Sunday, April 23, 2023

Magdalena Abakanowicz, the Abakans

Black Ball 1975, Sisal, 140 x 110 x 100 cm
and Abakan Red 1969, Sisal 405 x 382 x 400 cm

Polish artist, Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017), created and displayed monumental woven textile sculptures in site specific environments so that people could move around in as if in a forest of large cloaked figures.   

The sculptures were named Abakans, after the artist's own name.   

Created in the late 1960's and early 70's, they remain hugely influential. They show how soft objects can have great expressive power.  When we move through them, there is a feeling of breath and touch, of fertility and decay, of connection between humanity and all living things, animal or plant.   

in foreground Abakan Festival 1972 Sisal 370 x 100 x 100
and Abakan Brown IV 1969-84 Sisal 290 x 300 x 30 cm 

I see fiber as the basic element constructing the organic world on our planet, as the greatest mystery of our environment.  It is from fiber that all the living organisms are built, the tissue of plants, leaves and ourselves.  

Our nerves, our genetic code, the canals of our veins, our muscles.

We are fibrous structures.  Our heart is surrounded by the coronary plexus, the plexus of most vital threads.

Black Garment VI 1976 Sisal 330 x 220 x 100, Abakan vert 1967-68 sisal 260 x 60 x 30,
Winter 1975 - 80, sisal 320 x 360, and Abakan Festival 1971 370 x 100 x 100

Handling fiber we handle mystery.

What is fabric?  We weave it, sew it.  We shape it into forms.

Abakan Brown 1969 Sisal 300 x 300 x 150 cm

When the biology  of our body breaks down, the skin has to be cut so as to give access to the inside.

Later it has to be sewn, like fabric.


Abakan etroit 1967-68 sisal and wool 320 x 100 x 100 cm

Fabric is our covering and our attire.

Made with our hands, it is a record of our souls.


sisal and wool abakan

My works are organic like creations of nature.

And like creations of nature, they will eventually turn into earth.


Assemblage noir 1966  sisal, wool, hemp and horsehair 300 x 220

They are born from the effort of my fingers, wrists and muscles.

Only in this way can I pass on to them my energy and my secrets.

Only in this way can I learn their secrets.



Brown Coat 1968 sisal 300 x 180 x 60 cm

The threads I weave make up homogeneous fabric, the expression of which depends on the tension or the relaxation of my nerves.


Abakan - Situation Variable II 1971  sisal and rope 400 x 250 x 100

Forms result from everyday emotions, like a diary.

They are a product and the record of my time, with its experiences, disappointments, longings and fears.


sisal and rope 1971 detail

My forms change as time goes by like my face.


Abakan Yellow 1970  sisal and rope  380 x 380 x 70

My Abakans are a protest against the weaving conventions.

A need to guide people into a world different from that of a noisy street and a brutal technique.

They are a cry of despair in the face of the ailments of civilization.


Abakan Orange 1968 sisal 360 x 360 cm  and Abakan Yellow 1970  sisal and rope 380 x 380 x 70 cm 

They are, like sweat, a symptom of my existence.


background, abakan orange on floor, abakan january february 1972 behind it, and some of the 800  embryology bundles.  Foreground is Abakan Red 1969  Sisal 405 x 382 x 400 cm

The text in italics is from Magdalena Abakanowicz's presentation at Fiberworks: Symposium on Contemporary Textile Art in Oakland California, May 1978.  The images are from the exhibition Every Tangle of Thread and Rope, curated by Ann Coxon, the Tate Modern, London, England for winter/spring  2022-23.   An excellent video produced by the Tate: click here

Thursday, July 14, 2022

Sun Spots at the Gladstone House

Sun Spots (1) detail, cyanotype on paper by April Martin, 2021

April Martin was one of the Toronto area artists who was invited to create new art for the renovated Gladstone Hotel, now called Gladstone House, one of the oldest buildings still operating as a hotel in Toronto. 

Sun Spots (1),2021, cyanotype on paper 

Her work responds to the Romanesque Revival architecture of the 1889 building, specifically the ten small windows made from pressed glass that are a focal point of the Queen street entrance.    

She made photograms of these windows by pressing photosensitive paper against the textured glass.     


To create the cyanotypes the artist needed to prepare good quality art paper with the photo chemicals and keep it protected from light until the last minute.  A tall step ladder was one of her tools. 

April Martin is a process-based sculptor. 

She enjoys creating art that allows things to happen.  

In this case the sunlight acted together with the materials of chemicals and paper.  

This blog has featured April Martin before.  Please have a look at the August 2019 post, or the January 2018 post or the May 2016 posts if you are interested in seeing more of her collaborations.   

This artist is curious.  She believes in magic.  She opens personal windows for herself and for us. 

Sun Spots (1) detail, cyanotype on paper by April Martin 2021

April Martin is my daughter and last month I visited Gladstone House (room 307) so that I could see her work.  The rooms are elegant and have a minimalist aesthetic.   I took this photo just before I left after a lovely two night stay (and a beautiful city visit with her). 

