Style Spotlight: Crafting a Handmade Nation

August 2009 | BY admin | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

The words “DIY” and “indie craft movement” may be familiar to you by now—they’re the buzz words surrounding a new breed of craft show that has been growing for several years in cities across the country.

Faythe Levine, an artist, curator, author and director, was a part of those beginnings. She launched a craft fair called Art vs. Craft in Milwaukee,Wis., in 2004.Two years later, she realized someone had to document the growth of the movement. “I needed to make sure this was captured in the right light,” she says. In the spirit of the times, she decided to do-it-herself, funding a documentary on the “new wave of craft” in 2006.

Levine ended up traveling 19,000 miles and stopping in 15 cities to visit craft fairs, studios, galleries and boutiques to capture the stories and experiences of artists and retailers. Intrigued by her YouTube teaser, Princeton Architectural Press commissioned a book, and Handmade Nation:The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft and Design, appeared last November.

The original project—the “Handmade Nation” documentary— was released earlier this year, and Levine has followed up with another cross-country tour of readings and screenings at museums and art centers.

Upcoming stops include Houston,Texas, Seattle, Wash., and Rochester, N.Y. Check out http://indiecraftdocumentary.blogspot.com for event details, or www.papress.com to buy the book.

Style Spotlight: Old Meets New in Living Mural

August 2009 | BY Sara Baker | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

There is nothing small-scale about the living mural at California State University’s Fresno campus.The 43-foot-high mural wraps around three walls of the new Henry Madden Library’s elevator tower. For 4,500 straight hours, day and night, the video installation chronicles a Native American woman in a red dress weaving a traditional Mono basket.

The project’s mastermind, Susan Narduli, is also behind the library’s Native Garden, main stair and Browsing Room mural. She sees the digital triptych as a window into a vanished way of life.“What binds a culture can be complex, and here a new culture exists in parallel to one that preceded it,” she says.

The groundbreaking moving mural takes advantage of cutting-edge technology; a LED mesh curtain shows the woman working on the yearlong basket-weaving process. Look for it on the north face of the 370,000-square-foot library, overlooking the garden.

Style Spotlight: Thinking Small and Large

August 2009 | BY admin | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

Corrine Perez-Garcia created this sculpture for “Little & Large.”

When Patricia Frischer, a founding member of the San Diego Visual Arts Network, heard that Alexander Calder’s jewelry would be the focus of a major exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art this year, a light bulb went off. “This artist had created stunning sculptures, but also made more than 1,800 pieces of jewelry,” Frischer explains.

To pay homage to Calder, she asked close to 100 artists to each create one piece of jewelry and one sculpture to be exhibited side by side. The resulting work will be shown at 41 venues as part of a countywide exhibition, “Little & Large.”

Adorn Gallery in San Diego will showcase works by Mirjam Butz-Brown through Nov. 14; the Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery in La Jolla will feature works by Lisa Slovis Mandel, Corrine Perez-Garcia and Alexandra Hart through Dec. 31; and the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad will also celebrate Hart’s and Butz-Brown’s work, alongside that of Vickie Riggs, through Jan. 3, 2010.

The San Diego Museum of Art’s “Calder Jewelry” exhibition, also on view through Jan. 3, features approximately 90 necklaces, bracelets, brooches, earrings and tiaras—all worn by family and close friends of the artist—that demonstrate Calder’s love of abstraction and his unique mastery of this wearable art form.

Style Spotlight: A Man for All Seasons

August 2009 | BY Sara Baker | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

“Cafe Singer” by Edgar Degas. Credit:The Art Institute of Chicago / Bequest of Clara Margaret Lynch in memory of John A. Lynch, 1955.738

In an extraordinary collaboration, The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., is joining with 40 regional arts and community organizations to present “Season of Degas,” a series of concerts, theatrical performances, exhibitions and events honoring renowned painter Edgar Degas.

Seventy events have been planned in five New York counties as part of this “unprecedented artistic synergy,” says David F. Setford, executive director of The Hyde. The partnership was developed to increase the impact of “Degas & Music,” an exhibition celebrating Degas’ love of music, on view at The Hyde through Oct. 18.

The Adirondack Region Textile Artists Alliance will present a contemporary exhibition,“Inspired by Degas,” Sept. 16-Oct. 18 at The Shirt Factory in Glens Falls as part of the collaboration. Artists are invited to sketch dancers at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge Sept. 27-Oct. 3 at the “Artists and Dancers Open Studio.”

There’s even something for the children.The Adirondack Community College Touring Theatre for Children will offer Degas-inspired performances at area elementary schools Oct. 1-Dec. 31.

For more information, visit www.hydeseasonofdegas.blogspot.com or www.hydecollection.org.

Fall Arts Preview

August 2009 | BY Robin Updike | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

Renzo Piano designed the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, which offers bird’s-eye views of Millennium Park. Credit: Dave Jordano

So many arts places, so little time. What’s a serious-minded arts traveler to do? If you can stretch your budget to include only one major art excursion this fall, get yourself to Chicago.

The Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing, a 264,000-square-foot expansion designed by Renzo Piano, is the most-talked-about art museum expansion of the year—and for good reason. The elegant, light-filled glass-and-steel addition has won rave reviews from art and architecture critics alike, and enlarges the museum by nearly 35 percent, making the Art Institute the country’s second largest museum, after New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The new $294 million wing is dedicated to exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.The museum has organized five new exhibitions to inaugurate the space, including “Selections from the Architecture and Design Collection,” on view through January 2010.

Experiencing the new Piano addition in Chicago gives visitors a hint of things to come from the Italian architect. He is fast becoming the favorite for U.S. museums looking for additions and remodels that stand on their own as graceful structures without eclipsing the original museum buildings.

Piano’s recent projects have included the elegant addition to New York’s Morgan Library and the soaring entry pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Although there is no date set for groundbreaking, he has also designed a second 185,000-square-foot site for the Whitney Museum of American Art, to be located on the lower west side of Manhattan near the High Line, the elevated public park built on abandoned railroad tracks.

(Any trip to New York this fall must include a stroll along the High Line, by the way, which is a brilliant testament to the value of urban reclamation. Conveniently for art patrons, the High Line also happens to be very near the Chelsea gallery district, another must-see.)

For more of “Fall Arts Preview,” pick up the October 2009 issue of AmericanStyle today!

More Bang for your Buck: Masks

August 2009 | BY Sara Baker | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

Though it’s inspired by artist Peggy Bjerkan’s collection of ritual masks from around the world, “Life Is But a Dream,” $600, is an American mask with contemporary ideas, she says. Bjerkan’s ceramic masks will be shown at the Contemporary Crafts Market in Santa Monica, Calif.

More Bang for your Buck: Clocks

August 2009 | BY Sara Baker | Issue 69, October 2009 | 1 COMMENT

Googie Table” clock, $395, is handmade and handpainted by Lin and Will Christopher, using wood and acrylic. Their clocks are available at Raiford Gallery in Roswell, Ga.

More Bang for your Buck: Pots

August 2009 | BY Sara Baker | Issue 69, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

This ceramic pot by Michael Kline is wood fired, handpainted with a wax resist, and salt glazed. The 13-inch piece is priced at $300; Kline’s work is available at Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield, Mass.

Parting Shot: Paper Trails

June 2009 | BY Sara Baker | Issue 68, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

“Cartonlandia” by Ana Serrano

These masterpieces put the paper airplanes you made in class to shame. The Scion Installation L.A. Gallery in Culver City, Calif., gathered 10 international artists this spring for “Papershapers,” an exhibition of original pieces that are cut, torn, folded and sewn from paper. Los Angeles artist Ana Serrano’s 5-foot-high “Cartonlandia” was one of the showstoppers. Serrano worked on the piece for four months, first constructing a wooden frame and then building the colorful shantytown from the ground up. Sunday walks around her neighborhood were spent snapping photographs of doors, windows, people and mailboxes to incorporate into the detailed settlement. Cardboard, colored paper and food packaging became the walls and roofs of each building. Inspired by similar towns she visited in Mexico, the piece is “a look at class and economy, but without the serious overtones these topics tend to have,” says Serrano.

Organized Chaos

June 2009 | BY Margaret Lucke | Issue 68, October 2009 | NO COMMENTS

Content demonstrates the shibori dyeing process on her back patio in front of a backdrop of mirrors and frames she painted. Photography by Margot Hartford

Judith Content’s life is all about art—creating it, collecting it and bringing it into the community.

These passions are instantly evident as Content, smiling warmly, welcomes visitors to her home, a ranch-style house built in 1945 in a leafy Palo Alto, Calif., neighborhood. Every room is a testament to the joy she finds in living with art.

An energetic woman with crisp-cut gray hair, Content is best known for the art quilts she makes, and the outreach she does as president of the international Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). Art has shaped her life from her early years. Her mother was a painter, and as a child in Massachusetts, Content had her own table and paints in the studio. “I grew up with the desire to become an artist,” she says.

After her family moved to California, she attended San Francisco State University, taking almost every class the art department offered before graduating in 1979. A textiles course taught by artist Candace Crockett set Content on her current path.

Her signature technique is a Japanese dyeing process called arashi shibori. Strips of cloth are pleated and folded, wrapped around a pole—she uses wine jugs or lengths of plastic pipe—and tied on with thread. When the pole is dipped into a dye pot, exposed parts of the fabric are permeated with dye while hidden areas resist it, retaining their original color. Content likes to work with black silk, dipping it in a bleaching agent that discharges the black except for where the material has been pleated or tied. Then she saturates the lightened areas with color.

For more of “Organized Chaos,” pick up the August 2009 issue of AmericanStyle today!