Tag: Stimulus Art and its inception

Spinning Straw Into Gold: ACC Gold Medalists and Fellows at SOFA Chicago and Online

October 30, 2011 0 Comment

5R CEDAR EXPORT BUNDLE. Ed Rossbach, plaited cedar bark from Washington state with heat transfer drawing, waxed linen, rayon and rags, 5.5″ x 11″ x 9″, 1993, ©Tom Grotta, 2011

This year at SOFA Chicago (November 4-6) the American Craft Council (ACC) will recognize 28 artists who have been awarded an ACC Gold Medal between 1994 and 2010 in a display at the Navy Pier, curated by Michael Monroe. The ACC awards recognize those who have demonstrated outstanding artistic achievement and leadership in the field for 25 years or more.  Since 1981, the ACC has selected just under four dozen artists working in Fiber to receive a Gold Medal for consummate craftsmanship and/or join its College of Fellows.  We’ve mounted an online exhibition of 21 these artists on our website, browngrotta.com, under Awards. Many of these artists are featured in the catalogs published by browngrotta arts and in the videos and other publications we offer. http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/catalogs.php Works by Fellows and Medalists  Adela Akers, Dorothy Gill Barnes , Lia Cook, Helena Hernmarck, Gyöngy Laky, John McQueen and Norma Minkowitz are featured in our current exhibition,  Stimulus: art and its inception. Enjoy the show.

 

Press News: Stimulus: art and its inception — our 40th catalog now available

October 23, 2011 0 Comment

Stumulus catalog front and back covers

We are very (and this will date me) jazzed about our 40th catalog, Stimulus: art and its inception. It’s a departure for us, not in the variety of artists and number of countries represented — sculpture, ceramics, art textiles and mixed media by 55 artists from 14 countries — but in what’s new — images and statements designed to give readers a sense of each artist’s creative process. For each of the pieces highlighted in exhibition, the process of finding an image to illustrate the genesis  — whether an event, an object, an emotion, a place —  and of working with the artists to share something of that process in words, was stimulating for Tom and me.  We were also energized by working with Jane Milosch, Director, Provenance Research Initiative, Smithsonian Institution, and former curator, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, who writes about creativity and its embodiment in this exhibition in the introductory essay.

Stimulus Catalog: Norma Minkowitz Compound with Stimulus

The stimuli identified by the artists in this catalog is diverse. Current events, like the earthquake in Japan and global warming, inspired some of the artists,  including Norma Minkowitz, whose stitched wall work, Compound, illustrates the attack on Osama Bin Laden. “I began in a spontaneous, unplanned manner,” Minkowitz explains, “arranging lines and subtle patterns, until I had a feeling of the direction it would take. Suddenly the linear image took on the apparition of an aerial view of the compound that I had seen in a newspaper article. Compound combines a replica of the space and my vision of the event.”

Mcqueen, Bess, LaBianca, Serino, Henriksen, Akers, Bijlenga, Hunt, Walker

Several artists, including John McQueen, Nancy Moore Bess, Lawrence La Bianca and Naoko Serino of Japan, have taken Nature as their inspiration. In Serino’s case, Generating-3 was inspired by a Philodendron selloum, which she tended for 22 years before it finally bloomed. Others were inspired by the efforts of previous artists.  Ane Henriksen of Denmark, considered the work of coverlet makers from the 1800s; Adela Akers‘ work references Mbuti designs from Africa. Palimpsest 1, a wall piece by Marian Bijlenga, of the Netherlands, was composed by following the pinholes on the walls of Dutch masterweaver Herman Scholten’s studio to recreate the nearly erased surface.
Still other artists looked to their immediate surroundings. Trio 4, a sculpture of twine and newspaper by Kate Hunt, was inspired by the goats who share her studio. Echoed Surface, an energy-charged object by Randy Walker, was made from a charred and deformed badminton racquet that he found near his home;  Re-Tire,  is a basket Dona Anderson created from a tire chain she found by the roadside.
The catalog is 140 pages and contains 197 color photographs.  It can be purchased on our website: http://browngrotta.com/Pages/c36.php