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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NYTM
New York Textile Month
New York City and nearby locations
https://www.textilemonth.nyc

In New York, it’s NYTM — New York Textile Month.  That means range of activities — talks, films, studio visits, workshops, an in-window exhibition at Bergdorf Goodman, exhibitions at Mana Contemporary and elsewhere, and Eva Hesse’s Expanded Expansion at the Guggenheim — all celebrating textile art, making and conservation. Check out the NYTM website for suggestions, times, and dates.

Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6: Kyoko Kumai
Through November 6, 2022
Nakahechi Museum of Art
891 Kinro Nakahechi-machi
Tanabe-shi Wakayama-ken Japan
Tel; 0739-65-0390 
https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/en/events/-/2022%2Fcontemporary-weaving-artist-series-vi-kyoko-kumai

Since 2017, Tanabe City Museum of Art has been presenting Contemporary Weaving, an exhibition series that showcases outstanding contemporary weavers who create world-class works by combining traditional and unique materials and techniques with new weaving expressions that reflect the times. This year’s Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6 features the art of Kyoko Kumai (1943), who has expanded the world of weaving through her innovative use of metallic threads, and continues to develop a variety of expressions that evoke light and wind.

Intellectual Beauty
2nd International Exhibition of Textile Art and Mixed Media
Museu Textil 
September 1 – February 28, 2022
Virtual
https://www.museutextil.com

Rodrigo Franzao founded a fully envisioned virtual museum that focuses on the work of artists who “use textile strategies as support for their creations.” For Intellectual Beauty, Fanzao has gathered 43 artists from 18 countries, who have used their “sensitive reality to introduce to the beholder the sensorial perceptions of a reality emancipated from rules and theory, free and absorbed by inspiration.” You can view the entire exhibition, 116 artworks, including two by Jeannet Leenderste, online.

Contextile 2022
September 3 – October 31, 2022
Guimarães, Portugal

Contextile 2022 – Contemporary Textile Art Biennial celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year. The exhibition features 57 works by 50 artists from 34 countries chosen for their high creativity, originality and technical competence around the textile element, by construction, theme, concept or material used, as well as their adherence to the concept of Contextile 2022: RE-MAKE.  Among the artists included are Neha Puri Dhir of India. In addition, the Contextile organizers selected Norway as its invited country and are presenting work from 13 Norwegian textile artists including Åse Ljones.

X International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, “25 Years World Textile Art”
From November 3rd to December 15th, 2022
Miami International Fine Art (MIFA)
5900 NW 74th Ave
Miami, FL 33166
Colombia Consulate
280 Aragon Ave Coral Gables, FL 33134

This year 2022, WTA celebrates its 25th anniversary with the X International Biennial “25 YEARS WTA”, from October through December 2022. For the 10 th Biennial, more than ten countries will be interconnected to celebrate WTA history through salons featuring 25 artists each. A number of artists will have worked displayed in connection with this exhibition including Anneke Klein.

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries
October 8-16, 2022
browngrotta arts
Wilton, Connecticut
http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php

Mindful of the impact that poitical events can have on artists and their art, browngrotta arts will present to work of nearly 50 artists from 21 NATO-related countries in Europe whose work reflects diverse perspectives and experiences. Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8 – 16, 2022) will include art created under occupation, in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, art by those who left Hungary, Spain and Romania while occupied, and who left Russia in later years, including Jolanta Owidzka, Zofia Butrymowicz, and Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet of Poland and Luba Krejci and Jan Hladik of Czechoslovakia, Ceca Georgieva of Bulgaria, Gyöngy Laky (Hungary/US), Ritzi Jacobi (Romania/Germany), Adela Akers (Spain/US), Aleksandra Stoyanov (Ukraine/Israel) and Irina Kolineskova (Russia/Germany). Allies for Art will also include recently created art by artists living in Europe, including works by Gudrun Pagter of Denmark, Åse Ljones of Norway, Ulla-Maija Vikman of Finland, Heidrun Schimmel of Germany, Lilla Kulka and Włodmierz Cygan of Poland, and, five artists new to browngrotta arts, including, Esmé Hofman of the Netherlands, Aby Mackie of Spain and Baiba Osite of Latvia.

Reserve your space on Eventbrite.

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Reflect, Ulla-Maija Vikman, painted viscose and linen, 62.5” x 54”, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

May was quite a busy and exciting month here at browngrotta arts. We ended April and kicked off May with our annual Art in the Barn Exhibition, Blue/Green: color/code/context. The exhibition attracted a record-breaking crowd that swarmed from all areas near and far. In addition to the opening itself, we hosted “Art-Ocean-Energy” a fundraiser for Ports of Cause as well as an IDCEC accredited presentation “Material Matters: Integrating Art Textiles and Fiber Sculpture in Architecture and Interior.” We also published our new catalog Blue/Green: color/code/context. The catalog–our 48th volume–features work by 57 artists from over 15 countries. Blue/Green: color/code/context is available for purchase on our online store and Amazon.

