by Beth Neville Ellen Schiffman pushes the limits of Fiber Art in her “52 Box Project” solo exhibit at the Fuller Craft Museum. Moving away from cotton, wool, linen, felt and synthetic fiber, she works with unorthodox materials. Reaching a “milestone” birthday (age not revealed), Schiffman made a pledge to herself that she would make a new fiber installation each week for a year, sort of a shortened version of Julie Powell’s “365 days” take on Julia Child. All of Schiffman’s 52 fiber works are encased in 9” x 9” wood boxes, displayed together as an ensemble on the wall. The 52-box result is an almost overwhelming diversity of raw materials, styles, patterns and complexity. Schiffman’s materials include Q-tips, felting, embroidery, woven fabric, knotted and dyed fabric, beads, rocks, metal washers, wood, wire, string, photographs and more. Each box has its own motif and … [Read more...] about THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX: 52 WEEKS AT FULLER CRAFT
Issue Articles
LIVE AND LEARN: DRAWING ON HISTORY IN CT
by J. Fatima Martins In News & Views, the Mystic Museum of Art’s (MMoA) newsletter, Dawn E. Salerno, MMoA’s deputy director for public engagement and operations, asks in her “Art Education and National Welfare” essay, “Can a museum teach empathy or inspire good citizenship?” She goes on to reference a study that found that “even a single museum experience improved a student’s empathy for people who lived in a different time and place.” Salerno’s essay highlights a fundamental element of art: it is a product of culture, and culture tells the story of people. It is therefore, a teaching tool — an example of a specific colorful moment that can only be fully understood through preservation and continued reexamination. For this reason, MMoA’s two concurrent exhibitions, “Robert Brackman: Thinking in Color” and “Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts 106th Annual Exhibition,” are … [Read more...] about LIVE AND LEARN: DRAWING ON HISTORY IN CT
COWAN’S RE/COLLECTION: AN UPDATED GLASS MENAGERIE
by Beth Neville Among contemporary young artists, it is unusual to find someone in full control of her medium, with the emotional maturity and imagination to produce art that is both decorative and deeply emotional. This is even more unusual in the burgeoning field of American crafts over the past 50 years. Amber Cowan is such an artist. Her art, crafted glass, goes beyond the inherent decorative beauty of translucent and opalescent glass to form sculptures with significant symbolic content. A solo show of her work, “Re/Collection,” is on display at Fuller Craft Museum through October 8. “Hands and Handkerchiefs,” an assemblage of four pairs of green-glass hands originally made to display fashionable rings, immediately stands out. Cowan curved the fingers, using hot sculpting, so that they hold wires from which melted white cake plates dangle downward. It looks simple, but … [Read more...] about COWAN’S RE/COLLECTION: AN UPDATED GLASS MENAGERIE
NO PLACE LIKE HOME: BLACKWOOD IN PORTSMOUTH
by Linda Chestney So often we are compelled to leave home. The further the better, right? Yet there remains in our cultural DNA a pair that brings us back home. According to T.S. Elliott, “…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” A popular saying states that: “Life takes you to unexpected places, love brings you home.” Indeed. That was seascape artist Karen Blackwood’s experience. Blackwood, who will have over 30 works in oil on display when her show opens on July 22 at the Todd Bonita Gallery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was born and grew up in New Hampshire, where she majored in painting at the University of New Hampshire. She was taught in the classical tradition by such mentors as Sigmund Abeles and Conley Harris. Upon graduating, she was enticed by the siren call of the bright lights and career … [Read more...] about NO PLACE LIKE HOME: BLACKWOOD IN PORTSMOUTH
TO COIN A CHAISE: FUN MEETS FUNCTION IN VT
by Elayne Clift Johnny Swing was fortunate enough to have a mother who was an artist. She inspired and encouraged his interest in welding which led to him sculpting metal into functional art, something he said he knew he wanted to do from the age of three. By the time he was 13, he was comfortable with his medium both as a welder and a budding architectural artist. His first gallery show took place just after he graduated from Skidmore College, after which he studied at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Today his work is shown and owned internationally. Swing is best known for his coin furniture. One of his earliest chairs was made from individually welded steel dock washers he found in a dumpster. In the mid-1990s, his source material became coins, starting with his “Penny Chair,” which required thousands of pennies to be individually welded … [Read more...] about TO COIN A CHAISE: FUN MEETS FUNCTION IN VT
WORCESTER ELECTRIFIED: HUANG MOVES THE IMAGINATION
by Brian Goslow Nearly 50 years ago, the Worcester Art Museum hosted “Light and Motion,” a groundbreaking exhibition in which the participating “new kineticists” turned to “light and movement to produce a new sensibility.” This summer, just as those artists used the latest “electrical elements, lenses, Polaroid filters … and other non-traditional media” to modernize its viewers’ senses, Shih Chieh Huang’s “Reusable Universes” reinvents the possibilities of what a gallery space — and museum experience — can be. It only takes a peek inside WAM’s darkened (for this exhibition) Contemporary Gallery to be drawn into a multisensory visual experience not unlike a Disney ride through a new world. And while the collection of seven mesmerizing kinetic sculptures may have features viewers will automatically attribute to being similar to sea creatures, that’s more your imagination at … [Read more...] about WORCESTER ELECTRIFIED: HUANG MOVES THE IMAGINATION