If you are traveling this spring, stop in to see Fantastic Fibers 2018 at the Yeiser Art Center. I will be showing Litzmannstadt Getto, 1940-1944 in the show.
Five Textile Society of America members are represented in this year’s exhibition, which runs April 14 – June 9, 2018 at the Yeiser Art Center, 200 Broadway St, Paducah, KY 42001, (270) 442-2453. Arturo Sandaval was the juror. You will find a complete list of artists on the Yeiser Art Center web page.
Robert Mertens wrote about his impressions of the Surface Design Association 40th Anniversary Conference, Making our Mark SDA at 40. He wrote he didn’t expect to see immaterial fiber arts that center on ephemerality. Read his full text at the SDA Blog.
I was honored to be the guest editor of the summer issue and enjoyed developing content, working with the authors, staff, and editor Marci Rae McDade.
Your copy of the Summer Issue, Making our Mark: SDA at 40, is available with membership to the Surface Design Association, http://www.surfacedesign.org/
Angela Hennessy’s Untitled (floor mat) (detail) 2016, velcro dots, 42″ in diameter is featured on the front cover. Great articles and more excellent visuals inside.
At the Making our Mark conference in Portland, Oregon, August 3-6, 2017, I returned to a theme I have explored recently and installed 13 digitally cut vinyl patterns, my interpretation of Indian block-printed textiles found in Egypt. Ruth Barnes, as curator of the textile collection at Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, undertook the task of cataloguing well over 1,000 textile artifacts from the Newberry Collection dating from the 12th to the 16th century. This exceptional collection and scholarly document is the foundation for this artwork. The fragments on average are typically under 15” in length and width, yet reveal complex patterns, captured through digital tools to reintroduce them to conference attendees.
Excellence In Fibers is on view until March 19, 2017 at New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks! Four weavings are on exhibit. Fiber Art Now, a quarterly print and digital magazine, developed the exhibition.
will be part of the SHIFTING LANDSCAPES: 3rd International SDA Member Juried Exhibition.
Opening Friday February 24, 2017, 5:00–7:00 pm, on view through May 20, 2017.
at form & concept, 435 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501.
Tugboat Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska’s most hip alternative space presented “There’s Always an Apex Predator” featuring new work by Jay Kreimer and Wendy Weiss, September 2-29, 2016.
“There’s Always an Apex Predator” explores crocodiles, prisoners of war, the holocaust and more though painted wood sculptures, digitally cut vinyl wall installations, prints and a sound score by Jay Kreimer and Adam Zahller. The work in this collaborative exhibition is entirely new and is drawn from experiences in India, personal and world history, and current political events.
Kreimer’s father was a prisoner of war in World War ll. He was captured at the Battle of the Bulge. Kreimer states his father was “marched and marched, lined up at a pit to be shot, was not shot, and ended at Stalag lXB, Bad Orb, Germany.” Weiss adds this was “the worst German prison camp from which, in 1945, Jewish prisoners and perceived troublemakers were sent to the Berga concentration camp, a slave labor camp that mixed American POWs with Holocaust victims in a work to death frenzy.” Eldon Kreimer spoke little about his time in Stalag lXB, but he did tell a story about dividing a packet of raisins from a Red Cross package between his fellow prisoners. Starving, as they all were, he held back three extra raisins for himself and ate them. Later he felt compelled to confess this transgression to his group. Three raisins.
Our interest in his experience paralleled what developed from a latent interest for me about the Holocaust and cruelties in Europe during World War ll. As a child, my father had been gripped with the significance Holocaust and the industrialized murder of European Jews. In 2014, unintentionally, we stayed on the site of the Łódź Ghetto in Poland, called the “Litzmannstadt Getto” because during the war the occupiers briefly renamed the city after a German general who invaded the city in WWI.
Other forms of predation entered our thoughts. Animals and insects in the service of men to torment—dogs and fleas—for example.
We lived for much of the past few years in Vadodara, Gujarat, a city of two million with the distinction of harboring the largest population of wild crocodiles in a city of that size in the world. They conclude, “so the crocodiles came to this party: Apex Predators.”
Thanks to Nebraska Innovation Studio, a makerspace/fab lab, on Nebraska Innovation Campus, where we use terrific equipment and workspace for the development of the vinyl portion and some of the wood working portions of the installation. Check it out! And much gratitude to Peggy and Nolan and the super helpers at Tugboat.
