modernist aesthetic

Jane Whiteley

2011-10-24T01:10:00.023-04:00

quilt for a sleeping person detail, silk and cotton gauze, hand stitched, dyed with indigo and acid dye 1991

the hands know,
the materials too,
quite apart from your imaginings,
less or more than your intentions -
following the pattern that emerges,
the story as it tells.

Jane Whiteley

Sides to the Middle, Fingers to the Bone, silk and cotton gauze quilt, indigo dyed. 2009 stitched with red thread on the 'worn areas'

Born in England, Jane Whitely has lived in Freemantle, Australia since 1988.

She works with the stuff of bandages. Hand stitched gauze.
She works with the idea of reparation. Of extending life.
She darns. She mends.

Her quilt, Sides to the Middle, Fingers to the Bone references the English domestic practice of turning the sheets in order to prolong their life and was included in the important 2010 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum in London England, Quilts 1700-2010 Hidden Histories, Untold Stories. Large Red Cross, cotton bedsheet, flannelette and gauze. 1998

She works with the ideas behind the cloth. Under the covers, wrapped up with bandages. The intimacy of cloth. The memories of the body.

She is a poet.
In Art Textiles of the World Australia volume 2, her writing is given nearly the same amount of space as images of her work.

I use cloth because it has a powerful human presence and has the capacity to express humanity, human endeavor, emotion. It is as if cloth takes on the imprint of energy, the memory, of the body through years of use and wear.
down cotton gauze, cotton blanket, canvas, hand and machine stitched, eucalyptus dyed, 2006

Her work employs used domestic textiles in a very courageous way. With simplicity.
The human body's mark.
What would usually be thrown away, is made into art by Jane Whitely. Her work asks us to think about what is really important.

Her work is almost sculptural. It suggests the body's absence. It recalls the body's presence.
Her textiles breathe.
Like passing footsteps.

a story unfolding
Leave no shadow, no stone unturned hand pieced silk, acid dye, cotton threads 2006

Most of these images are from Art Textiles of the World Australia, Volume two. The Powerhouse museum in Sydney, Australia mounted a solo exhibition of her work in 1999, but there are no images available on their website. The catalog for that exhibit, From Within is unavailable to purchase.

I hope that this blog post brings more attention to this artist's work.

Polly Binns

2011-09-30T12:20:00.023-04:00

Intimacy and space blend in the immensity of the landscape. The whole is imbued with the memories of my body within the landscape; my step, pace and sight-line. Serial Shimmers and Shades, 1996 Acrylic paint and thread on linen canvas 185 x 125 cm, collection of Nottingham Castle museum

Polly Binns, a member of England's prestigious 62 group, is considered a 'maverick' in the embroidery community. She grew up in a house of artists; her father used grids to size up his modernist design work and her mother painted the surrounding landscape. Untitled 1982 black cotton with coloured thread, smocking technique. 50 x 45 x 5 cm

She started her art career in clay, but soon studied weaving as a way to understand the material essence of cloth. When she eventually began exploring artist's canvas she was influenced by minimalists like Donald Judd and Carl Andre who worked with ordinary materials for their own sake. How did canvas behave when it wasn't stretched, when it wasn't covered with oil paint? She folded, pleated, stitched the cloth to raise the surface. She worked the cloth from both sides. Sand Surface and
Shadows, Winter 1996 1996 artist canvas, acrylic paint, threads, surface treatments. 7 panels 280 x 210 cm

The vertical elongated rectangles in the above piece relate directly to the body and seem to represent humans within the landscape. Polly Binns says about this piece that it is "a memory of the surface from where my feet stood to the far horizon. "
Her work from the mid 90's can be termed "post minimalist", as along with the grid geometry and attention to materials, there is also a kind of poetry.
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard is an influence. He wrote about "two kinds of space, intimacy and world space. When human solitude deepens, these two immensities touch and become identical. "
Although her work has become more poetic, it is never autobiographical. Her work is about observation and about memory of place. Before Polly Binns does any work in her studio, she walks. She repeats the same walk each time, at low tide, in the Blakeney Channel on the north Norfolk coast of England. No walk - no work.

This is a phenomenological approach. Walking immerses her in a direct experience. Mud, sand, water, bird marks, light are observed and felt with all her senses. There is a tension between order and intuition, between rational knowledge and the not quite known. Inshore Curve 1996 185 x 125 cm

Polly Binns had a daughter in 1986. During the first five years of Katy's life, the artist mounted a solo exhibition, joined the craft council and started full time teaching. However, about those years between 1986 and 1991, the artist says that she "closed down" and that her "balance had gone".

She took time off from making art and looked at more art by others, including that of Agnes Martin. Even more important, she took her little girl on long walks in the landscape, and together they observed things closely. All of a sudden, she realized that the land had seeped into her material knowledge and she knew what to do next in her career. Study 1 1996 27 x 28 cm collection Pamela Johnson

"My intention is to pare down the image: to reduce the pictorial elements of my memory landscape:
to focus on my interior vision
to recall and reference the glimpse, the half caught image,
the layered textures of memory." Polly Binns

In 1998, she received a PhD from England's University of Teesside for her new body of work entitled Vision and Process in Textile Art: a Personal Response to a Particular Landscape.
In 2001 she represented Britain at the 10th International Triennial in Lodz Poland.