All the guest rooms have the neutral style seen in this photo yet each is made unique with original art created by local Toronto artists.  I've written about the Gladstone hotel's annual exhibition of textile art, Hard Twist, several times on Judy's Journal.  While that show is not happening anymore, the hotel is still committed to supporting the arts.  Read about the art program and find the names of the other artists involved in the new décor at this link.

"Look up!  Notice the ten panes of differently textured glass, as you come and go through the south entrance of the hotel. These photograms were captured by pressing photosensitive paper against early spring light that filtered through the unique crystalline surfaces.  Like the marks that stain your eyelids after staring at the bright sky, these shapes stretch as doorways into other, blue worlds."  April Martin

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Kirsti Rantanen


Kirsti Rantanen

A strong woman textile artist from Finland.   

She is having a retrospective exhibition this year at the Craft Museum of Finland in Jyvaskyla entitled The Space of Textiles.  It continues until the end of August 2022.

Although she was well known in her native Finland, she is almost unknown in other parts of the world.  The images in this post are from the exhibition of her work that took place at Helsinki's Design Museum of Finland in  2016-2017 that was simply entitled Kirsti Rantanen. 

Thank you to Camille who wrote a blog post about Helsinki's design district in 2017.

The above photo and the one below are from Camille's blog.  




Several circles and zig zags float through the exhibition space and guide us through the space.  

Kirsti Rantanen was born in 1930.

She graduated from the Department of Textile Art at the School of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1952 and during the 50's taught art and design there. 

During this time she also designed Rya rugs and furnishing textiles.

During the 1970's she began to experiment with sculptural textiles and also to advocate for women artists.

After the age of 40, her work became three-dimensional.

It takes up space.  

We move around it, yearn to touch it.  

The scale is awesome.  

Rantanen's textiles are large and in this way they mimic nature.

trees      mountains     clouds 
 

In 1983, Kirsti Rantanen won an award that allowed her to take time off teaching and be a free lance artist for five years. 

She moved out of Helsinki to the medieval town of Porvoo and began the most fertile period of her career.  She started to use the ancient Sumak method of weaving on a vertical warp that hangs from the ceiling.  To weave large scale on a free vertical warp means that she had to work on a ladder sometimes while weaving.  Yes, she was a strong woman artist.  

Her monumental weavings were made between 1984 and 1993 when she was in her 50’s and early 60’s. 

In 2017, after the exhibition of this body of work at the Design Museum, Kirsti Rantanen donated the collection to the museum.  
Women artists from pre-internet times are being discovered by curators today.  It's exciting.

It is good that the Design Museum is taking care of her work and that her work is being shared with other museums.  
Apologies that I have not been able to find the titles of most of Rantanen's sculptural pieces. I will keep looking.  I will be paying attention to her name.
Her name is Kirsti Rantanen.  (1930-2020)

She has a Wikipedia page that you can look up.  She has a daughter who is a respected artist named Silja Rantanen.  

A review of the Design Museum exhibition is available through this link.   The article is written by Satu-Lotta Peltola
   
Kirsti went on to make more sculptural work that involved wire and the spiral as a form.  

Requiem is the title of the blue piece, Abandoned Stage is the title of the black portal,  all work by Kirsti Rantanen


Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Penny Berens In The Middle Of The World

Whispering Cairns
plant dyes on silk, wool, cotton, linen
 hand stitched  35 x 49 inches 2019

Chasing the Moon
plant dyes on damask, silk, cotton
hand stitched 40 x 50 inches 2020

Penny's artist statement for this new body of work begins with these words:  "For many years now I have taken to heart the words of Peter London in his book ‘Drawing Closer to Nature"

Resting Between Tides
  plant dyes and discharge on silk, wool, cotton, linen
hand stitched  43 x 42.5 inches 2019

“Find a portion of the world that is close at hand and adopt it. Become acquainted with it. Draw closer to it by staying with it over a long course of time. In all seasons, all times of the day, all weathers, all circumstances of your own life. The more often you return to this chosen portion of Nature, the more finely you will be able to perceive its more delicate features, as well the slow-to-emerge pattern and rhythms.”    Peter London

Resting Between Night and Day
plant dyes and discharge on silk, cotton, linen, wool,
hand stitched 2019 43 x 49 inches

Holding Deep Memory
hand stitch and shibori on reclaimed denim dress and old table linen
 44.5 x 39.5 inches 2021

Woodland Berries
plant dyes on silk, wool, cotton 
hand stitched 43 x 42 inches 2019

My process starts with daily wanderings in the wooded coastal landscape of Nova Scotia,  slowly becoming more and more familiar with those seasonal rhythms and changing patterns.  Penny Berens


from left to right 
A Stream Runs Through It, The Edge of the Woods, Woodpeckers Live Here
Plant dyes on cotton, silk, wool, hand stitched.
various sizes, approximately 21 x 15 or 20 inches 2015

When Autumn Leaves Fall 
plant dyes on silk, linen, cotton
hand stitched,  30 x 24 inches 2017


During the warmer months these walks become foraging expeditions for dye stuff with which to colour the fabrics I use. This plant dyed cloth is then hand stitched and embroidered in response to these walks.
Penny Berens

