Home

Showing posts with label gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gallery. Show all posts

Thursday, January 12, 2017

National Museum of Women in the Arts - No Man's Land

Magdalena Abakanowicz, '4 Seated Figures,' 2002. Burlap, resin and iron rods.

'No Man's Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection' (here for the online exhibition.) was recently shown at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.

'4 Seated Figures' may have been inspired by Magdalena's memory of witnessing her mother being shot in the hands as soldiers stormed their home in Poland during WWII. What she says about these genderless, race-neutral figures is 'they are naked, exposed, and vulnerable, just as we all are.'


Faith Ringgold, 'Jo Baker's Bananas,' 1997
One of Faith's story quilts commentating on racism and discrimination.

In Faith's signature technique of acrylic painted canvas with a pieced fabric border.


Outside the museum, a sign warned there were nuts in the building. I thought it strange and only on seeing this box of walnuts realised the sign was an allergy alert.

Jennifer Rubell 'Lysa III' 2014
Jennifer was inspired by finding a Hilary Clinton nutcracker for sale online.

She worked with the concept of harnessing female power making, as she says, 'a scary act of female power.' 

Museum visitors were encouraged, with supervision, to operate the nutcracker. The artist cleverly invites the viewer to contemplate female power in a playful way.
The Hilary Clinton nutcrackers were on sale in the museum shop at the same time Hilary was campaigning to become a president.


Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Visiting Washington DC Museums - Textile Museum, Renwick, National Museum of Women in the Arts


After attending the Textile Society of America Symposium in Savannah Ingrid and I flew up to Washington DC with the intention of checking out the newly relocated Textile Museum now on the George Washington University campus. Unfortunately, our timing was not great. We could only enjoy the shop because the gallery was closed while a new exhibition was being installed.
We visited the Renwick Gallery. I didn't take my camera because I wanted to focus on looking at the work and thinking about it. Sometimes while I am taking pictures/photographs I feel as though I am missing out on the full experience. 
We also visited the outstanding National Museum of Women in the Arts and spent many hours working our way up through the floors of the gleaming marble building.
On the top gallery floor, we thoroughly enjoyed the current contemporary exhibition "No Man's Land - Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection" where the work was often provocative, cheeky and humorous, as its title suggests.


I particularly enjoyed artists whose use of particular materials was intriguingly icky and so full humour.
Karin Upson's 'Kiss 8' is part of her " The Larry Project." There is bit of a weird story about Larry which led her to paint a portrait of Larry and at the same time a self-portrait. While both portraits were still wet she pressed the 2 together creating 'a pair of unsettling hybrid faces.'

The paint was so thick and textured one had to step back quite a distance before the faces emerged.

Analia Saban's 'Acrylic in Canvas' was so tongue-in-cheek. The paint wasn't on the canvas as is 'normal' with fine art, instead, she filled a canvas bag with paint so it was in the canvas. It was kind of icky while at the same time humourous.

Solange Pessoa's 'Hammock' looked from the entrance to the room like the suspended intestines of a huge beast. But it was not what it seemed. On closer inspection, the materials were familiar: fabric earth and sponges. Up close the mass and scale were somehow comforting which was a huge shift my first impression.

Dianna Molzan's 'Untiled' is work toying with the definition of fine art as paint on a stretched canvas mounted to look as though it is floating against a wall. Dianne took each of those elements and played with them. She removed the vertical threads from the canvas while leaving the horizontal threads mounted conventionally to the stretcher bars. Then she applied paint to the remaining draped threads. I enjoyed the way she had cleverly brought together the fine art expectations with the materiality of craft and women's detailed repetitious work.


Rosemarie Trockel's 'Colony' is another play on the definition of what is fine art. From a distance, her work looks to be worked in the Colour Field style where large blocks of flat colour cover the stretched canvas.

Closer inspection reveals it is not what it seems and so questions the definition of fine art.
Rosemarie is quoted as saying, "I tried to take wool, which was viewed as a woman's material, out of that context and to rework it in a neutral process of production."

Lots of food for thought.






Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Fun with Fibre...Cloth & Wood - An Annual Art Group Exhibition at Tulista Gallery


Dale MacEwan
email - dalemac@telus.net
Each year, around June, a group of 5 local artists install an exhibition in the Community Art Council of the Saanich Peninsula (CACSP) gallery in Tulista Park, Sidney.


Dale makes pieced and quilted compositions reflecting micro views of the landscape she lives in. She often incorporates her photographs printed on cloth and fabrics she has built up with texture using printing, stencilling, and stamping, all in her distinctive warm pallet.

Heather Corbitt
email - khcorbitt@gmail.com
I am going around the gallery to show you how each artist has set up a mini studio to work at during the exhibition. 

Heather makes wearable art garments and landscapes by building up very small pieces of fabric to produce multi-layered textured cloth. Her fabric of choice is dupionni silk.