To kick off May’s New This Week we shared Ulla-Maija Vikman’s Reflect. Made by hand-painting viscose yarn and linen, Vikman’s Reflect falls freely into space and forms varying color surfaces as air flow causing the uniquely painted fibers to move. Vikman found combining the color blue with textiles very interesting because of the way in which they juxtapose each other. “Textile is material and tactile. Blue is immaterial, airy and spacious,” explains Vikman.  

Changing Tides, Wendy Wahl, Encyclopedia Britannica pages, 27” x 42” x 1.75”, 2018. Photo by Tom Grotta

Next up we had Changing Tides by Wendy Wahl.  Made of 275 pages of 1988 Encyclopedia Britannica Annual of World Data, Changing Tides continues a series Wahl developed from her interest in expressing our station in time through the use of materials that have been a part of a particular collective consciousness. Wahl cut the encyclopedia pages into seven sections, for each of the continents, and thoughtfully scrolled and compressed into 1,925 whirls to symbolize the reality of rising water around the globe.

Blue Wave, Ferne Jacobs, coiled and twined waxed linen thread, 19” x 17.5” x 6”, 1994. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Lastly, Ferne Jacobs’ Blue Wave. Jacobs, who began making sculptural baskets in 1970, uses waxed linen to create intricate, coiled designs that evoke organic forms. Jacobs’ commitment to fiber sculptures grows out of a fascination that thread can be made solid, that by using only her hands and thread, she can create a form that can physically stand on its own.

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Yellow, Blue and Black, Gudrun Pagter, sisal, linen/flax, 42.5” x 95”, 2017

We started off October with Yellow, Blue and Black, a tapestry made by Danish artist Gudrun Pagter. When making tapestries, Pagter draws inspiration from architecture, using lines and shapes to achieve spatial tension. “I am engaged in a constant process of exploring the picture through a highly disciplined structuring of geometrical form elements and lines through a restricted color spectrum,” states Pagter. The expansive gray line in Yellow, Black and Blue not only creates a sense of movement but also “transforms a two-dimensional plane into a three-dimensional space.” Despite the name, there are actually many colors in Yellow, Black and Blue; Pagter mixed in light pink and yellow linen threads with the yellow sisal, deep green flax with the blue sisal and blue and black flax with the black sisal. Incorporating other colors into Yellow, Black and Blue helped Pagter to bring the tapestry to life.

Black 15 Boxes Steel mesh, Jin-Sook So, electroplated gold, gold leaf, painted acrylic and patinated thread, 43″ × 65″ × 3″, 2016

Jin-Sook So’s Black 15 Boxes immediately grabs the viewers eye with its grid-like structure. In Black 15 Boxes So creates a grid pushing each of the 15 electroplated gold boxes off the wall, giving them a two-dimensional quality which flattens the boxes without completely altering the perspective. While the ability to peek inside So’s boxes and bowls captivates the viewer, the material’s ability to look like paper, silk and steel bend the viewer’s perception.

Biagga (Sea Wind), Ulla-Maija Vikman, painted viscose and linen, 67 x 71 in, 2010

When making Biagga (Sea Wind) Ulla-Maija Vikman was inspired by his material, linen. The vertical threads create their own natural rhythm complemented by their horizontal patterns. Vikman paints and repaints the threads two or three times in order to get the tones he desires. Vikman always hangs his work off the wall to give the impression of a free fall. The slightest breeze or draft moves will move the threads, altering the light and form of the piece, having a kinetic effect that brings the work to life.

Left: White Shell Tongue n. 1, Federica Luzzi ,two fine art prints on “baritata” paper, 66.875” x 24.75” x 1.25”, 2006 Right: White Shell Tongue n. 2, Federica Luzzi, 78.625” x 32.75” x 1.25”, 2006

Federica Luzzi’s work focuses on nature, specifically leaves, bark and plant seeds. Above all, Luzzi is fascinated with plant seed, it is for that reason all of her work features the title Shell. “I am interested in their small and sinuous shapes, which assure their mobility from trees, and in their vital capacity of shutting themselves until the moment they mysteriously wake up, the seeds like ‘sleeper beauties,’ ” states Luzzi. The White Shell Tongue prints were born after a variety of conversations with researchers at the National Institutes of Physics in Frascati about the concepts of dark matter, antimatter, nuclear, subnuclear physics and the particle accelerator. The prints “suggest a primordial voice, speaking in a language now unknown to us but original, a pure, reductive writing externality, with wrappings and empties shells,” Luzzi explains. The vertical loom and tapestry art tools allow Luzzi to work with vegetal fibers from their frame to three-dimensionality.  Luzzi’s works are presented like a dimensional installation as if they are fragments of a galaxy: macrocosm and microcosm together.

