That question and many others run through "The Thread as theLine," an intriguing if rambling group show at Arlington's Ellipse Arts Center . Curated by Cynthia Connolly, the exhibition gathers a sampling ofyoungish artists -- most in their 20s and 30s -- working invariations of embroidery, crochet and quilting. These 16 artists hail from destinations local (Matt Nelson, born inFairfax) and international (Anila Rubiku, from Albania). A few arefinishing art school (Valerie Molnar and Zac Monday). And one is awildly successful fashion designer (Natalie Chanin, co-founder ofthe boho-chic, Vogue-endorsed, $20,000-a-gown Project Alabamalabel. She now runs her own boho-chic, soon-to-be-Vogue-endorsedline called Alabama Chanin). The area hasn't seen a survey of fabric works as large as this onein recent years. Although our galleries have mounted smaller showsof sewn work or included "The Thread as the Line" artistsin group shows (G Fine Art showed Sabrina Gschwandtner a few yearsago; Molnar appeared at Carroll Square Gallery this year), anexhibition of this type is overdue. Connolly calls her exhibition a "document" of artworksmade with thread or Embroidery Yarn. As that word suggests, the show takes ahands-off approach. Connolly assumes no stance on the manyapproaches to material on view, nor does she posit why this kind ofwork is popular now. Instead, we wade largely unguided through awide variety of work. A curatorial road map might have made our journey a little easier,because here the approaches vary. Ask these artists why they workin fabric, and you'll get as many answers as participants. One thing these artists aren't doing is making radical statements.That happened about 40 years ago, thanks to trailblazing 1970s-erafeminists who took heat for raiding grandma's knitting supplies.Those who saw last year's "WACK! Art and the FeministRevolution" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts remember Faith Wilding's crocheted room and Harmony Hammond'sstuffed ladders, among many other attempts to bring so-called"women's work" into the museum. In "The Thread as the Line," youngsters recall their'70s-era foremothers and, sometimes, embrace their feminist agenda.Jennifer Boe addresses twin agents of female oppression:domesticity and the church. Her embroidered triptych mimicsliturgical hangings, but with a catch: Cherubim encircle a vacuumcleaner in lieu of the Holy Virgin. Boe's is a clever gesture thatrides the coattails of early feminists but doesn't advance theircause. Other Big Issues addressed here include neo-hippie activism and itscorollary, art as social interaction. You get a strong sense of itby watching Gschwandtner's video documenting a "KnitKnit SundownSalon," where attractive young people teach each other to knit andpurl. When not following the buzz and hum of happy knitters, thecamera pans on rows of crocheted boots and dolls presumably knit bythe participants. Gschwandtner's utopia suggests that art need onlybe a bunch of people hanging out. In many ways the most radicalwork here, it dismisses the gallery system entirely. Area artist Brece Honeycutt's approach is similarly social. Shevisits public places and spins yarn, asking passersby to sharetheir memories of fiber and thread. In "The Thread as theLine," the artist's spun yarn hangs on a gallery wall with atiny video monitor nesting inside. A soundtrack capturing theartist's interviews -- one subject recalls his childhood inEthiopia -- present fabric as Proustian madeleine. Sewing and knitting still connote women, so the presence of fivemale artists is worth noting. Standouts here include Zac Monday'sfantastical figures, including a marvelous tube-eyed blue monster.Steve Frost explores gender and sexuality by transforming galleryseating into beds; he also hangs wall works that, excepting theirfabric content, behave very much like paintings. Which brings us to another set of artists, those engaged not in BigIssues but formalist ones: line, color, composition and figure. For her fantastical pictures of fashionable women standing -- yes-- on horseback, Rubiku sews into paper using colored thread. It'sa lot like drawing with ink or pencil, but there's a tactility andpresence to the fiber that makes each line pop. The sewn line linksthe series of four works called "Mastering Freedom" to the kookykind of empowerment she's trying to evoke. Other artists appear to adopt the niftiness of thread to divert usfrom the banality of their images -- a strategy decidedly lesseffective. One offender is Natalia Blanch, who presents an 18-panelseries featuring stop-motion frames of a figure doing a truncatedcartwheel. No amount of jazzy stitching salvages this one. More interesting, ultimately, are artists such as Megan Whitmarsh,who embroiders naive-style retro scenes of mod young peopleinteracting with Yeti (as in abominable snowmen). These scenes,which take place on brightly colored backgrounds that stand formuseums or living rooms, have a sweetness to them that'sunderscored by the artist's homespun medium. The formalist tendencies of Whitmarsh, Blanch and Rubiku would nothave been possible without the work of feminist pioneers. Yet "TheThread as the Line" reveals how fabric -- once a signature feministmaterial, now embraced by artists with varied agendas -- entered anart world whose definition grows broader by the day.
- 0 ratings
Loading ...
1 comment
1. steffan (anonymous), Jun 5, 2008 4:22:52 PM #
If you call an apple an orange enough times will it actually taste and look like an orange ?