Let's join together.

joined together

don't leave.

I am so loving the simple and profound nature of the work of artist and knitter Lindsay Obermeyer, particularly the work from her series Women's Work. This body of work beautifully explores the relationship of mother and child. From works that explore observing the child in play and friendships...

ring around the rosies

encircled

To the literal exhaustion and complex physical and emotional responses a women has in the raising and caring of her child...

stretched thin.

mommy

To the idea of the emotional connection to ones child and that of the child's to the mother, and the eventual inevitable cutting of the umbilical cord.

blood line.

Whether in performance or as sculptural objects Lindsay's work sensitively and honestly deals with and explores the complex relationship of mother and child.

She states:

The enduring connection of textiles to the body offers rich metaphorical possibilities for exploring the bond between mother and child. Like a knitted garment this bond can stretch, rip, fray, or unravel as the child grows and matures. It is in a perpetual cycle of mending and loosening until death creates the final separation.

swaddled

She of course has a number of other beautiful and rich series to explore as well. See them here.

Life is...

as long as we all remember to...


and ...
each other.

another boundary broken.

We couldn't’ get in. We couldn’t get out.

Lacey Jane Roberts similar to Sophia Horton uses craft, crochet, and knitting to explore the roles of boundaries and power. Working mostly with a Barbie knitting machine to completely re-create a chain link fence with barb wire she expertly juxtaposes sharp with soft, mass produced with hand made, and masculine with feminine.

Her statement reads:

My current work merges craft with objects of violence and control to examine large structures of power and how they might be interrupted by ways of making that are often labeled as gendered, amateur, and low. By hand-weaving razor wire fences that have been ensconced with yarn knitted on children’s toy knitting machines and morphing seminal craft tools like spinning wheels into cyborg like creatures, notions of what it means to “master” are thrown into question. To “master” is to wield power over others, but “to master” in the context of craft is to possess a self-sufficient creative agency over materials and tools. I hover between the ideas of Lorde and Butler, reclaiming the mastery of craft to create an alternative set of tools that could potentially dismantle “the master’s house

To see more of Lacey's work go here.

Opening Tonight.

Hey all. Just in case you will be in Brooklyn tonight or this month I have 2 works in a show at Space 414 in Red Hook. One of the works is the commissioned work above. It will be suspended in the window- I cannot wait to see how it looks.

Show details are:

YOU ARE STANDING INTO DANGER

7 AUGUST - 11 SEPTEMBER, 2009

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY AUGUST 7 @ 7PM

SPACE 414 presents You are Standing into Danger, an exhibition of twenty-two artists working or living in Red Hook, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a functioning waterfront and a complicated history of isolation, violence and corruption.

“You are standing into danger” is a communiqué of the international maritime signal code, denoted by flying alone the flag “U” (pronounced uniform), which appears as a four-square of checkered red and white.

The artists who contribute work to You Are Standing into Danger deliver analogous communiqués, each one built from its own visual language. More than two dozen works of painting, sculpture, photography, video, printmaking, illustration and embroidery mediate the instability that persists between the contents of artwork and the honest and oftentimes horrific confrontations with contemporary life. A nausea emerges from this instability, as the viewer is held in a tenuous balance between beauty and terror.

Curated by WALKER WAUGH, You Are Standing Into Danger is the third exhibition this summer at SPACE 414, following Vintage Violence and Disaster Kit, to address the persistence of threat, disaster, survival and the role of the artist as a purveyor of hope against harbingers of fear.

Featuring work by AUDREY ANASTASI, JOSEPH ANASTASI, RAFAEL BUENO, MARIE-HELENA CARLETON, MATTHEW COX, ASTRID CRAVENS, LAYLA DELRIDGE, KARNI DORELL, EMILY DRISCOLL, PATRICK DUNAWAY, SEAN ENO, MICAH GAREN, MOLLIE GOLDSTROM, SHANTI GRUMBINE, CATHRIN HOSKINSON, JOETTA MAUE, SIOBHAN MCBRIDE, STUART NICHOLSON, SUSU PIANCHUPATTANA, RYAN RUSSO, J.T. THEODORACOPULOS, and HARRIET ZUCKER.

Read a blurp about it here.

I will be at the opening on the early side, so I hope to see some of you.

boundaries of yarn.

See my article on artist Sophia Horton and her exploration of boundaries and place through yarn. Read here.

a mess.

Sorry, no post yesterday but my day was crazy and hectic. I taught 3 yoga classes and had a meeting in Chelsea. But teaching is good and the meeting could have been real good. I am hoping that it will result into my work being carried somewhere that could develop into some other exciting opportunities.
We will see it is all in the works nothing actualized yet.
...and I am trying to get some work done for proposing works to them and works done to ship out to another show.