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Annette Bellamy Long Lines

Rippling, roiling, teeming with life… Deep, dark, waiting to be explored…
Water has long been a potent influence for artists wishing to explore its majesty and mystery.

For the last several months, browngrotta arts has worked with Jamie Uretsky, Curator and Noelle Foye, Executive Director of the New Bedford Museum of Art/ArtWorks! in Massachusetts. Plunge: explorations from above and below, which examines the influence of water in the work of 16 artists from around the world, is the result.

Plunge explorations from above and below installation

The multifaceted exhibition combines sculptures, tapestries, installation works, paintings and photography. Each work resides at the intersection of the maker’s fascination with a variety of nautical and natural themes and the artmaking process. Plunge pairs Helena Hernmarck’s monumental woven depiction of tall ships in New York Bay 1884 and Chris Drury’s Double Echo, a print that superimposes a fragment of an echogram from Flight W34 over East Antarctica and an echocardiogram of the pilot’s heartbeat. In other galleries, Heather Hobler’s meditative photographs of seascapes join Karyl Sisson’s “sea creatures” made of domestic objects like zippers and clothespins; Christopher Volpe’s evocative paintings join Grethe Wittrock’s Arctica, a sculpture made from a repurposed sail from the Danish Navy. Unlike most musuem exhibtions, the works in Plunge are all available for sale.

Thirteen of the artists in Plunge, representing five countries, are represented by browngrotta arts: Dona Anderson; Jane Balsgaard; Annette Bellamy; Marian Bijlenga; Birgit Birkjaaer; Chris Drury; Helena Hernmarck; Lawrence LaBianca; Sue Lawty; Judy Mulford; Karyl Sisson; Ulla-Maija Vikman; Grethe Wittrock. Their work, and that of the three other artists in the exhibition, Heather Hobler, Anne Leone and Christopher Volpe, will be included in the catalog for the exhibition, designed and photographed by Tom Grotta. It will be available beginning June 5th at www.browngrotta.com.

Plunge’s opening is tonight Friday, June 2nd at the New Bedford Museum of Art from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Jane Balsgaard, one of the artists in Plunge, will attend from Denmark.

The New Bedford Art Museum is great cultural destination for those on the way to the Vineyard, Nantucket or the Cape. You have plenty of time to see it, as the exhibition continues through October 7, 2017. The New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks! is located at: 608 Pleasant Street/ New Bedford, MA/02740/508.961.3072/info@newbedfordart.org.

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Still Crazy…30 Years: The Catalog

It’s big! It’s beautiful (if we do say so ourselves –and we do)! The catalog for our 30th anniversary is now available on our new shopping cart. The catalog — our 46th volume — contains 196 pages (plus the cover), 186 color photographs of work by 83 artists, artist statements, biographies, details and installation shots.

Naoko Serino Spread

Michael Radyk Spread

Lilla Kulka Spread

Jo Barker Spread

The essay, is by Janet Koplos, a longtime editor at Art in America magazine, a contributing editor to Fiberarts, and a guest editor of American Craft. She is the author of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture (Abbeville, 1990) and co-author of Makers: A History of American Studio Craft (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). We have included a few sample spreads here. Each includes a full-page image of a work, a detail shot and an artist’s statement. There is additional artists’ biographical information in the back of the book. Still Crazy After All These Years…30 years in art can be purchased at www.browngrotta.com http://store.browngrotta.
com/still-crazy-after-all-these-years-30-years-in-art/. Our shopping cart is mobile-device friendly and we now take PayPal.

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Tamiko Kawata reports that she had the chance to read a few books while icing her injured shoulder after therapy, first three times a day, then two times. She enjoyed Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. She is now reading — and enjoying — Herta Muller, Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter.

Mary Merkel-Hess recommends Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin’s Lost Notebooks by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. “It is the gracefully written account of how, during his five years on the Beagle, Charles Darwin became an accomplished naturalist who could discern scientific truths from the creatures he studied. “ she writes. “Haupt documents this transformation by concentrating on Darwin’s lesser-known writings, particularly his notebooks. At points it reads like a travelogue and a manual for bird watchers. I found it fascinating.”

“I do not get to read books as much as I like,” writes Kiyomi Iwata, ” but the best book I read this year was The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen. Even though she is very young — my daughter’s age — I found her prose most sensitive, insightful and compassionate. Her most recent book is No Book for the World, which I am still reading.”

