clots of beads..

Due to a blog comment I was led to the website of Laura Bell and I was excited to be led to her "gurgling" fiber sculptures. I know a few particular readers that will especially like her work.

She says this in her statement:

The act of stitching is one that is simultaneously repetitive, meditative, and industrious. It is also a series of tiny acts of violence: cutting, piercing, grafting together, that when added up, become a realized form. The texture of the materials against the hand, the stab of the needle, the piles of knots, beads, stitches, and filled forms, creates an intimate and tactile working process.

The forms bubble, gurgle, boil, and emerge. They stretch and strain against each other, encrusted by milky blooms of knots or glittering clots of beads. As they creep across the surface of the piece, they become unruly and unpleasant, recalling itchy prickles, a parasitic mild, or an oozing bud.

In these pieces, I am contemplating the inevitability of change and my preoccupation with its effects, as I reflect on getting older, as well as my worries for the future of my daughter and the world she is inheriting: one of wonder and beauty certainly, but also one where beloved animals go extinct, viruses grow stronger and more deadly, and weather patterns are violent and unpredictable. This anxiety is built into the work.  The pieces contain a world in which a battle between chaos and control is being waged.

Her statement kind of says it all and is quite eloquent but indeed her marks creep and seep across in the most beautiful and repulsive way.

She also does some incredibly lovely drawings and paintings. See more work here.

threads...

A sneak peek at the Threads exhibit. Come see me give an artist talk NEXT Wednesday at 5pm.

a delicate mess.

My most recent Future Heirlooms artist led me to research the ceramicist Joke Schole. Her work is a wonderful delicate mess. She combines many elements to make fantastical works from porcelain.

She often somehow incorporates elements of fabric from a lace pressing to an addition of ribbon or trim into her works.

In a recent press release about her work this was said:

Joke Schole’s creations challenge the viewer to engage in a dialogue. Her art is based on storytelling, it’s symbolic, full of humour and harmony, and yet often profound.
Using fine porcelain, sometimes combined with textiles, paint, or other materials, Joke’s work creates something unexpected. The soul in her creations comes, from the playful approach to her work where she combines a regular and repetitive approach with irregularity and the unexpected …..but the details make the perfection.

See more work here and here.

small stitches.

 I am getting a lot of small stitches done this week- remembering how much you can get done while watching tv or sitting at a table chatting. This is a good reminder. I have A LOT going on in the next month or so and have been very concerned about actual progress in my studio- So the steady progress of all these small stitches is encouraging to me.

How do you carve out time to get into your studio?

What I really need to do is get my website updated and get some shows lined up. I have been oh so neglectful in that category but it is just so not the fun part of being an artist. Anyone have a show or space to recommend?

explosions of fiber.

another Asheville artist team, Libby and Jim Mijanovich- 2 self taught artists that left their regular jobs to pursue making nature inspired sewn works.

Their work is a little more "traditional" for a lack of a better word then what I tend to write about but I find their use of recycled clothing to create abstract color field works are quite lovely.

 

Online the texture of the work is totally lost and is essential to the quality of the work. But atleast you can get a sense of their use of color and shape. See some more of their works here.

Classical drape.

I am currently doing a little visit to my folks in Asheville so thought it would be appropriate to find a few local folks to feature. Lucky for me my parents have a new local magazine and what do you know it feature some pretty cool local artists. Megan Van Deusen's work stood out to me for obvious reasons- lots of draping, lots of white, figurative.

She draws, directly onto fabric, representations of nudes lit and posed in classically inspired ways and then drapes, pins and attaches draping that brings the entire piece into the 3 dimension.

I like how her work is referencing such classical periods of art and style but simultaneously doing a totally contemporary interpretation of it.

See more of her work here.

hoping and avoiding

I am hoping to get these new drawings started stitching this week. Obviously another from the piles series above.  It will be the largest yet.

And a "toys" one. I was planning on another image and could not find it so ended up with this one. But I am kind of loving it and am thinking of doing a mini series of some of the elaborate and wonderful ways I discover t's toys.

I am also cutting, cutting, cutting to do a new piece similar to this...
and should be working on some other stuff that instead I am avoiding.

freak out.

I am officially freaking out. The month of April is going to be CRAZY for me all for good reasons... But I am also hoping that neither my studio or my kiddo are too neglected in the process. 

I am teaching crazy amounts over the next month, have an artist talk upstate, at the end of April early May I am back at NYU as a visiting artist, have an article to do, an exhibit to take down and have taken on more responsibility in my life not as an artist. So the timing of everything is a little bit nuts but...its all for good things. But oh poor studio what will happen in you over the next month.

Night time will be my only time with you my needle friend.

taut thread.

Sometimes simple is oh so good. Anne Lindberg has been a round for quite awhile and is known for her wall installations of thread. But her recent "thread drawings" are simple to the max and are also quite lovely.

