Category: Textiles

‘Yvonne Wells: Play the Hand That’s Dealt You’ to Open at Fort Gansevoort

Fort Gansevoort, Meatpacking District, Textiles

 

 

 

Yvonne Wells, Play the Hand That’s Dealt You, 2011; Assorted fabrics, 81.5 x 65 inches © Yvonne Wells. Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevort, New York

Beginning June 8, 2023, Fort Gansevoort will present Play The Hand That’s Dealt You, the first New York solo exhibition of Alabama-based artist Yvonne Wells. Born in 1939 in Tuscaloosa, Wells is known for her intricate narrative quilts depicting American history subjects, pop culture figures, and religious subject matter. As a self- taught artist living and working in the same region as the enslaved female quilters from the rural Alabama community known as Gee’s Bend, Wells is aware of heritage techniques, yet cleaves to her own contemporary visual vernacular. Through a practice that illuminates quilt making as a form of fine art and not simply craft, she has developed a style that uniquely melds geometric abstraction with bold figuration. The evolution of Wells’ personal aesthetic and technical mastery will be seen through over a dozen large works on view, spanning three decades of the artist’s career.

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Artist Sheila Pepe to Crochet ‘My Neighbor’s Garden’ Throughout Madison Square Park in June

Crochet, Feminist Art, Madison Square Park, Textiles

 

 

 

Sheila Pepe (American, b. 1959), Proposal for ‘My Neighbor’s Garden’ in Madison Square Park, 2023. Telephone poles, yard hardware, nylon and cotton string, shoelaces, paradors, rubber bands, plant materials. Dimensions variable. Collection the artist. Courtesy Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Convening groups of novice and advanced crocheters, artist Sheila Pepe will create her first outdoor exhibition commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy and opening on June 26. In My Neighbor’s Garden, Pepe upends a traditional American nineteenth-century urban park layout with a twenty-first century temporary installation that brings color, unexpected materials, and optimism outdoors. Pepe, a feminist and queer artist whose elaborate web-like structures summon and critique conventional women’s craft practice, uses crochet to transform contemporary sculpture.

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Simone Elizabeth Saunders: Unearthing Unicorns at Claire Oliver Gallery in March, 2023

Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem, Textiles

 

 

 

Simone Elizabeth Saunders, Release in Darkness, 2022, Unearthing. Image courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery

Claire Oliver Gallery will open its doors to Unearthing Unicorns, the debut solo exhibition by artist Simone Elizabeth Saunders. Unearthing Unicorns showcases large-scale textile artworks that explore the iconography of the famed high Renaissance era Unicorn Tapestries and Art Nouveau advertising through a contemporary Black feminist lens. The artist’s sweeping art historical reframing is rendered in vibrant polychrome hand-tufted textiles that both reference the prized woven tapestries of the Renaissance as well as the more contemporary feminist craft movement of the later 20th century. Unearthing Unicorns will be on view in Harlem March 17 – May 13, 2023.

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Tenuous Threads, a Two-Part Exhibition On View at Atlantic Gallery in January & February

Atlantic Gallery, Chelsea, Fiber Art, Textiles

 

 

 

Gorgeous piece by artist Carol Paik entitled ‘Same River, Twice’ will be in Part Two of the exhibition Tenuous Threads at Atlantic Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.

Atlantic Gallery will open its doors to TENUOUS THREADS, a two-part exhibition showcasing works incorporating textiles, fibers, threads and mixed media. Tenuous Threads alludes to the delicate lines that bring us together and sets us apart; that join us yet repel us. All of life is connected through networks, systems, fibers and webs. Communication (visual, verbal, electrical, chemical, and kinetic) enables an exchange of information amongst all life forms. The exhibition, curated by Patricia Miranda, includes innovative artworks that utilize textiles, fibers, threads (natural and synthetic) in sculpture, collage, 3D and 2D mixed media that communicates the strength and fragility of what binds all life.

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Basil Kincaid: River, Frog and Crescent Moon to Open at Venus Over Manhattan

Textiles, Upper East Side, Venus Over Manhattan

 

 

 

Basil Kincaid, Praise around the Seed, 2022. Em- broidery and hand-woven cotton fiber on canvas; 67 x 88 in (170.2 x 223.5 cm). Courtesy the artist and Venus Over Manhattan, New York.