The most inspirational book Toshio Sekiji read this year was Korean Economy Drilled Through by Lee Hong Chang, which was originally published in Korea by Bobmun-sha,1999, the Japanese translation was by Hosei University Press in 2004. The book illuminates the dramatic changes from the medieval age to the modern age. It was one of a number of related books Toshio has read over the last two years as he prepared a report, “Korean Lacquer Culture through Neolithic Age to Modern Age” for the Bulletin of the Lacquer Art Museum in Wajima, Japan.

Ulla-Maija Vikman most enjoyed Nyljettyjä ajatuksia (Flayed Thoughts) by Juha Hurme. In Finnish only at this point, it’s a story of a 700-mile, 20-day rowing journey in which the characters eat, camp on islets and beaches and discuss what is essential and how what’s essential is transmitted.

There are two recommendations from Ruth Malinowski: The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, recommended last year by Kay Sekimachi (and published by Rhonda’s other employer, FSG/Macmillan) and 1913: The Year Before the Storm by Florian Illies. The latter highlights developments in literature and art, as well as politics, covering the lives of Kafka, Rilke, Thomas Mann, Camille Claudel, Freud, Stalin, Hitler and some Royalty. Wars, love letters, art thefts and many more events from1913 are cleverly combined in 12 chapters, each reflecting a calendar month.

Ceca Georgieva rated Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts as her most inspirational read of the year. (Full disclosure, this one is also published by Rhonda’s other employer, St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan and a book she also quite enjoyed. It’s been optioned by Johnny Depp and the movie is currently in production.)

“Of the many inspiring reads this year,” writes Wendy Wahl, “two authors stand out who had an impact on my work as a visual artist interested in the potency of printed text on paper. I was given Nicholson Baker’s The Size of Thoughts, by my husband when I was trying to weave together seemingly disparate yet connected ideas that sometimes are considered mundane and should be thought of as blessed into a cohesive short story. Baker’s style reminded me to keep doing what I was doing. I went onto read his Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, which became the inspiration for a sculpture I made this year that shares its name. One of my favorite library activities is to stroll through the stacks with my head cocked to one side and my index finger underlining titles vertically to see what’s there. I was delighted to come upon On Paper, The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History by Nicholas Basbanes, ‘a self-confessed bibliophiliac.’ I’ve checked this book out several times, paid late fees and, since I can’t write in this copy, I realize I must own it.”

Five art books got the nod from our artist/correspondents including Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art by Deloris Tarzan Ament with photographs by Mary Randlett. Dona Anderson “enjoyed immensely” Ament’s profiles of 21 artists who lived and worked in Washington State during formative periods in their careers, profiles that blend discussion of their work and commentary on the obstacles they faced and the influences they brought to bear on one another.

Scott Rothstein rates A Passionate Eye: Textiles, Paintings and Sculptures from the Bharany Collections, Giles Tillotson, ed. as a “great book.” Mr. Bharany is Scott’s “Indian Father.” He is very involved with textiles as well as paintings and other Indian art forms. Scott says, “I had tea with him three times a week when I lived there and we get back to India almost every year, mostly to spend time with him. He is around 88 years old, so we feel we need to be with him as much as we can.” The book on Judith Scott, Judith Scott, Bound and Unbound, he recommends, too — more for the photos than the text.

Nancy Koenigsberg found the volume created to accompany the traveling exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Fiber: Sculpture 1960 to the Present (available on our website, browngrotta.com), “a must read for fiber people,  makers and buyers — especially young artists who don’t know who some of these artists are. I was really surprised to discover that!!,” she says.

“My favorite book for this year,” writes Adela Akers, “is, without a doubt: In The Realm Of Nature: Bob Stocksdale & Kay Sekimachi (available on our website, browngrotta.com). A beautiful book, well conceived with excellent writing by Signe S. Mayfield. The life history of these two wonderful artists is beautifully intertwined with perfect images of their work. What a pleasure!”

Wishing you all new year that provides plenty of time for pleasure reading!

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“Some works in Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture reflect the early days of contemporary textile art and sculpture movement,” says Tom Grotta, founder and co-curator at browngrotta arts. “There are also current works by both established and emerging artists, which provide an indication of where the movement is now and where it may be headed.”

Since Monday the 26th is CyberMonday this year, sales of art, books, catalogs, videos or dvds placed online or by telephone that day will be discounted 10% (excluding tax and shipping). In addition, bga will make a donation to the International Child Art Foundation for each sale made from November 24th through December 31, 2012. Visit browngrotta.com. For more information call Tom at 203.834.0623 or email us at art@browngrotta.com.

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