Tag: Sung Rim Park

Kisetsukan – Pursuing Seasonal Sense in Art

October 15, 2025 0 Comment

The weather’s changing here in Connecticut. Sweaters come out of storage, and sandals and sleeveless shirts are packed away. Light-colored duvets give way to warmer quilts and flannels. Pumpkins appear on porches and shelves, paving the way for twinkling lights in December.

What if we gave our art collections the same seasonal revisit?

The Japanese embrace this idea through a practice called kisetsukan, or “seasonal sense” — an aesthetic and cultural principle deeply rooted in their appreciation of nature and the home. This approach doesn’t just apply to art but extends to festivals, food, clothing, and everyday life. Kisetsukan reflects an awareness of the seasons and their emotional impact — something echoed in many cultures.

Sara Brennan, Gali Cnaani, Mary Merkel-Hess Details
Sara Brennan, Gali Cnaani, Mary Merkel-Hess, Lia Cook: Trees, woods and greenery in varying views.

Substituting artwork throughout the year can shift one’s emotional response and renew our connection with both the art and the environment around us. A single piece viewed in spring might evoke freshness and renewal; that same piece in the depths of winter could feel nostalgic or even melancholy.

One beautiful example is Paul Furneaux’s City Trees II, City Lights II, a memory of a hidden park in Tokyo where luminous white and pale pink cherry blossoms contrasted against dark-barked pines and the brutalist concrete and glass of the surrounding buildings — a moment of heightened beauty and tension. Works like this could be rotated in and out as the days lengthen or shorten, responding to the mood of the season.

Katherine Westphal, Merja Winqvist, Nancy Koenigsberg, Paul Furneaux details
Katherine Westphal (Fall Leaves); Merja Winqvist (Long Hot Summer); Nancy Koenigsberg (Winter Field), Paul Furneaux (City Trees II and City Lights II). Seasons highlighted in disparate media.

The Benefits of Seasonal Rotation

Rotating your artwork seasonally can:

  • Deepen your connection to nature by aligning your interior space with what’s happening outside.
  • Enhance appreciation for individual works by seeing them with fresh eyes each time they return.
  • Spark reflection on the passage of time and the impermanence of beauty — what the Japanese call mono no aware, a bittersweet awareness of life’s fleeting nature.
  • Expand your collection by giving you reason to collect more works and experiment with pairings, contrasts, and themes.

You don’t need to collect four new works for each season to begin. Start small. Instead of grouping similarly sized pieces, try alternating light and dark palettes, or switching black and white for bold color.

Grethe Sorensen diptych
Grethe Sorensen’s Interferens-7 and Blue-Color-Gradation can be hung together or rotated.
Cynthia Schira weavings
Cynthia Schira’s Nightfall and Spring-Lyric can be hung together or rotated.

Some pieces even offer built-in versatility:

Gyöngy Laky's Deviation displayed two ways
Gyöngy Laky’s Deviation installed two ways
  • Gyöngy Laky’s Deviation — OY can be displayed as “OY” for half the year and flipped to read “YO” for the other. Is it an existential “Oh, Why?” or a cheerful “Yo!” greeting? Let the season decide.
Laura Foster Nicholson's Shed displayed two ways
Laura Foster Nicholson’s Shed installed two ways

Laura Foster Nicholson’s work Shed can be hung vertically or horizontally, allowing a shift in visual weight and direction.

Sung Rim Parks sculpture on and off the wall
Sung Rim Park’s Beyond 220723. Displayed on the floor and floating in space.

Sung Rim Park’s Beyond series can be installed on or off the wall, offering new perspectives and levels of engagement.

Tall Lia Cook positive/negative image weaving
Lia Cook’s Big Richard front and back.

Lia Cook’s banners, like Big Richard, are impactful whether viewed from the front or reversed — another way to surprise the eye.

The more flexible the installation options, the more enjoyment you may find in your collection. Changing your art throughout the year brings new energy into a space, reawakens your senses, and reminds you of the beauty in change itself.

Field Notes: Who’s New? Sculptures and Vessels

April 9, 2025 0 Comment

browngrotta arts’ Spring 2025 “Art in the Barn,” exhibition. Field Notes: an art survey, opens on May 3rd and runs through May 11th. In Field Notes, browngrotta arts reports on the state of play in fiber art, as the medium crests in popularity, with significant exhibitions in the US and abroad. We survey artists we work with regularly, artists who’ve caught our eye, and gather select pieces by artists who introduced the innovative approach to textiles that’s become contemporary fiber art. 