In the process of all this I have realized that my portfolio of available really good works is diminishing, I need to get some new text works done asap just in order to have them to show people. And in planning for a grouping of them I realized that my stockpile of linens is shrinking fast and I have very few really special ones left. So I am going to have to get a new stockpile somehow?
But no plans to head anywhere with good antique stores until September....

-and my studio is a MESS.
So I guess all in all that is all good news. Busy is good.
I finished 2 pieces this week and look forward to sharing them with you once they are ironed.

humor in the knit.

Capitol

Persistent Melody

I am so excited by the work of Janet Morton. Her oeuvre is giant, her medium spans many things but her favorite definitely seems to be yarn. Conceptually she seems to explore many things. But everything is exciting, beautiful, and has a sense of fun to it. As you can see I had a hard time selecting images to show because all her work is great and it is so varied.

sweater for a giraffe.

Work socks for Patsy (the elephant)

Janet playfully examines the meaning and roles of everyday objects. Often through large public installations. One journalist states:

...such creations also invite audiences to take a long, hard look at how humans view and interact with objects and environments. When viewing Morton's art, look twice—first to enjoy the surprise of the unexpected and then to be drawn into deeper potential meanings. from here.

Early Frost.

Morton's projects often contain added measures of humor and care demonstrated in a sincere investment of time and labor to produce a relevant transformation that is at the same time delightful and absurdly excessive. "It is my intention," she says, "to make publicly accessible work that asks questions about perception, about truth, about equations that link time and money and about the ways in which value and meanings are assigned to objects."

Early Frost. (detail)

She has been quoted to say that her love for knitting comes from its documentation and "measurement of time." Often very well expressed through her many tree works.

Domestic Interior

Tweed plant.

I also of course really love her work with the everyday objects of domestic life. I have been "working" on making a house plant myself for years.

casting off.

Strangely, when looking through her entire portfolio much of her visual approach reminds me of one of my all time favorite artists, Annette Messeger. Something about how she approaches the wall in installation is similar.

I cannot find any sort of clear statement. But her work is so playful you seem to not need one so much. To see more of her super fun and fabulous work go here.

comforts... with the Lion.

So here are some shots of my work installed at Lion Brand Yarn Studio. I was quite happy with how it looks against the exposed brick. I was concerned it would not stand out enough. What do you think.


The install went well. The torrential rain waited for me to get in the Studio and then opened up. Thank goodness. Hanging a 4 x 8 ft panel of yarn is hard enough but soaking wet would have so sucked. At first I was a little worried as the initial hang it looked very droopy and had little shape. But with much fussing and many threads of fishing line to create shape - it worked.


I am quite happy with it. And it looks good even from afar.
The studio is great very vibrant with life and crafters working away and the staff are capable of answering most any question.
The work is up until the end of October so if you are around be sure to stop by and visit.
Also check out their blog, cause it is good and it will also have a feature on me in the coming week.

lovely lazy.

Here is an earlier shot of the first piece of a new text series I am doing. Now the piece is almost done. I should be able to finish it in just a few brief moments- once I find the thread.
It is a new series based on a daily journal I kept the year before I turned 30. The journal is over a year old now but the language found is quite perfect for a new series of work.

The weekend was quite productive and lazy at the same time -perfect mix. It was a super rainy Sunday so I just watched really bad TV movies and embroidered all afternoon- it was great.
I got a piece done for a show in Brooklyn that opens this weekend and got a ton done on this piece.

I will share photo's of my install at Lion Brand tomorrow.

skins you can stand behind and snuggle with.

Ivy, snow leopard

Reading a magazine this weekend I got reminded of the work of Ruth Marshall. I first saw some of her snake works at the Museum of Art and Design a few years ago.


Ruth uses knitting to protest the poaching of animals for their skins and in the process creates astoundingly realistic replicas of the animals.

amur leopard

Beyond wildlife preservation Ruth is interested in the balance between survival and danger and our precarious relationship with nature.

Gold Jaguar

Her big cat's series is extremely beautiful and ambitious. The knitted skins are so realistic you have to look twice to believe what you see. Supposedly, one of her recent skins sold for more than the black market value of an actual cat skin. Now that is awesome to replace the killing of an animal by the sweet click of your needles and fingers.


Her snake works are lovely. I particularly like them all curled up and tagged as you would find them in a collectors work room.
But they are often displayed hung on the wall.

Coral Snakes

Seeing work like this always makes me want to make work that is more political or more about the greater world. But I never have personally been inspired to do it- and the inner world of our hearts is just as important so for now no political work for me. But I do hope someday I get that bug of inspiration. As I am always inspired by those that do it.

Check out Ruth's work and heartfelt writings here.