Dialogues and Diversity this May in Discourse at browngrotta arts
In its Spring exhibition, Discourse: art across generations and continents (4 May - 12 May), browngrotta arts in Wilton, Connecticut, will celebrate the diversity of the fiber arts field, assembling a large and eclectic group of artworks that celebrate 50+ artists from 18 countries, who work with varied materials, and represent distinct artistic approaches. Included will be works from contemporary fiber art’s origins 60 years ago, current mixed media works and sculpture, and pieces created in the decades between. Discourse will place works in interesting conversations. The exhibition will offer viewers opportunities to draw comparisons and contrasts — to see myriad ways to shape perspectives on contemporary fiber art.
Image: 7fs Knothole III, Shoko Fukuda, knotted paper, 4" x 8" x 4", 2023. Image above: 19bas Tracking Nasca Patterns, Jim Bassler, indigo dyed ikat tapestry, 63" x 32", 2006; linen, both the warp and parts of the weft, natural dark brown cotton from Guatemala, lighter brown cotton from Oaxaca, Coyuchi, a white handspun silk from Oaxaca where the silk worms feed off of native oak trees, and purple-dyed handspun cotton, Caracol. This dye comes from a sea snail that lives off the Pacific coast, on rocks, in Oaxaca. They go out in row boats with hanks of spun cotton. They milk the snails then put them back on the rocks.
Structural explorations
Varying approaches to structure and making is one such perspective. Despite their distinctiveness, the artists in Discourse share a common trait. Each possesses “material intelligence,” what author Glenn Adamson describes as “a deep understanding of the material world around us, an ability to read that material environment, and the know-how required to give it new form.” Artists like John McQueen and Norma Minkowitz of the US and Norie Hatekayama and Naoko Serino of Japan engineer imaginative structures of unexpected materials — organic forms of plaited paper tape, improbable shapes of moulded jute, and figures of crocheted linen, and pieced twigs and branches.
Reading between the lines
Deciphering messages made by artists is another way in which the works in Discourse will challenge viewers. "I like to tease the brain -- to promote or even provoke or cajole, a visual dialogue with the viewer,” says Gyöngy Laky (US). Anticipation, which spells out the word “Who?“ in applewood branches, presents a question. "Given the challenges, concerns, conflicts and other dangers we face today,” Laky says, "this question, underlies the search for a way forward to a better day.” Through Spectator, Irina Kolesnikova (RU/DE) also shares the anxiety of daily life that’s on her mind. She presents her alter ego in a filmstrip-like series of discomfiting scenarios. Laura Foster Nicholson’s (US) woven landscapes, idyllic at first glance, reveal a concern with man’s impact on the natural world. Anneke Klein’s (NL) interest is in communication. Dialogue is made up of two layers that hang, one in front of the other. As one's viewpoint of the work changes, the interaction between its two layers shifts, just as words alter the interaction between two speakers.
Weaving emotion into art
Emotionally, this is another way in which Discourse will provoke. Our engagement with fiber art — art textiles, tapestries, and three-dimensional sculpture — is deeply personal. Our first memories are of cloth, fuzzy blankets, soft towels, and they remain strong ones. Scientists have shown that different parts of our brains light up when we look at a woven image and a photographic image of the same item. Aby Mackie (SP) sources and recycles used fabrics from flea markets, fabrics laden with memory. She is captivated by these silent witnesses to a life lived; a worn bed sheet, a stained tablecloth, a moth-eaten gown. Such artefacts bear the marks and physicality of human nature, possessing poetic power. She gilds this repurposed material in works like We Can All Be Saved 13, asking viewers to consider what creates value. In her work, Red Shell N.4, Federica Luzzi (IT) has used fabric from Elvira Sollevanti, a woman born in Gubbio, Italy born at the end of the 19th century, created while she waited for her husband to return from the front in World War II. "When you receive a loom-woven cloth from another woman as a gift, it is a handover,” Luzzi says. "It is therefore not a simple use of someone else's material in one's own work but it is a real transfer of knowledge, from hand to hand, from loom to loom, from story to story. A woman weaver, that I have never met and who preceded me, gives way to her successor; to continue the discussion, expanding it.”
Generational and geographic correlations
Discourse also offers viewers a chance to make intergenerational and cross-continental comparisons. Included will be graphic weavings by Warren Seelig (US) made in the 70s, and ones by Gudrun Pagter (DK), and Blair Tate (US) made 50+ years later in the 2020s. Differing sensibilities among artists from Eastern Europe and those in Western Europe, Asia, and the US will also be on display. Artists in Eastern Europe have a history, which began after World War II, of using items at hand to create works – sisal, rope, hemp, and goat hair. A fierce energy is seen in these works; they are rough and irregular, front and back. Discourse features an example from Poland in the 1960s and three works from Latvia in the 2020s. Artists elsewhere, including Adela Akers (US), Kay Sekimachi (US), Michael Radyk (US), Polly Barton (US), and Heidrun Schimmel (DE), have worked in more traditional tapestry materials like wool, silk, linen – quietly refined works are the result. Discourse will spotlight such regional contrasts.
Technical departures
Discourse will also highlight the wide range of technical innovations and experiments that fiber art has featured since its inception. Several artists make vastly different uses of paper — scrolling of encyclopedia pages by Wendy Wahl (US), knotted paper objects by Shoko Fukuda (JP), sculptural works of rice paper by Pat Campbell (US), and woven paper patchworks by Eva Vargö (SE). Three artists, Adela Akers (US), Marianne Kemp (NL), and Marian Bijlenga (NL) use horsehair in different ways. Jim Bassler’s work, Tracking Nasca Patterns, from 2006 is an indigo-dyed linen ikat that incorporates dark brown cotton from Guatemala, lighter brown cotton from Oaxaca, coyuchi, a white handspun silk from Oaxaca, and purple hand-spun cotton, caracol, created with a dye that comes from a Pacific sea snail. Neha Puri Dhir (IN) is involved in several dyeing experiments to achieve differing effects, including stitch-resist-discharge dyeing and over-dyeing to achieve a halo effect, letting the upper patch colour of two contrasting colours bleed onto the silk fabric below to achieve two distinct colours on a single layer of fabric, and painting with dyes on fabric, combined with stitch-resist work and discharge dyeing.
Discourse: art across generations and continents is on show at browngrotta arts from 4 - 12 May 2024.
Photos by Tom Grotta, courtesy browngrotta arts
Find out more:
browngrotta.com/exhibitions/discourse-art-across-generations-and-continents