Walking on Stoney Ground
plant dye and rust on linen, cotton, silk, wool
hand stitched 29.9 x 24 inches 2019

Stoney Island Memories 
plant dye on linen, cotton, silk, wool
hand stitched  42.9 x 31.5 inches 2019


Working by hand is a slow and tactile practice spread over long periods of time which deepens and clarifies my understanding of the story the piece wishes to tell.   Penny Berens


Beaver Moon Dreaming
plant dye and discharge on cotton and linen
hand stitched  43.3 x 43.3 inches 2020

I would hope that my process and the final embroideries inspire others to slow down and become inspired by daily observations in their own chosen landscapes. (Penny Berens)

Chasing The Moon
hand stitch on silk, cotton, damask
40 x 50 inches 2020

Dancing In The Wind 
plant dyes on linen, silk velvet, cotton, wool
hand stitched 41.5 x 31 inches  2020

Walking With Dogs
plant dyes on silk, cotton, wool
hand stitched 53 x 12 inches x 2 panels, 2021

Currently on display until December 18, 2021, the venue for this exhibition is a unique heritage building.  The Mississippi Valley Textile Museum used to be a woolen mill, located in the small Ontario town of Almonte and the waterfall that powered the old mill still flows through this town.  Please note that the walls behind many of Penny's wall pieces are original to this mill.   Like most textile art, it is nice to see details.  Please visit oPenny's Tanglewoods Thread blog or instagram to see close ups of Penny's work.  

In The Middle Of The World is a two person exhibition with Judy Martin, guest curated by our dedicated young freelance curator, Miranda Bouchard.    A post about Judy's work in the exhibition is on Judy's Updates, click here

Monday, March 1, 2021

Lawrence Carroll

Tom
1985-86 oil, canvas, wood, wax, staples
 13" x 10.5" x 6" 

Untitled
 1985 oil,, wax, canvas on wood
18" x 10" 

Penance
1987-88   oil, wax, canvas, staples on wood 
 9" x 9" x 7.6"
I was painting thin pieces of paper with black house paint that I would place on the white canvas.  I used staples because it allowed me to remove the painted lines and shapes if I was not satisfied, altering the composition as needed.
Breathing In
1988 89 oil, wax and paper collage on canvas on wood
  12" x  11" x 10"
Yes, like Matisse at the end of his beautiful life.  This was before I started cutting my paintings apart and using wax and other things.  

I was looking at Donald Judd. I was interested in the way that his wall and floor sculptures would come out of the wall and into the space.

Dependence
1990   oil wax, staples, canvas, wood
33" x 15" x 10"
This physical relationship between the work and the viewer started to influence how I started to think about my painting.

It slowed down the viewer.

Heaven Picasso 
1994-95 oil wax house paint newspaper, canvas on wood
55" x 42" x 3"
You could not see the painting entirely in one view.  

You could not grasp it.

Untitled
2017 oil, wax, staples, canvas on wood
19" x 1/2" x 11"
It added psychology to looking.  It opened up a world to me.

I looked at Carl Andre too - How and where to place the painting and how the placement changes the psychology of an entire room.

I felt I had everything.

installation at museo vincenzo vela in 2017
I thought of the canvas as a skin and wax as an ointment

and that there was a body of memory under the skin where things were buried for years and then for some reason they reappeared.

Lawrence Carroll 
I Have Longed to Move Away  works 1985-2017
edited by Gianna A. Mina
I started to think about cutting a painting completely apart.

And then about the futility of trying to put something that was once whole back together again, exposing all its imperfections. 

There was the revelation.   Painting does not have to be perfect

untitled  2017 
house paint and wax on canvas
19" x 19" 16"

Paintings can be flawed and vulnerable and imperfect and human.

Maybe my paintings are about my broken life.

untitled
2016 - 17  stain, house paint, wood pieces, canvas on wood 
67.7" x 108" x 1.5"
And that I'm trying to piece my life back together.

At certain times in your life, things appear.  Things come.

You look back on your life and examine it.

Last night I thought of different possibilities of what some of my paintings could be about and it shook me.

untitled 
stain, house paint, wood pieces, canvas on wood
118" x 75" x 1.5"
It's impossible for me to always know and understand exactly what I'm doing.

I need time and distance.

The gift that I have been given is to be able to explore these things and to give comfort to myself in knowing that I have a place to express things that some people may bury inside themselves and carry away with them all through their lives.

untitled 
oil, wax, house paint ,staples, canvas on wood
114" x 85" x 4" 
I like the idea that the painting can convey some of life's weight.

We all carry the weight of an imperfect life, some far greater than others.


Lawrence Carroll
I Have Longed To Move Away
Installation in Museo Vincenzo Vela, Switzerland

So what do you expose?  You have to risk.   You can't hide.   Lawrence Carroll  1954 - 2019


All text is from a Lawrence Carroll's interview with Barbara Catoir, entitled "Carry On the Light" .  

It is in the catalogue of the exhibition  I Have Longed to Move Away which was curated by Roberto Borghi for the Museo Vincenzo Vela in Switzerland during the spring of 2017.