The images in this post are from Surfacing, a monograph of Polly Binns that accompanied her 2003 exhibition at Bury St Edmunds art gallery. The information is gleaned from Pamela Johnson's excellent essay and the timeline of Polly Binn's career and life that is included in that book. The quotations are from Polly Binns's artist statement from the catalogue for Texture and Memory, an exhibition curated by Pamela Johnson and Peninna Barnett in 1999.

Louise Bourgeois

2011-06-15T23:53:00.022-04:00

Once I was beset by anxiety.
I couldn't tell right from left.
I could have cried out with terror at being lost.
But I pushed the fear away by studying the sky, determining where the moon would come out, where the sun would appear in the morning. 2007 untitled

I saw myself in relation to the stars.

Louise Bourgeois 1911 - 2010

2005 untitled

At the age of 40, Louise Bourgeois, wife and mother, exhibited a group of painted abstract wooden figures in a gallery in New York and one of them was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. 2008 untitled
That she did this was a challenge to the status quo of society in the late 40’s and 50’s. Her work was a challenge to modernism. Even then. 2002 The Woven Child
Louise Bourgeois’ work was looked at with renewed interest by the feminist movement in the early 1970’s. Renowned feminist art critic Lucy R. Lippard wrote: “Rarely has an abstract art been so directly and honestly informed by its maker’s psyche. It can’t be categorised. Can’t be art historicised”. 2006 untitled
Over her 70 year career Louise Bourgeois has not had a signature material and has managed to remain ‘contemporary’ for three separate generations. Famously neurotic she has been an undeniable influence on younger women artist. "Art is the guarantee of sanity" was her mantra. Her early work was made from wood and house paint and her late work was made from cloth and thread. Using these ‘low’ materials, she worked subversively from within the formal modernist
language of abstract form. She insisted that her work was always about her own personal memories. She believed that the needle is magical and has a restorative power. “It’s a claim to forgiveness” 2001 Rejection
Her most recent work was made from her own and found domestic textiles. The hand sewn fabric figurative pieces are stitched so crudely that they look mended rather than constructed. Placed in vulnerable and intimate positions they connect with the viewer on an emotional level. 2001 untitled
In 2001 she created a series of three eight foot high fabric towers. They relate to her early wooden pieces, slender and vertical, installed alone but are part of a group. One of the towers is stitched from the antique tapestry fabric that references her childhood. Louise Bourgeois has often said that all of her work is an attempt to reconcile with that traumatic childhood. Just before creating these towers she also made portraits of her parents, depicting her father as a small chair and her mother as the now famous Maman, a massive metal spider with eggs in a basket.

The evident stitching adds hands on emotional quality to this lonely narrow structure, and one reads it as an erect old lady standing stiffly alone, an
abstracted portrait of Louise Bourgeois herself, 90 years old in 2001. 2006 untitled
The pieces shown here are new, created in the last years of her long life. They seem purified. They seem resigned. 2002 untitled
Unlike many women of her generation, there are no shortages of web sites that showcase Louise Bourgeois. click here for example. She is collected by nearly every major art gallery world wide. These images are from two books. Louise Bourgeois 2008edited by Frances Morris and Louise Bourgeois The Fabric Works 2010 edited by Germano Celant.

Aino Kajiniemi

2010-12-28T22:43:00.012-05:00

Aino Kajaniemi (born 1953) lives with her family in the beautiful central lake district of Finland. It is the house that she grew up in, and her studio is in the cellar. The rhythms of nature and everyday life influence her work. Her images of female protagonists, shown in the midst of thought or caught in interior monologues, are as assured as the line drawings of women made by modernist painter, Henri Matisse.

“The subjects of my work usually originate from the innermost heart of a human being; sorrow, joy, uncertainty, guilt, tenderness, memories, and so forth.” The eyes of her subjects look down, off to the side, or into themselves. This invites the viewer to consider beyond the picture and build a narrative that passes through and between the woman in the tapestry and the interiority of the viewer. Kajaniemi’s subjects are not passive women offering themselves up to be gazed upon, they are intently involved with their inner lives and this self involvement inspires a similar participation within the viewer. Kajaniemi usually produces eight to ten small tapestries that are displayed together in order to give multiple perspectives. She uses the difficult and labour intensive technique of tapestry weaving. She selects which aspects of her narrative will be hidden and which will be revealed. Yarns are interwoven and carefully considered and the process is painstaking. Craftsmanship is important to Aino Kajaniemi. Her line is controlled, yet dramatic, nervous, and spontaneous.

