Summer 2012
PATTERN Stitched, Woven, Pieced
UNSETTLING WALLPAPERS Pretty and Provocative
fiberarts.com
FIBERARTS SUMMER 2012 | TABLE OF CONTENTS
Features 27 | NOT-SO-PRETTY PAPER Jessica Hemmings
The deeply unsettling wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman visualized in a short story more than a hundred years ago has finally come to life.
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35 | A COLLECTOR OF QUILTS AND STORIES
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Jacqueline Ruyak
For two and a half decades, Eli Leon has been pursuing and documenting improvisational African-American quilts
43 | JANE RICHLOVSKY: UNPACKAGING THE AMERICAN DREAM Mary Lane
In these paintings on textiles, the textiles’ patterns are an integral part of the story.
50 | THE CAPTIVATING CIRCLE
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Lynn Cornelius Jablonski
Three artists—Ilze Aviks, Janice LessmanMoss, and Donna Sharrett—whose work harnesses the symbolism of this powerful shape.
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56 | SUMMER CONFERENCE EXHIBITS: A SAMPLING A glimpse of work seen at the surface design and batik conferences this summer.
Fiber in Bellevue This Fall The Bellevue Arts Museum, formerly the Bellevue Art Museum, will be showing two fiber exhibitions this fall: David Chatt: Two Hands, Twenty Year, and a Billion Beads, September 29-January 1, 2006, and Fiber Art International 2004, October 13-January 22, 2006. The Washington-State Museum, which closed in September 2003 because of lack of funds, reopened in June with a tweaked focus and a new director in Michael Monroe, former Renwick Gallery curator-in-charge and former American Craft Council executive director. The museum’s new mission is to be the Pacific Northwest’s center for the exploration of art, craft, and design through exhibitions, educational programs, and partnerships, emphasizing the work of regional artists.
Resarch Grants Available!
ABOVE: Eugenia Liu, Amigurumi Bear, 2010; yarn; 6" x 5" x 3". Photo: Casey Mitchell Photography.
Crafts at the Castle Turns Twenty Boston’s crafts at the castle show celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year with a larger venue and a museum exhibition. To be held December 2-4, the event will showcase 150 of the finest craft and design artists from the United States. The location of this annual show, a fundraiser for Family Service of Greater Boston, has moved to a larger venue—from the castle=like armory building it has historically used to the Hynes Convention Center in the heart of Boston’s downtown shopping district. ABOVE: Amber Curtis, Wired Protector, 2009; wire; 10" x 12" x 10". Photo: Haley Rhea Photography.
The center for craft, Creativity, and Design, part of the University of North Carolina, is accepting proposals for grants from its Craft Research Fund. In the second year of a three-year pilot program, the fund’s mission is to advance, expand, and support scholarship in the field of studio craft in the United States. In 2005, $95,000 was awarded through the program. Proposals for research projects, as well as requests fro $500 travel grants to present papers on studio craft at the College Art Association conference in Boston February 22-25, are due November 28. In the few short years of its existence, the center—with the help of generous anonymous donors—has moved rapidly from exploring the needs of the field of studio craft to implementing far-reaching projects. In addition to the grant program, the center has undertaken the writing of a text on the history of studio craft. Meanwhile, the center, located in Hendersonville, North Carolina, also mounts exhibitions and through October 29 is showing Crossing Boundaries: Maintaining Traditions, Teaching Artists of the Southeast, work by twenty-four fiber educators who gather annually at Penland School of Crafts. For more information about the center or to order the catalog ($4 plus shipping), visit www.craftcreativitydesign.org.