I am relishing the time this has given me without other commitments getting in the way. Admittedly I’ve struggled to concentrate, but I have been spending long hours each day working on a new piece for an exhibition which Tim Johnson is organizing in Spain.” Here are images of work in progress. “I’m glad for the focus,” she says, “and I can’t believe how quickly the days are whizzing by.”

Also in the UK, Laura Bacon has been creating — literally — having welcomed a baby boy in May. “It was a bit stressful awaiting the arrival of my baby in the middle of the pandemic,”she writes, “but everything went smoothly in the end. I have my hands happily full with my lovely little boy, and also two-and-a-half-year old little girl. She is keeping me busy, too, as she’s not in nursery in the way that she was before the virus, so for now, I only have time for them.”

Stay Safe, Stay Separate, Stay Inspired!

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Works by a notable group of artists are on exhibit in Basketry: Function & Ornament at the Ruthin Craft Centre in the UK through October 13, 2019. The exhibition, curated by Gregory Parsons, looks at current practice of some 30 makers from throughout the UK including bg artists Lizzie Farey, Dail Behennah, Tim Johnson, Rachel Max and Laura Ellen Bacon. Basketry: Function & Ornament brings together functional vernacular work from various parts of the country, alongside pieces that are sculptural and ornamental, providing “a survey of a craft that has been somewhat sidelined in times of great technological advances, yet offers a sustainable answer to so much of our modern day throw-away habits.”

Tim Johnson’s artistry is represented by baskets from his “Keeping Time” series. “These ‘keeping time’ baskets, like all baskets, take time to make,” he says. “The twining, folding and stitching that holds them together marks increments of being, a declaration of presence, the makers time is kept in the work, a trace of activity. “

Thatched and piled textile structures date back to Neolithic times, Johnson says, providing insulation and weather protection in our ancestors garments and shelters. “In the ‘keeping time’ series I am happy to work in this tradition and relate the basket’s captured spaces to the containment of ancient clothing and architecture.”

The other artists in Basketry: Function & Ornament include influential makers Lois Walpole and Mary Butcher, the remarkable Irish basketmaker Joe Hogan and Lise Bech along with Mandy Coates, John Cowan, Mary Crabb, Jane Crisp, Jenny Crisp, Alison Dickens, Rosie Farey, Eddie Glew, Charlie Groves, Stella Harding, Peter Howcroft, Anna King, Annemarie O’Sullivan, Sarah Paramor, Dominic Parrette, Polly Pollock, Ruth Pybus & David Brown, Clare Revera, Lorna Singleton and Maggie Smith.
RUTHIN CRAFT CENTRE
THE CENTRE FOR THE APPLIED ARTS
PARK ROAD, RUTHIN
DENBIGHSHIRE
LL15 1BB
OPEN DAILY
10.00AM – 5.30PM
ADMISSION FREE

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It’s hard to believe another year had passed, but we are welcoming 2019 with open arms here at browngrotta arts. We are excited for all the great things to come in 2019, but we’ll shed a light on all the great art we shared on our social media throughout the month of December. From Laura Ellen Bacon’s Attached to Adela Akers Night Curtain there was quite a diverse line up on display in December.

To kick off the month of December we shared Laura Ellen Bacon’s Attached. Bacon, whom we had the pleasure of visiting on our trek through the United Kingdom, consistently creates stunning woven sculptures. Bacon’s unique weaving technique, such as exhibited in Attached sets her apart. The combination of her technique and the use of natural materials allows Bacon to slowly develop the weight and form of her work as she pleases, which she describes as, “Starting out with a frail framework and building curves from the inside out to achieve quite ‘muscular’ forms with a sense of movement, a sense of them being alive somehow.”

Next in the queue was Endless by Rachel Max. Made of plaited and twined cane, Endless’ unique form piques’ the viewers’ curiosity. Through sculptural basketry, Max investigates the relationship between lace and basket making techniques. Often inspired by natural shapes, Max enjoys exploring the concepts of containment and concealment in her work. With this exploration, Max has developed a technique of layering to form structures that probe into the relationship between lines, shadows and space.

The origins of Stéphanie Jacques‘ Ce qu’il en reste VI is rooted in her adolescent years with scoliosis. Jacques spent many years wearing corrective corsets, which inhibited her from many activities, such as dance. This series of sculptures, known as the Miss Metonymy sculptures are built as vertebral columns. Jacques has spent many years trying to create a figure that stands up, however, leaving the idea of verticality allowed that to become possible.

To conclude 2018’s New This Week posts we shared Night Curtain by Adela Akers. Unique to Akers’ work is her utilization of horsehair and recycled metal foil strips from the tops of wine bottles. Incorporating metal into her work adds another dimension, one that becomes a veil through which metal can shine through. In Night Curtain the luster of metal and veil of horsehair is reminiscent of stars peeping through a thin curtain of clouds in the night sky.

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