“My textiles are my way of thinking. I appreciate simplicity, but I work things out in a complicated way. " Yet her work has a swift and easy look, as if it was just a sketch. To achieve this casual look, she does many pre-sketches beforehand. She may draw the same idea over and over, ensuring that the composition is interesting and that the subtle glance of the subject is emotional. Eventually she translates the sketch to the loom and uses a single line of black wool to weave her idea into white or natural backgrounds always allowing for changes that may arise.
Her work never loses the feeling that it is just an easy sketch, made quickly when the subject was caught unaware in a reflective moment. The idea of lace or lace-like pattern appears often in her work. These spaces, lines, curves and floral shapes translate a feminine, fragile sensibility and contrast with the pared down, almost tough, tapestry weave. Out of place colours and different weights of yarns are added and disrupt the even warp and weft. We remember that cloth eventually wears out after time because this work seems to hold its own destruction within itself. It appears to be something old that has been mended, and eventually, some time in the future, it will wear away.

“I get all my threads from flea markets now” she said in 2008 which explains the surprising tones and materials that enliven her new work. This up-cycling of used or surplus materials is an ethical decision. Our current material culture is ‘awash in plenty’. Kajaniemi’s pared down imagery and slow intent sings of order within the disorder of our wasteful world. A sense of isolation is palpable in her work, relating perhaps to the loneliness of the beautiful Finnish language, unique in Europe.

“Weaving is finding”

After 30 years she still allows the weaving itself to make unexpected decisions and avoids complete mastery. If, as Rilke proposes, poetry’s purpose is to address the natural growth of a human’s inner life then these weavings are poems.

All images are from the artist's website.
Text is from my 2010 BFA dissertation, "The Immensity Within Ourselves" for Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts.

Noriko Narahira

2010-12-04T09:42:00.009-05:00

Noriko Narahira was born in 1948 near the tragic war zone of Hiroshima. Everyone there had experienced loss, and this underlying horror must surely inform her work although she never refers to it. Instead she speaks about the influence of nature.

When she was a student Noriko Narahira lived and worked very close to an unspoiled natural area. Aware of the rhythms and cycles of nature, the sounds of rustling grasses, leaves and birdsong, those feelings of soft air has never left her.

“My perception of nature has been the main inspiration for my work.”

Eastern meditation practice informs her work, demonstrated in the attention Narahira pays to intervals, small differences, and breath. The physical repetitive activities of wrapping and stitching do not attempt to conquer time but instead allow her to be at one with its flow. The repetition is meditative.
Some pieces marry elements of Japanese daily life such as the colourful printed kimono, obi and koinobori, (hanging streamers that catch the breeze) to the elegance and fragility of European lace. As in lace, it is the voids and spaces in her work that are the most important design elements. sound of nature, printed cotton, organza, polyester thread, 1994

“There is no tradition of lace making in Japan, but my perspective is Japanese. I wanted to bring this to my work in lace.”

In her installation, sound of nature, twig-like rolled and stitched pieces of printed cloth are collected loosely together as if from the forest floor into airy panels held together with delicate threads. There is as much open space as connecting thread. The small linear elements outline large circular voids or mass together to form large leaf or ark shapes. Everything emerges organically from a chaos of seemingly unorganized threads in an all over composition of emptiness and slender broken lines. Human sized, the work hangs from the ceiling and casts mysterious and ephemeral shadows. scene of white, felt, organza, polyester mesh, polyester thread, each dress life sized, 1999

holes

hanging in the air

white wind of the atomic bomb

Noriko Narahira also stitches into wool felt, distorting the fabric by covering it completely with stitch and pierced or slashed holes. The intensive stitching activates and distorts the surface and connects her work to the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi which teaches the acceptance of transience and that beauty is in imperfection, impermanence, and decay. In Scene of White a series of five white dress-like shapes hang in a semi circle from the ceiling. They hover. They seem like angels, each different. One has zigzag points coming out of one side, others are longer, curvier, another has a large ellipse made of unstitched sheer organza where the chest would be. All have been slit, slashed or punctured with holes.
It is the central dress shape in this series that drew me to Noriko Narahira’s work. A mummy shape, wrapped and with a useless arm, rent and slashed through the torso, it is full of holes. Punctured, some flesh coloured areas of stitch are revealed in the middle area.

Wrapped, swaddled
Vulnerability
Life
With its own death
Held tight

Personally, this piece is one of the most emotional pieces of stitched art I have ever experienced. It recalls for me a vision of my mother when she lay dying. So still, propped by pillows, wrapped in sheets, her bones so brittle that they broke for no reason, her closed face and the emotions of that time in my life resurface Yet, at the same time, this piece makes me think about what it must have been like in Hiroshima at the end of the war. What was it like for the maker of this piece? I go back and forth, distracted and spell bound, lost in the surface and shape, perfect just as it is.

While the maker may have had a conscious intent, art quite often has a completely different message for the viewer. Each of us is unique, sustained by our own experiences. When art touches something buried deep in the memory of the individual viewer, it connects on an emotional level. Ephemeral, fragile, unsettled, hanging free, Narahira’s work connects with the viewer’s psyche enabling contemplation and accessing of the inner self.
However, it is prudent to remember Lesley Millar’s advice to Western audiences about the Japanese aesthetic before finding metaphor.

“Japanese artists are very concerned with structure and materials. Their concerns lie with respecting the harmony of nature and creating something which is very beautiful but which contains no other meaning. The context is purely the harmony achieved, whereas for many western textile artists the context is much more concerned with contemporary debate” Lesley Mllar

The images in this post are all taken from Telos Art Publishing's excellent
Textiles of the World Japan Volume 2.