Celebrating improvisation, freedom of imagination, and a continuous process of self-discovery through making, St. Louis, and Accra-based Basil Kincaid is a post-disciplinary artist known for textile compositions that mine what he calls a “spiritual inheritance.” On September 7, 2022, Venus Over Manhattan will present River, Frog and Crescent Moon, the artist’s first New York solo exhibition, featuring a series of recent quilted, embroidered, and sculpted works. Kincaid’s pieces are often made from “emotionally charged materials,” including the cast-off clothes of loved ones, and involve a time-intensive collage technique that channels the inheritance of a multi-generational familial practice of quilting. The exhibition will be on view through October 8th at the gallery’s Upper East Side location.

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Chellis Baird: The Touch of Red at National Arts Club in March

Gramercy Park, National Arts Club, Textiles

 

 

 

Chellis Baird. Image, Flirt, 2021, Golf Leaf plaster cast

The National Arts Club will open its doors to Chellis Baird in the exhibition ‘The Touch of Red,’ on view from March 21st through April 8th. In this exhibition, Baird, a 2022-23 National Arts Club Artist Fellow, explores the complex significance of the color red, expanding upon her signature techniques of sculpture, painting and textiles within the spectrum of the hue.

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2022 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellows Bisa Butler, Andre D. Wagner, and Nicole R. Fleetwood Join Network of Creatives Advancing Park’s Vision for Social Change

Art, Photography, Textiles, Writing

 

 

 

Left to right: Bisa Butler, Photo by Gioncarlo Valentine; Andre D. Wagner, Photo by Ike Edeani; Nicole R. Fleetwood

The Gordon Parks Foundation has named its 2022 fellowship recipients: Artists Bisa Butler and Andre D. Wagner, and author and curator Nicole R. Fleetwood as the inaugural Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. Established in 2017, the fellowship program champions individuals who share the foundation’s devotion to advancing Parks’s vision for social change through the arts and humanities. This year expands on previous art fellowships with the launch of the Genevieve Young Fellowship in Writing, established in honor of the legendary book editor, who was also Gordon Parks’s former wife, estate executor, and instrumental member of the foundation’s board until her passing in 2020. Each recipient will receive $25,000 to support new or ongoing projects that explore themes of representation and social justice.

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Loose Ends + The Colour of Words II Opens at Jane Lombard Gallery in Tribeca

Jane Lombard Gallery, Textiles, Tribeca

 

 

The Color of Words II. (Image) Jane Bustin, Psychopomp, 2020, Acrylic, wood, copper, beetroot dyed burnt silk, 11.8 x 11.8 inches.

Jane Lombard Gallery opened its doors to two summer exhibitions ~ Loose Ends, a group exhibition celebrating women working in textiles, and Jane Justin’s ‘The Colour of Words II.’

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‘Unraveled: Confronting the Fabric of Fiber Art’ Opens at The Untitled Space, Tribeca

Fiber Art, Textiles, The Untitled Space, Tribeca

 

 

Artist, Mary Tooley Parker in the group exhibition, Unraveled: Confronting the Fabric of Fiber Art

If you love Fiber Art, you must add this group exhibition to your list. The Untitled Space in Tribeca opened its doors to more than 40 contemporary artists who will feature textile and fiber-based artworks.

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Art for the Community: The Met’s Circulating Textile Exhibitions, 1933-42

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Textiles

 

 

Furnishing silk ca. 1750 (Elizabeth Cleland, 2020) via The MET

Between 1933 and 1942, The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized one of its especially noteworthy landmark educational initiatives to bring the Museum’s collection to as many New Yorkers as possible. Called the Neighborhood Circulating Exhibitions, the series consisted of small, thematic displays of select artworks presented in New York Public Library branches, high schools, city universities, and settlement houses. The effort, which was developed in response to an inquiry from a high school teacher, reached more than two million visitors and will be the focus of the exhibition Art for the Community: The Met’s Circulating Textile Exhibitions, 1933–1942, on view October 31, 2020, through June 13, 2021, in honor of The Met’s 150th anniversary.

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