Textility

January 13- April 1, 2012

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Curators: Mary Birmingham and Joanne Mattera

Opening Reception: January 13, 6:00 pm- 8:00 pm

Textility is an exhibition that explores the inventive ways contemporary artists employ materials, concepts, and processes associated with textiles to convey their ideas. Many artists today are producing paintings and sculptures that resemble or reference textiles, using traditional materials like paint, canvas, wood, paper and glass.  Other artists are appropriating materials and techniques traditionally associated with fiber or textile arts—cloth or thread, crochet or embroidery, for instance—and using them to convey elements like color and line. And some artists are creating work that suggests fabric or textiles to incorporate a sense of the woven, knotted or stitched. Textility, a group survey of 28 artists, will examine art that draws from and is immersed in this textile sensibility.

Textility is co-curated by Mary Birmingham, Art Center Curator, and Joanne Mattera, a New York-based artist, curator, and art blogger. “Textility” is a word the curators created to express the idea of art that has some material or conceptual quality related to textiles.  Observing what they consider a trend in contemporary art, they conceived this exhibition to pose the questions: “Who is making work with fiber and textiles or work that suggests fiber and textiles?” and “How and why are artists doing this, and why now?”

The exhibition will utilize all three Art Center galleries and will incorporate a broad range of materials and media including painting, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. A fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Birmingham and Mattera will accompany the exhibition.  Participating artists: Joell Baxter, Caroline Burton, Sharon Butler, Mary Carlson, Jennifer Cecere, Pip Culbert, Elisa D’Arrigo, Grace DeGennaro, Barbara Ellmann, Carly Glovinski, Elana Herzog, Marietta Hoferer, Nava Lubelski, Stephen Maine, Lael Marshall, Derick Melander, Sam Messenger, Sam Moyer, Lalani Nan, Aric Obrosey, Gelah Penn, Debra Ramsay, Susan Still Scott, Arlene Shechet, Susanna Starr, Leslie Wayne, Ken Weathersby and Peter Weber.

Thanks to Suvi Aarnio for letting us know about her latest show, which runs throughout December at  in Turku, Finland.

SUVI AARNIO

DANCE OF DEATH

9th December – 31st December 2011

GALLERIA Å, TURKU, FINLAND

 Joie de vivre and fear of death intertwine with folkore and popculture, leading to the macabre shortcuts of subconscious, to the thin borderline of dreaming and being awake. Works created with embroidery and video present chaotic ideas of afterlife, the crushing power of nightmares, carnal death having a feast and randomness, we expose ourselves to every single moment. www.suviaarnio.net / www.kikihawaiji.com

Tod Hensley, the exceptional manbroiderer and firm favourite of the Mr X Stitch team, is one of several artists featured in The Art of Fiber exhibition at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA.

The Workhouse is pleased to present The Art of Fiber exhibition from November 23 – December 31. It is the Workhouse Arts Center’s 2011 holiday exhibition, displaying the beauty and creativity of the fiber arts. The Art of Fiber showcases pieces from around the country and around the world. Please join us at the opening reception on November 25 from 5-7pm, in conjunction with Black Friday.

The jurors for this exhibition are Candace Edgerley and Trudi C. Van Dyke. Edgerley is a studio fiber artist and adjunct faculty member at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. She specializes in the traditional Japanese technique of Shibori, working with hand dyed silk and cotton. Candace is currently President of the Surface Design Association, an international textile arts organization.

Trudi C. Van Dyke is an independent curator and fine arts consultant who curates fine arts exhibitions nationally and internationally. She was formerly director of the Torpedo Factory Arts Center (Alexandria, VA) and the Ellipse Art Center (Arlington, VA). She travels around the country as a festival judge and conference speaker on the business of art and the adaptive reuse of facilities.

Date(s): 23rd November to 31st December 2011

Venue: Gallery Building 2nd Floor

Workhouse Arts Center 

A Project of the Lorton Arts Foundation

9601 Ox Road
Lorton, VA 22079
(703) 495-0001 tel
(703) 690-1880 fax

Hours of Operation

Closed Monday & Tuesday.
Classrooms are open during scheduled classtimes
Gallery W-16 and Artist Studio Buildings
Wednesday – Saturday 11:00am – 7:00pm
Sunday 12:00pm – 5:00pm

Melissa Zexter,  Lucilla Bonfante, Keun Young Park
November 22, 2011 – January 8, 2012

Muriel Guepin Gallery
47 Bergen Street (between Smith and Court) F/G train to Bergen street
Brooklyn, NY
718-858-4335
contact@MurielGuepinGallery.com
Wed-Sat: 11AM-7PM
Sunday: 12PM-5PM
Closed Monday & Tuesday

http://www.murielguepingallery.com/upcoming.html

This show, featuring Elisa D’Arrigo is on until 2nd November, and is definitely worth a look!

[via Textile Arts Center]

Join us, at our NYC location, for a free event in celebration of the recent release of Push Stitchery: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Stitched Art! Let’s celebrate these great fiber artists, admire their work and help us create a collaborative embroidery project! We will provide the materials, if you bring the creativity!