The text is from my December 2010 B.A. dissertation for Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts.

Kyoko Kumai

2010-12-02T06:48:00.013-05:00

air cube, stainless steel filament

Some moments in nature happen so quickly and then they are gone. The rush, harmony and togetherness of a moving flock of birds is one example, so emotional and uplifting to watch. Another such sight is when wind pushes grasses over and over as it ripples a field, making the air otherwise invisible, visible. These kinds of things, common in nature, are nearly impossible to capture in a painting or a photo, but we remember them forever.
Kyoko Kumai (born 1943) says that she remembers these kinds of things with “memories in my cells that have four billion years.”

There are things that we are consciously influenced by and others that we are unconsciously aware of. The interconnectedness between the land, the air, and humanity is one of the latter. Blowing in the wind 1985 - 1987

It is her attempt to bring forth that unconscious memory without regard to academic theory or traditional materials that is so astounding. Her quest for whatever technique or material that might work led Kyoko Kumai to eventually find a way through trial and error. Although she had studied weaving she needed to develop her own technique of interlacing and knotting the steel filament. The natural effects of gravity had to be overcome.

She was able to eventually succeed in the late 80’s and has continued honing her own technique of making visible what is invisible. Such works then achieve a powerful connection with the viewer’s invisible inner self. blowing in the wind 1988

"I have been making things that I myself hope to see, and have never seen before”

The use of stainless steel filament, a comparatively new man made material to create her representations of wind blowing over grass is innovative and practical. Her work can cover a floor in a gallery, be spread outside in the courtyard or be contained, bunched up and draped over walls in a relatively small space. Embedded in all her work are the repetitive physical body movements that she must make over and over during a long period of time.
Although the employment of an industrial material to represent nature is ironic, she does not use it for that reason. Her purpose is more representational. For example, in blowing in the wind (1988) the viewer is able to experience a gust of wind blowing over a huge field and the fact that the grass is actually stainless steel filament does not matter. This small chunk of represented grass and earth seems to go on forever in the viewer’s imagination, because we recall it. We recognize it and can imagine a kind of infinity in the repeated, narrow organic and tactile shapes. We recognize and we imagine because of her hours of repeated activity. the wind blowing over the grass 1999, stainless steel filament

Egg shaped and circular forms from wrappings of stainless steel filament are another direction for Kyoko Kumai. Displayed piled up into tower forms, or stuffed into small rooms, they bring to mind the crush of humanity that must be part of the artist’s experience in over populated Japan. sen man na yu ta-ga 1996

Her work enables the wonder and awe that one experiences occasionally in nature. We recall moments glimpsed from train or car windows. Things become visible that are usually invisible. Kyoko Kumai’s use of stainless steel filament to depict the grasses found in nature is an example of how her intuitive approach led her practice. Although the employment of an industrial material to represent nature is ironic, in blowing in the wind (1988) the viewer is able to experience a gust of wind blowing over a huge field and the fact that the grass is actually stainless steel filament does not matter. It is the small differences in each detail that, we can see that these grasses go beyond the chunk of detail Kyoko has given us – it’s infinite the grass. We recognize and we imagine because of her unendable activity. The quintessential way that Japanese artists work is intuitively rather than intellectually. Academics in the UK were startled out of their preferred theoretical approach when Kyoko Kumai exhibited in Textural Space, a show that toured Britain in 2001.

“Pattern, colour, form as well as monumentality and lightness are all derived from the patient and repetitive manipulation of stainless steel filament. While the economy and approach suggests a minimalist approach it belies a lingering emotional charge.” Martina Murgetts

She enables the wonder and awe that one experiences occasionally in nature. We recall moments glimpsed from train or car windows. Things become visible that are usually invisible.

Her work connects with her viewer’s deep memory and gives it back to that individual. Her work sets the mind free.

All images are from Telos Art Publishing's book Art Textiles of the World Japan 2.
The text is from my 2010 dissertation for JC Textile Arts - The Immensity Within Ourselves.

Piila Saksela

2010-10-24T12:38:00.014-04:00

Working in the Garden 2000 synthetic silk, newspaper, sewing thread, smocking

Piila Saksela lives in Finland. She is 72 years old now, and has been a maker of textile art all her life. She began her career as a weaver, devoting many years to that craft. She thought that she would weave her entire life but around the age of 50 she became unsatisfied with the restrictions of warp and weft and searched for a new way. She felt fearful of the 'catastrophes that might lie ahead" but after years of searching, through trial and error, she developed a unique new style. Orlando steel, rust, knitting 2001

"Bringing one's own studio to life is an arduous task" she says. "It feels as if all originality will flee at any moment."

Her technique involves preparing synthetic silk-like fabrics with oils and lacquers in order to make them translucent. She then layers this prepared fabric on top of tissue paper or newspaper, which then transfer their colours and markings to the fabric. The result is pleated and hand-smocked.