We’ll present the work of six artists, new to browngrotta arts, in Field Notes. Three of them, Yong Joo Kim of Korea and the US, Masako Nakahira of Japan, and Sophie Rowley who resides in Germany, create works for the wall. We’ll tell you more about them and their work in an upcoming arttextsyle post. 

Three of the artists we have invited to Field Notes, Sung Rim Park of Korea, Ane Lyngsgaard of Denmark, and Jennifer Zurick of the US create vessels and fiber sculptures. Here’s a sneak peak at works we’ll feature and into these artists’ thoughts about what and how they produce.

Sung Rim Park floor Sculpture
Beyond 220723, 180623, Sung Rim Park, hanji (Korean paper) 46″ x 36″ x 4″; 36″ x 36″ x 4″, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

Sung Rim Park’s ethereal fiber sculptures of thread and hanji paper explore repetition. Her work employs repeated knots, which in multiples, permit three-dimensional construction. The tightly tied knots, and the threads connected to them, are built up to form a spatial matrix. “Fiber is the most appropriate material for my artwork,” Park says, “because of its multidimensional perspective, physical characteristics, psychological stability, cultural nostalgia, and its ability to capture both sight and touch.” Park majored in costume and textile design in Korea and the UK. Her sculptures reference her interest in contemplation and healing. Starry nights are an influence. “[N]ature is a place of relaxation and a source of adoration for me, and this is the reason I chose this as a theme for my artwork.” 

Ane Lyngsgaard basket
Organic Basket, Ane Lyngsgaard, willow, willowbark, fiberconcretek, 31.5” x 19.5” x 19.5”, 2024. Photo by Tom Grotta

From Denmark, Ane Lyngsgaard  has taught in Europe, Canada, the US, and Africa for 20 years. She has achieved international recognition for her innovative basket works. The TearUp Festival in the UK described Lyngsgaard as “a bonafide genius with the widest range of materials.” Her sculptural vessels are made with a mix of bark, driftwood, recylced fiber concrete, wire, and willow which she grows and harvests herself. “Initially, it was the willow that captivated me,” she writes, “followed by other organic materials, and now it is whatever the eye discovers and the hands shape. I am always drawn to new materials—lichen, seaweed, old ropes, willow, and more—and how I can alter the perception of those materials, exploring the expressions they can take.”

Jennifer Zurich Baskets
Jennifer Zurick, Random Thoughts (#792), willow bark, 12” x 8” x 7”, 2017
Entwined 4 (#823), willow bark, honeysuckle vine, 16.5” x 8” x 8″, 2021

Jennifer Zurick from Kentucky in the US, is a self-taught artist. She specializes in black willow bark which she has been harvesting and weaving into baskets since 1980. Zurick has exhibited internationally and created special commissions for Spanish firm Loewe (2019 Salone del Mobile, Milano) and the Irthi Contemporary Craft Council in Sharjah, UAE. “My work has been deeply influenced by Native American basketry, tribal textiles from around the world, and contemporary Japanese basketry,” Zurick says. “I aspire to create simple, elegant woven vessels that possess a richness of spirit and a presence embodying the soul of the tree from which they came …. The random woven pieces are my attempt to deviate from structured, methodical methods into more intuitive, flowing work that feels earth rooted and spontaneous, like something one might find growing along a woodland path, twisting and winding itself into the forest plants.” 

Join us at Field Notes to see more!

Field Notes: an art survey
May 3 – 11, 2025
browngrotta arts
Wilton, CT
Plan Your Visit Here: https://browngrotta.com/exhibitions/field-notes

Save the Date

February 5, 2025 0 Comment

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. 

Wlodzimierz Cygan
20wc Totems, Wlodzimierz Cygan, linen, sisal, fiber optic, 37″ x 37″ x 7″, 2022. Photo by Tom Grotta

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. 

Sung Rim Park
1-2srp Beyond 220723, 180623, Sung Rim Park, Hanji, 46″ x 36″ x 4″; 36″ x 36″ x 4″, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

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.

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
171mr Reflets de Montréal, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 42″ x 82″ x 2.5″, 1968. Photo by Tom Grotta

“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!

Sheila Hicks
40sh.1 Family Evolution, Sheila Hicks, 9” x 25” x 9”, 1997. Photo by Tom Grotta

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)