Maya Brouwer
This setup offers the viewer a unique opportunity to talk to each artist about their work or to just watch them at work.

Maya makes large pictorial art quilts. Many of the fabrics she uses she has herself dyed, discharged, and added surface design elements to.


Kathy Demchuk
Each artist sets up a display of their work around their work area. Most of the works are for sale.

One of Kathy's techniques is to draw a resist on the ground fabric before dyeing it. Her signature style is to tell humorous stories that make the viewer chuckle. Kathy also makes jewellery using beach glass she has collected from local beaches.

Peter Demchuck
I have heard some viewers ask for special finishing requests, place orders, and commission new work.


While Kathy is beachcombing for glass, Peter collects driftwood. To quote from Peter's website, Besides giraffes, I carve bowls, make yard birds from driftwood, and do some wood sculptures, mostly of fish.


It is interesting to visit the gallery several times over the week to see how work is progressing.
And to sample Kathy's daily fresh batch of cookies.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

'Edge of the Forest' exhibition - Surface Design Association (SDA) Canada

 'Edge of the Forest' exhibition and 'Gathering at the Edge' event committee.
L to R- Gina Dingwell, Barbara McCaffrey, Lesley Turner, Laura Feeleus


After touring across Canada the 'Edge of the Forest' juried textile exhibition arrives on Vancouver Island to be hosted by the Vancouver Island Surface Design Association.
Here it is loaded up and ready to be taken to the Coast Collective's new gallery in Colwood.

Barbara and Laura
Every work was made to a specified size which made the collection a breeze to hang once Laura had done the math to fit in all the works so they were evenly spaced while filling all of the gallery's walls.

Barbara and Lesley
With the show hung we are ready for the public opening on 26th March 2016


Barbara was responsible for the food and beverages catering and the floral arrangements. She did a wonderful job.

And they came...




Lesley, Laura, Barbara
Here we are looking very pleased with ourselves after successfully hanging the exhibition and attracting the public to the opening event.
Many thanks to Judi McLeod for documenting the events with her camera.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Textile Treasures Exhibition - Mark Makers at Tulista Gallery, Sidney

The Mark Makers are exhibiting again!

Here is a peek at what they have produced over the past couple of years.
This is the view as one walks into the gallery - wearable art and 2D and 3D wet felt.

To the right are the results of a challenge to produce interpretations of the Melford Messenger Bag with a focus on upcycling, recycling and embellishment.


To the left - 2 different ways of working on top of a printed image.

Wet felted wall hanging, upcycled jacquard linen table cloth transformed into a blouse, embellished bags. 

Exploring the water and sky themes.

Upcycled pillows, soft sculptures and wearable art.
Hand and machine stitched framed wall pieces.

Art dolls, soft sculpture, wet felted forms.

Wet felted hats, scarf, bag, neck art.


Hand and machine 2D and 3D fibre art.

The alcove has a display of old traditional, handmade textiles from the 5 continents. They illustrate the history, techniques and skill mastery behind the Mark Makers' work.
This is just a taste of what is on display at the Tulista Gallery in Sidney, until May 1st.
There will be artists in attendance every day to answer your questions and to tell you the stories.



Monday, March 7, 2016

'Small Expressions' Opens in Tulista Gallery, Sidney BC

The Community Arts Council of Saanich Peninsula is hosting its annual 'Small Expressions' exhibition in the Community Arts Centre at Tulista Park, Sidney BC, March 4 - 30, Tuesdays to Sundays, 10:00 to 4:00 pm.
A team of us spent 9 hours the first-day accepting work and hanging the show.

One of the challenges with hanging the show is all of the works are small. 
Artists were challenged to work within a 12" x 12" x 12" framework. This is not always easy when one is used to expressing ideas in a much larger format.
It is interesting to see how many of the artists take the opportunity to explore a new technique or medium. They take more risks and they make discoveries. I wonder if for some this Small Expressions exhibition works as a catalyst or a jumping off point to head in a new direction.

When planning the hanging we had to forget about going for contrast in size and focus more on themes, colour contrasts and compatibility and how different works influenced each other. 
With all the works being small we hung them close together and in groupings ensuring each work sit comfortably with the others.
That is why it took 9 hours the first day and more hours the next day to straighten, adjust, fine tune, tweak, and add labels. I wasn't able to help the second day because I was out at Sooke hanging the VISDA 'Current Threads: Garden Tapestry' exhibition I posted about here 

One of this exhibition's charms is how it makes the viewer  physically get up close to the works. Each work enters the viewer's personal space creating a feeling of intimacy. Having to look at one work at a time slows the viewer down and encourages contemplation. Long distant scanning of the walls is unsatisfying. There is an absence of the usual back-and-forward dance in front of the wall. Instead, the viewer moves along the wall with their nose nearly touching the works.