When I was first overlooking the submissions to Cutting Edge I was blown away by the large number of amazing works that were incredibly minimal. Generally speaking I am not a minimalist kind of girl but a handful of these works really moved me as they tethered this incredible balance of minimal and yet rich with meaning. Most of these works did not end up making sense in the final version of the exhibit but I just could not get the work of John Paul Morabito out of my head.
I do not include this image because either of us were happy that the band blocked most viewers from his work at the opening but...It gives you a sense of the scale of the work which I think is essential to the beauty of the work.
My most recent explorations have a focus on communication and relationships. This work is a humorous investigation of actual, metaphorical and poetic means of building connections between peoples. I am exploring methods of communication and the navigation of the spaces, both physical and mental, that we inhabit. I am intrigued with creating new ways of seeing, hearing and participating with our surroundings. By disrupting or enhancing the senses, my props make possible an exaggerated self-awareness, a break in the normalcy of daily experience. With the body dressings I am creating a threshold space between reality and the imagination. This work is a social experiment of sorts, a mediated event to explore communication, comfort and complacency through play. 
This is a shot of the gorgeous tag that Kathryn Pannepacker gave us at at the Textile Arts Center opening. She came out to check out the opening and I was lucky enough to meet her and she left this lovely note for us. Awesome.
If the humor is subdued for this one, the element of surprise remains strong, especially when making close inspection of these pieces — many of which incorporate national flag designs — which amply display Pannepacker's penchant for utilizing man-made materials along with staples of weaving, such as wool, cotton, jute and silk. The yellow parts of her flag of Rwanda are made from caution tape. A flag of Sierra Leone sports a diamond shape in the center made of silver pipe cleaners and red-tipped matches: It's her take on the notion of blood diamonds. A piece that shows the Israeli and Palestinian flags divided by a wide band of hundreds of matches, in the middle of which sits a small opening, offers quiet commentary on that particular world conflict.
She has been known to set weavings on fire — the match part, that is. The rest of the piece, which she treats with flame retardant, remains intact. Even without the pyrotechnics, these works burn with a strong message.
"When I weave thousands of matches into something but they're not set on fire, it's got all this potential energy," she says. "It's about the capacity for something to happen."
read full article here.
She also does some graffiti weaving where she leaves little weaving's out in the world as she lives and travels through life. Sharing her love towards the process with the community at large.
Recently she did a large scale public work of painting traditional textile patterns on a large wall.
No matter what Kathryn seems to be doing she does it with a sense of humor and obligation towards her craft and the world. She has a strong foundation in tradition but is always pushing the envelope and looking outside of her own self. Admirable work.
See more links to a number of interesting articles here and her blog where she documents her activities as a renegade craft artist.
work by Sheila Klein
Perhaps you can check out this opening that sounds great- sadly I cannot....
September 3 - October 9, 2010
First Friday Closing Reception: October 8, 2010 7-10pm.
at 1708 Gallery
Through stop-animation and paintings, Marcie Paper records visual abstractions of her experiences in the current moment. As she layers these images on the paper, they become a collection of short-term memories that help her, “hold on to a little longer, understand a little better, and have physical evidence of, (her) existence.”
The paintings and animations on display in Mama Pajama Rolled Out of Bed were created during a two year period in which Paper listened exclusively to one side of a Paul Simon album. She notes that this particular album brought her back to a former time and place in her life, and “began to wonder how much “memory-time” one album or song could hold.” The images that comprise this exhibition represent and capture specific moments in time and explore questions that arise as the artist investigates memory, experience and nostalgia.
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