Ninive II 2002 synthetic silk, newspaper, sewing thread, stitching, smocking Ninive II (detail) 2002
I love the colour and the little bits of text and image that I glimpse in Piila's work, but more than that, I am comforted and intrigued by the repetition and texture of Piila's hand stitch and manipulation. Smocking is an age-old technique that crosses many cultures and perhaps this is what gives it such power. ( Piila says that the technique is from Hungarian national dress, but my Canadian mother (half English, half Irish) smocked dresses for me.) Land Ahead 2000 synthetic silk, newspaper, sewing thread, smocking

Piila Saksela has done something rare. She has succeeded in making a domestic technique leap into the fine art world. I found all these images as well as a very small amount of Pilla's statement in Art Textiles of the World Scandinavia published by Telos Art Publishing. Land Ahead (detail)
Matthew Koumis says about Piila Saksela "Her hangings recall a Japanese aesthetic, and convey both her desire to harness light and to express 'fortuity' allowing of happy accidents in the creative process." Circling 2001 wrapped steel, rust, wood
I find it so unfortunate that artists of Piila's generation slip away from our web-based research. If her work was not brought to my attention by the Telos series, I would not have known about it. I could not access any images of this artist's work in the "new museum of cyber space". (which is where students today go first when they look for role models) Part of the reason I am writing this blog is to try to give women textile artists who came of age and did most of their work before the internet revolution some deserved attention.

Patti Roberts Pizzuto

2010-01-26T12:36:00.012-05:00

Last Days Before Dying, 2007, acrylic, ink,embroidery, hand made paper

Patti Roberts Pizzuto uses an earthy combination of acrylic, embroidery stitches and hand made paper to create poetic works that ponder the big questions about life's meaning. All images in this post are from an article about the artist by Lynn Cornelius Jablonski I found in Fiberarts, April May 2008. Waiting Vessel, 2007, acrylic, collage, beads, embroidery, handmade paper

Her imagery is empty space in combination with one or two common objects such as a bowl, bed or boat and the texture of hand stitching. The recent work shown in this article had either the form of a primitive house shape or a simple rectangle. For me, the house shape is evocative of our personal longing for the simple quietness of childhood, and I would bet that Patti Roberts Pizzuto has read The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. The artist says that the house image symbolizes comfort family, sense of self and belonging. Finding Home, 2006, acrylic, beeswax, embroidery, handmade paper

The artist worked in the library of an art and design college in Flordia for 25 years, and it was the art books she handled every day that were her inspiration (and I would guess, her education). A recent move to South Dakota in 2005 changed her palette, and fostered an interest in her own family history and the history of mid Western United States. Dance of Chance, 2007, acrylic, ink, collage, beads, handmade paper

Objects that are from our daily lives act like witnesses in her work. They are like things that occur in our dreams, meaningful and with narrative. She rarely depicts figures, but when she does they wear medieval dress.
Each Leaf a Universe, Each Night a Dream, 2007, acrylic, embroidery, collage, handmade paper

Natural items like seeds, flowers and leaves occur. The seeds are symbols of possibility, of birth, renwal and even death. She contemplates the sacred and the mundane at the same time. Existential work. Quiet Compositions.

Patti Robertsw Pizzuto has her own web site - you need Adobe flash to view it, and so I was not able to visit it. Still on dial up here on Manitoulin Island, Canada.

Francoise Sullivan

2010-01-04T10:07:00.013-05:00

Paterson 2003, diptych, acrylic on canvas 348 x 287 cm.

Francoise Sullivan is a role model for women artists. She is a mother of four and she is 85, and through sixty years she has maintained an artistic career. "For me, art is like breathing" she says.

The images and information posted here have been taken from Robert Enright's interview with Francoise Sullivan in issue no. 106 of Border Crossings Magazine. (June 2008) Enright's interviews are generally intelligent discussions although in this particular interview he seemed more interested in Sullivan's early friendships with groundbreaking painters like Jean Paul Riopelle, Paul Emile Borduas and the writing of the Refus Global in 1948 than he does in her recent oil paintings.

The above painting entitled Paterson is an homage to her late husband (and fabulous painter) Paterson Ewen. "Paterson got the biggest painting. He was the most important man in my life. I have four sons who look and walk like him. I am always reminded of him." Vert no 1 2007 oil on canvas 193 x 122 cm

Enright: "You were young but obviously learning at a galloping pace. To be involved with that kind of intellectual movement at such a young age - you were only 18 - seems rather extraordinary."
Sullivan: "Well, you know revolutions are always done by young people. This is when you have the enthusiasm, the energy and the folly."
Enright: "Did you know at the time that what you were involved in was going to transform Quebec society?"
Sullivan: "We felt like apostles. We knew we were doing something exciting and we felt like we were in the avant-garde but we were never recognized." Quand je ferme les yeux je vois no. 2 2007 oil on canvas

She has been a dancer and a sculptor but says with 'conviction and without apology that painting inhabits her, it always has'.
Enright: Has painting supplanted dance as your most passionate form of self-expression?
Sullivan: Yes, but it was always there. Everything referred to painting. My dance thoughts were painting thoughts. You might think I'm old-fashioned but for me painting has remained the major art.
In the 70's "the theoreticians upset me when they said that art was over, that painting was dead and that even museums were dead". La Tache Bleue 2007 101 x 76 cm oil on canvas

"As I go along my involvement with painting is growing. Some paintings happen in the first casting and others take a long time to work out. You have to go over and over them and that's why sometimes things happen, or colours show through. I don't think of my paintings a s monochromes because for me a monochrome is something that is completely blank. Even though they might look like a monochrome, I feel that they're alive. I feel that there's life boiling in them."