She states this:
My sculpture and drawings inhabit a non-verbal place resonant with such primal human conditions. Systemic and non-representational, these works are subtle, rhythmic, abstract, and immersive. I find beauty and disturbance through shifts in tool, layering and material to create passages of tone, density, speed, path and frequency within a system... The work references physiological systems – such as heartbeat, respiration, neural paths, equilibrium - and psychological states.

 She has work on exhibit kind of all around the country at the moment so if you are in Philly, Kansas and some other places you might be able to see her work. Check out her website for more amazing work and her exhibition schedule.

woven wows!

This show looks pretty freaking amazing. Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich at the MET.
Cannot wait to see it.

More info here.

THREADS-

I amso honored and happy to have a number of works in this exhibit and very honored to be speaking at the gallery April 3rd.  So please come visit the show or me if you can. I promise to give a fill report when I am at the gallery. 

THREADS
 
March 19-April 25, 2013
Dowd Gallery, SUNY Cortland. 

 Contemporary works of embroidery by:
Karin Birch, Orly Cogan, Andrea Dezso. Angelo Filomeno, Kent Henricksen, Nava Lubelski

Tom Lundberg, Joetta Maue, Clay McLaurin

Opening Reception: TONIGHT Thursday, March 21, 4:30-6:30 pm

For centuries, embroidery was labeled as “women’s work” and was therefore relegated to the category of craft. However, during the twentieth-century, artists such as Anni Albers, Judy Chicago, Sheila Hicks and Faith Ringgold helped to elevate fiber as an art medium. In rebellion against the historically male-dominated media of painting and sculpture, feminist art of the 1960s and beyond was often created from the alternative medium of fiber. Artists choosing to work in fiber successfully expanded the definition of fine art to include it.

The nine contemporary artists–five women and four men–whose works are featured in this show each have a unique approach to embroidery. However, they all share a commitment to this ancient needlework technique and its slow and meditative process as an expressive art form.

Programs
Artist's Talk - Joetta Maue: Wednesday, April 3, 5:00 pm

Hands-On Embroidery Workshop:
Karin Birch and Jenn McNamara
Wednesdays April 17 and April 24, 5:30-7:30 pm
SUNY Cortland Fibers Studio, 22 W. Court Street, Cortland
Free and open to the public; registration required.
Call 607-753-4216 to register. 

GET ALL THE INFO HERE.

richer...

It is funny to look back and see how when I was lucky enough to be in the studio full-time I was always being frantic and pushing myself, never getting enough done.  And now with all that I am balancing I feel as if I have finally come to a peace- and simply do what I can and let that be enough.

I have some extra days in the studio this week and it has been wonderful. But it has also been wonderful to not pressure myself- for instance I let myself wander around Harvard Square for an hour yesterday and this morning hung out a little longer with my kiddo. Though these choices make me be in the studio a little less they make my life so much better and more balanced.  Which in the end makes my work so much richer.

I even organized my studio yesterday, something I rarely allow myself to do, and it feels amazing. My husband was like "it doesn't look that different." But little does he know- now things do not fall on me every time I open my cabinet, my threads are organized by color, my scissors are no longer jammed on one hook because I had crap in front of the other hook- and all of this makes me happy. So though I again have some things to do today which will pull me away from my work I will be so happy to be in my studio working when I am.

Hope you get a few minutes in your studio today.

Flashback.

I am choosing this awesome "Flashback" from October 2011 because Sophia's work ROCKS and her new work is even more compelling and she is the subject pf my next future heirlooms interview.  So get excited and read on...



I came to the work of artist Sophia Narrett through my curatorial work as she was one of the artists featured in PLAY. I immediately loved her work, it has a wonderful sense of both honesty and playfulness. I meant to feature her here well before this moment so am glad she let me know about her participation in some upcoming exhibits to remind me of how awesome she and her work is.


Like I said Sophia herself is pretty awesome. I found her to be very sweet and gracious to work with. What I love about her work is that it is also sweet... and vulnerable. And also has disco references!!


She combines "hobby" store goodies with funky embroidery to comment on the complexity of love and romance. I love her use of bright, even neon, colors and non precious materials such as fake feathers, puffy paint, and artificial leaves.


Her style of illustration is a very "in the now" hip style. And don't let the pictures deceive you the work is actually on a pretty large scale. I mean not huge but bigger then you think.


In a recent feature she said:

Romantic love transforms life, allowing people to move beyond the loneliness and pain typical of human existence. In a world of fear and isolation, love is everything we can want. With this work I use embroidery and fabric paint to approach the monumental concepts of beauty, love and meaning.

I capitalize on the communicative power of symbols and color by using a language of love signifier and clichés. Disco music describes the euphoric, glitzy kind of love I imagine, and the multi-colored disco floor can be a bed, a stage, a source of sublime light, a garden, or a cage. While suns, computers, and disco balls radiate truth, rainbows frame mini-landscapes, which act as doorways to new possibilities.

I cannot wait to see what she does next, especially knowing that she is such a young artist, she is totally one to watch.


See more here.