Push Stitchery is written by the incredible Jamie Chalmers, a.k.a the MR. of Mr. X Stitch. This book features 30 contemporary artists using the needle as their tool of choice. The show, curated by Luke Haynes, features local artists from the book including Orly Cogan, Jimmy McBride and Joetta Maue.

Friday, October 21st, from 7-9PM
NYC location
26 West 8th Street
New York NY

For more information on the book, read Joetta Maue’s review on our blog or purchase the book here!

Also, this November at TAC, we are offering unique PUSH stitch classes with some of the featured artists!

PUSH: Embroidery with Joetta Maue
Joetta Maue, one of the featured artists in PUSH, will teach you the fundamentals of embroidery! Learn basic embroidery stitches to utilize the process of applique and fiber collage to create 3 dimensional fiber pieces of art. Each class will be dedicated to a different technique each week. Each technique is inspired by artists in the book.
REGISTER!

PUSH: Quilt with Luke Haynes
Luke Haynes, one of the featured artists in PUSH, will teach you the fundamentals of quilting! Build a quilted narrative through visual imagery: portraiture, landscape, figurative drawing. Students are invited to bring old clothing, rags, important pieces of fabric to include in their works.
REGISTER!

HEIR/LOOMS

August 26^th - 30^th, 2011

Studio Beluga

160 St-Viateur Est, Suite 508A
Montreal, QC
H2T 1A8

Participating artists: Amanda McCavour, Carl Stewart, Jennifer Smith-Windsor, Lizz Aston, Meichen Waxer, Megarrah Buxton, Samantha Purdy, Sarah Gotowka, Suzen Green, Tara Bursey, Thea Haines, Vanessa Yanow

Curated by: Nicole Dawkins

For contemporary artists working with textiles, the material and creative legacies that haunt these works are often downplayed or positioned discursively as ruptures from or subversions of tradition (“This ain’t your granny’s…”). Drawing from the broader original meaning of the loom as any implement or tool, HEIR/LOOMS is interested in the more complex and ambivalent relations that makers have with the (handmade) objects and labours that they have come to inherit.

The 12 artists included in the exhibit engage in distinct ways with the notion of “heirloom”— emulating or appropriating specific linguistic and creative traditions; revisiting nostalgic signifiers of family and home; incorporating hand-me-down and discarded materials; and collaborating on and with things left behind by mothers, grandparents, and anonymous strangers.

Amanda McCavour’s Stand in for Home, for example, is a life-size thread rendering of the kitchen in her previous home— a trace of domestic space as it is remembered. Machine sewn onto water soluble fabric which is later dissolved leaving only the thread behind, the re-imagined kitchen seems on the verge of unravelling; a reflection of the transience and fragility of the things, spaces, and memories that constitute what we call “home”.

In contrast, with her Collaborating with Her Story (Incarnations II and III), Vanessa Yanow salvages unfinished textile-based hobby projects and attempts to distil the personality imprinted on these incomplete objects. Guided by the hidden histories, anonymous women and creative labours encoded in these abandoned crafts, Yanow transforms them into finished fibre and glass assemblages.

How is it that some mundane objects take on the status of iconic or treasured artifacts, while other are left abandoned and forgotten? How do the things we make, like those which we inherit, become vestiges of our past, our home, and our heritage? Disrupting the boundaries between hobby craft and art object, past and present, “traditional” and “contemporary”, the fibre-based works included in HEIR/LOOMS explore how we use objects to remember, preserve and construct the past as well as frame ourselves for future remembrance.

Opening: Friday, August 26^th, 7-10pm

Join us at the Vernissage to participate in Megarrah Buxton’s Collect (Exchange): exchange a button (a button inherited, a button discarded and found, or a button off the clothes you wear) with one from Megarrah’s grandmother’s collection.

About Studio Béluga:

Established in 2009, Studio Béluga serves as a studio space for resident artists to create works of art and as a gallery space where those works are shown. The Studio is run collectively and was established to facilitate artists and curators in forming a self-pedagogical creative community. Studio Béluga attempts to foster collaboration across disciplines through exhibitions, thematic and self-directed residencies, and public events. The Studio encourages projects that push the boundaries and challenge traditional gallery models.

www.studiobeluga.ca

www.heirloomsexhibit.tumblr.com

Gallery1988 has two pop-culture inspired shows happening in LA at the moment. While Beefranck and I continually argue about the validity of this particular film icon, the Pee Wee Herman tribute show at Gallery 1988 Venice would suggest there’s more to Pee Wee than I’m realising…

Mr X Stitch favourite Ellen Schinderman is one of the artists included in this show, with the following cushion d’homage:

You will also find Ellen’s work at Gallery 1988′s other show, Crazy for Cult 5.

C4C is a becoming a big hit and this fifth exhibition features heaps of talent:

You can see previews of the work at the Gallery1988 store, including the Schindermania Royal Tennenbaum pillow series:

If you’re in the area, you still have time to see them for reals!

Gallery 1988 Venice

214 Pier Avenue

Santa Monica, CA 90405

Map

CRAZY 4 CULT 5
100 artists take aim at classic cult films

Dates: July 8-30, 2011

Hours: Wed - Sun: 11 AM – 6 PM
Monday & Tuesday: Closed