Animals don't do art like we do. The do something else. A spider web or a nest is not a work of art in the human sense. It is a physical necessity. This is more of a spiritual necessity." Danse dans la neige, photograph by Maurice Perron 1948

Images of Francoise Sullivan dancing in the snow near ont St Hilaire Quebec are famous examples of early performance art. She was filmed by Jean Paul Riopelle while Maurice Perron took still photographs. Unfortunately the film has been lost, but the photographs remain.

In 2009 Francoise Sullivan was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz prize. In 2001 she was made a member of the order of Canada and I believe that she still teaches in the fine art department at Concordia University in Montreal.

Joyce Wieland

2009-12-12T00:39:00.024-05:00

O Canada Animation (1970)
The 71 mouths forming the words to the national anthem are embroidered in red lips and white teeth on cotton.

In 1987 Joyce Wieland, one of Canada's most beloved artists, was given a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the first for a living woman artist. The images in this post are taken from the catalogue for that exhibition.

Lucy Lippard's catalogue essay states: "Joyce Wieland is a wild card that saves the contemporary art world from its straight and narrow conformity to institutionalized ‘wildness’. She moves back and forth between mediums and as well, she has a breadth of content. Her art has been criticized for being awkward, sentimental and naïve. She has always had a centre. Her work unifies a personal, sexual, domestic landscape that has grown to be a transcontinental landscape."
Reason Over Passion, cotton construction, (1968)
Joyce Wielend made this quilt for the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
Collection of the National Gallery of Canada

Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s confident assertion of the need for government to place reason above passion juxtaposed with the softness of a bed covering (with its connection to the passion of birth, death and love making) makes a thought provoking yet sensual piece of art.

In 1960 she said about the Dada artists. “It’s not just painting, not just art – they’re artistic in a general way. They see things whole. Their jokes are about life." She wanted that same wholeness in her work.

I Love Canada - J'aime Canada, cotton construction (1970)

In 1971 she had a retrospective called True Patriot Love at the National Gallery of Canada. She was 40. Joyce Wieland was a born again Canadian and part of the feminist wave. “I think of Canada as female” she said having recently travelled from Toronto to Vancouver and saw a land that 'amazed' her. It was a nationalistic time in a Canada still euphoric from the 1967 centennial.

For "True Patriot Love” Wieland received Canada Council funding to produce new pieces with help from expert craftswomen in knitting, embroidery, rug hooking, and sewing. She wanted to emphasize the collaborative aspect of art and the value of traditional domestic arts. 10 out of 36 pieces in the show were from cloth. “I wanted to elevate and honour craft, I wanted to join women together and make them proud of what they have done”. It was also symbolic of a way that the country might work together. (p.s. Judy Chicago's Dinner Party did not happen until 1979).

Squid- jigging hole (1971)
The words to this east coast song are shown with embroidered lips on cotton

Harold Rosenberg once said that if art went backwards it would become handicraft and if it went forward, it would become media. "She was like Eva Hesse who responded to minimalism in her unique way. Wieland is not a primitive but she is an outsider. She thrives on tension. " writes Lucy Lippard. Joyce Wieland worked with both craft and with new media, she revelled in her femaleness, she was able to combine opposites like earth and spirit, fact and feeling, pain and pleasure.

Her work is intimate because it offers places for the viewer to enter with her/his own associations. She uses words to ‘illustrate’ the visual instead of the other way around. Her speaking mouths are a good example.

The Water Quilt (1970-71)
Embroidery of arctic wild flowers and sewn plastic construction
Text from James Laxer's book The Energy Poker Game, about the alleged plot by the Americans to take over Canada's water resources.

She said that irony was too frivolous. “We have to get to the very essential thing now, the land, and how we feel about it. It’s important to feel the beauty of everything, to be as positive as possible.’ Joyce Wieland made art for thirty years, and she was always considered eccentric.

Her sister helped her make her quilts. “I cut things out, basted the quilt and my sister completed it.” Wieland wanted to make art that was accessible to everyone, and at the same time invest it with many levels of meaning.”

“I thought that the quilts should be used for special occasions or have a celebratory use – first day of spring and such like. Getting into the making of quilts as woman’s work was a conscious move on my part" Wieland and her husband Michael Snow lived in New York for a period of time. "It was a highly competitive scene with men artists in New York and it polarized my view of life, made me go right into the whole feminist thing.” the water quilt DETAIL

Wieland used quilts because we know and trust them. Quilts mean hearth and home, they keep us warm.

Joyce Wielend was born in 1931 and died in 1998. Several websites promote Joyce Wielend. This one calls her Canada's greatest female artist of the 20th century. There is an excellent biography of the artist on this Canadian government site. In 1983 she was awarded Canada's highest honour, The Order of Canada.

Karla Black

2009-11-15T00:17:00.013-05:00

Wish List, 2008 sugar paper, chalk, ribbon, hair gel, nail polish, plaster, paint, petroleum jelly, polyethylene and rubber gloves

I read Michael Archer's review of Karla Black's Tate Britain exhibition in the March 2008 issue of Art Forum magazine and was intrigued by her absurd materials and new wave feminist viewpoint. The artist says that she does not want her work to be perceived as a formal object because she doesn't want the viewer to objectify the piece. Instead she wants the viewer to encounter the work as they walk past it or as they glance at it. Psychological weight and layers of meaning are not her prime intent.

"Wish List is constructed of sheets of sugar paper held together with hair glue, superglue, and nail polish and then creased, folded, crumpled and twisted into an opulent swag that is suspended from the ceiling hammock like, by two strips or ribbon. Rubbed with chalk dust and plaster, its largely pink surface supports a glop of petroleum jelly coloured with yellow acrylic, and the shredded remains of two household rubber gloves, one pink and the other yellow."
Expressions are hurting, move outside 2008. cellophane, sellotape, petroleum jelly, paint, plaster powder, glass, polyethylene bags, concealer stick, lip gloss, hair conditioner, bath cream, tracing paper, hair spray, and lipstick.

Her pieces might cover large pieces of the floor or hang from the ceiling and in this way they remind us of a range of modernist art such as the dripped paintings of Jackson Pollock, the unusual and fragile materials of Eva Hesse's sculptures and the multi part works of process art.

The nail polish, hair spray, eye shadow and other substances allude not to an obsession with the female body's beauty but appeal more broadly to art's affective power. The decorative qualities, "the illusion and the lies."
Expressions are hurting, move outside, 2008 detail
"While there are ideas about psychological and emotional developmental processes held within the sculptures I make, the things themselves are actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communicating and relating. They are parts of an ongoing learning, or search for understanding, through a material experience that has been prioritised over language" Karla Black
Division Isn't, 2008 paper, paint, chalk, polyethylene, sellotape
Division Isn't is a large sheet of brown paper painted with white acrylic and then stained pink with chalk dust. It developed out of a set of five works titled Opportunities for Girls.
Michael Archer says: "Part of what makes Black's work so compelling is the deft manner in which she accepts the achievements of 1970s feminism while at the same time taunting us, playing to the very stereotypes of male and female activity that feminism so ably deconstructed."

Karla Black lives in Glasgow. There is more about her work and a complete artist statement at Open Frequency
She was recently awarded 15,000 pounds from the Scottish Arts Council.

Gabriella D'Italia

2009-09-16T07:42:00.014-04:00

Black Finery
2008
Cotton sateen, cotton batting, machine pieced, appliqued, embroidered, hand quilted. 64 x 64 inches square.

This piece is included in Quilt National 2009 and I photographed it from the catalogue (page 54). I've returned to it many times because I have found it to be very inspiring in regard to my own work in white damask. I love the way that this artist uses a single fabric cut into tiny regular pieces which are then pieced back together again. She makes a minimalist statement about cloth itself as well as referencing larger ideas such as individualism and community. I love this idea. It reminds me to look at cloth in a fresh way. What kind of cloth is it? Is it silk, cotton, linen and what are the characteristics of those fibres? How is it woven? What is its usual purpose?
Here is her statement from the quilt national09 catalogue.

Quilts embody ideas and have functional purpose in a domestic context. Through manipulations of fabric and stitching, I explore the intimacy between manufactured objects and daily living. The idea of finery emphasizes both the created nature and elevated status of this quilt. Its homogeneous, incremental piecing refers to elemental concerns, both material and philosophical, or relationships, boundaries, and scale, all framed in the context of home.

Interested in finding more out about this artist, I googled her name and found out about her gold quilts. Here is some of what she has to say from this website.

I work compelled by a reciprocal exigency exerted in alternation between materials and mind. I find expression of the simultaneously created and creative capacities of everyday objects through incremental change and elaborate specificity so I work in tiny pieces, as in my "Finery" series, and with repetition and similarity. Upon closer examination of "Gold Quilts", seemingly identical quilts reveal vast material discrepancies. I don't want to move past objects, or transcend, but to move further into them.

There are more images of her work on the Maine Craft Guild website.
Gabriella D'Italia lives in Newburgh, Maine USA.

Yoshiko Jinzenji

2009-08-17T01:09:00.008-04:00

Star Connection, nylon, natural dyes, 68 x 83 inches

Yoshiko Jinzenji lives and works in Japan and in Bali. Her quilts are simple and to the point. They are spiritual, covered with hand work and attention to detail. They are like prayers. Baby quilts, bamboo dyed silk, hand stitch

She began quilting after she came upon quilts made by Canada's Mennonite people in the 70's and was moved by their resonant, sacred quality. When she attended the Mennonite Relief Sale she realized that the Waterloo area Quiltmakers played a role of global significance. "Women's handwork was making a huge contribution to the welfare of humanity, and that helped inspire my eventual decision to devote my own life to quilting." Ten Thousand piece quilt, Natural dye, cotton, 72 inches square

The energy in the repeated texture of the many seams and the understated colour make Ten Thousand Piece Quilt a minimalist masterpiece. All images in this post are from Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East, a book published in 2002 about Yoshiko Jinzenji's work. Versification II

Yoshiko calls the method used for the above quilt 'spiral block', a technique similar to the traditional log cabin technique in that the fabrics are stitched around a central square. What's different is the use of innovative materials such as titanic coated nylon and rubber in combination with silk, wool and cotton and the artist's use of piping cord to strengthen and enhance the wide variety of textures.
Dew II, silk, cotton, wool, linen, natural dyes including bamboo, 75 x 77 inches

"What I am striving for is to bring out and add to the essential textures of the cloth" she says. "to create shadows and light, to find a balance between minimalism and a sense of richness."

white repose
hand stitched bamboo dyed silk quilt 85 x 102 inches

John Mawurndjul

2009-07-28T07:03:00.010-04:00

John Mawurndjul is from Maningrida, in North Australia. He was born in 1952 and has been intensely prolific for thirty years.

Mardayin at Mankarrard 2004 Ochres on bark 204 x 74 cm
Mardayin Ceremony 1999 ochres on bark 153 x 88 cm

I've gathered these images and information from an book just published in 2008 about the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Beyond Sacred, Recent Painting from Australia's remote Aboriginal communities. The specific text about John Mawurndjul is by Apolline Kohen. Mardayin at Makkamukka 1998ochres on bark 158 x 78 cm

In 1989, his work was included in the landmark exhibition "Les magiciens de la terre" at the Centre Georgess Pompidou in Paris, France. During the 90's his work became abstract images about the rarely performed Mardayin ceremony. This is a ceremony about clan identity and about mortuary rites.
His paintings are on bark. I only have seen them in reproduction, but I imagine them to be wonderfuly textural and earthy in reality. Mardayin at Kakodbebuldi 1998 orchres on bark 154 x 64 cm

His work since 2000 are abstract representations of places in his clan estate. I am inspired by the way John Mawurndjul balances circles within intense backgrounds. His use of the cross hatching infil (called rarrk) in the backgrounds is innovative and has been a huge influence on other Kuninku artists. Mardayin at Milmilngkan 2003 etching on paper 60 x 35 cm

In 2005, the artist was given a retrospective of his work at the Musee Jean Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland that then travelled to Germany.

Sue Hammond West

2009-07-13T12:22:00.012-04:00

Wisdom Nerve
paint, wool, silk, thread, objects on felt 72" x 72" 2006-2007

In 2007, I took a four day workshop with Sue Hammond West at the Surface Design Association conference in Kansas City. The class was called "Art as Quiet" and I loved it. Each session began with meditation. We painted with acrylic on scraps of upholstry material and stitched into them afterwards. We did not make small talk while creating and this encouraged each of us to work with inner passion.
Abundance Magnent
paint, silk yarn stitching, gold leaf on industrial felt , 72" x 72" 2006

Sue Hammond West also had an exhibition in Kansas City at that time and I was very impressed with seeing her work. It is very large and simple with barely tangible circles and organic shapes surrounded by large quanities of space. I found myself emotionally gripped by her work. numina
paint, paper, mica, stitching on cloth 49" x 50" 1999 - 2004

She currently teaches at Naropa, the Bhuddist University in Boulder, Colorado. Tacit Longing
paint, paper, rocks, flower petals on industrial upholstry cloth 59" x 60" 2003-2004

These images of her work are from her 2007 self published catalog of mixed media textile paintings as well as from an article about her work by Ginger Knowlton that I read in the spring 2007 Surface Design Journal.

Nectarian Moonlight
paint and stitch on industrial upholstery, 79" x 38.5", 2006

Sue Hammond West's website is currently under construction.

Ase Ljones

2009-05-28T12:25:00.006-04:00

Thread Suns, 1999

Ase Ljones is from Norway. She uses hand stitching to make very contemplative surfaces relating to nature. I read about her work in Embroidery magazine Sept-Oct 2008 in an article by Jessica Hemmings.

Wandering Towards the South, 1999, 288 x 255 cm, cut rubber

The things she makes have a material beauty that she is able to combine with an ethical stance. She often uses recycled materials such as old inner tube rubber. Her work shows an extraordinary committment of time that is directly related to labour.
Intention is prioritised over speed.

modernist aesthetic

2009-05-28T00:47:00.003-04:00

Memory of Wikwemikong detail 2008

I have started this new blog to give myself a place to keep images of art made by others that I am moved by. The more I look at art, the more I realise that I appreciate the beautiful simplicity of the modernist aesthetic.

I have made a list of over 150 artists and plan to post about each of them in the future, one at a time. While some of these artists already have huge web presences, many do not. This blog will gather them together for me - it's as if I am a collector or a curator. I hope that others will enjoy this collection as well.

From now on, the work on this blog is the work of artists I admire and not my own work. Although the image above is my own work, future posts will profile other artists who work with a similar aesthetic.