Bedford Gallery

Walnut Creek, California

Needle Art

Curated by Carrie Lederer

April 18 - June 13, 1999

Diablo Arts Magazine

Kate Rothrock

April-June 1999

Radical Notions:

"Needle Art" reveals a spectrum of artistic uses for a humble household implement.

A revolution has erupted in the sewing room. Creations with needle and thread that we once consigned to craft or women's work have been liberated and now have invaded the realm of fine art with a vengeance. An exhibition at the Bedford Gallery brings this shifted paradigm unequivocally to life in works by 54 California artists. "Needle Art" is on view April 18 through June 13 at the gallery in the Regional Center for the Arts.

"We associate needlework with order and tradition," says Carrie Lederer, curator of the Bedford Gallery. "But now, more than ever, there are sewing machines in studios, and artists are busily deconstructing what has been put together over hundreds of years."

Lederer builds a bridge between traditional needlework and the unbridled inventions that now characterize the medium. The show includes some historical samplers as well as contemporary works along more familiar lines. Embroidery, quilting, beadwork and even upholstery are common starting points. But even when these techniques are employed with the loving care that would win a great-grandmother's approval, their applications steadily undermine our ideas of what sewing is supposed to be. June Archer Miller's rows of meticulous beading decorate the detached heads of dolls. Didi Dunphy's precise samplers in embroidery hoops are miniature Mondrians. And Jehanne-Marie Gavarini tailors terry washcloths to the contours of handguns.

Lisa Kokin begins with a friendly and familiar household object, a wooden ironing board. The board is crowded with a seemingly random selection of small objects: a knife, a toothbrush, a flat rubber toy octopus, a photograph, a pen, a pair of knitted doll trousers, a measuring tape, a book of matches-that give the impression of having gravitated there from some other comer of the house. Then, like chalk at a crime scene, an outline of heavy black stitches surrounds them. "I often use items of people who have passed away, items that are symbolic of their life," says Kokin. "It's what remains. We are so transitory, but the objects remain."

The use of domestic materials to provide commentary is also apparent in works like Masako Takahashi's party dress for a little girl. Its dainty design implies femininity and cuteness, while its yoke is embroidered with the words Expensive in front and Exhausting in back. Angela Lim's frilled white kitchen apron has a herd of trapunto sheep running roughshod across its lap, in what must be the opposite of restful sleep. Indigo Som deconstructs the gingham plaid fabric she was forced to wear during her unhappy boarding-school years, reassembling it into strict grids over which she has control. We can read these pieces as ironic, political, personal, feminist or simply funny-the choice is quietly left up to us.

Many works in the exhibition reach back, like Som's, into the artist's intimate past, causing one to reflect on sewing's relation to childhood memory. Artist Cheryl Coon found working with needle and thread a natural choice. "It makes sense, because sewing is one of the first things you learn," she says. "It's been passed down from mother to daughter for as long as we can remember." Coon returned to memories of her mother, a nurse, removing stitches from her brother's knee, and of her father's morning shaving ritual to create My Nurse, a book whose pages hold double edged razor blades, safety pins, straight pins and small scissors. Among these items are garter snaps, adding a note of eros to the menacing implements.

The pull of opposites is also present in the work of Carla Paganelli. In her piece Blue Junior, Paganelli creates a strictly formal, three-dimensional shape, then covers it with fleecy child's pajama material, including snaps down the side and a bit of the nonskid white fabric that usually covers the soles of the feet. "Even as a child, I always had very strong relationships with materials," she says. "I remember fabrics that dresses were made of, I remember that stuff on the bottom of my pajamas, the repetitive texture, the nature of it."

Paganelli's blend of the childish and personal with formal abstraction sets up a duality that keeps the work open. She often takes found materials that already have a history, then applies them to a new use that works against that history, saying, "I'm enamored by their history, but then I try to separate myself from that and see it through new eyes, in a different way, a more formal context outside of its utilitarian purpose."

This purposeful estrangement is present throughout the exhibition. "There is a lot of duality built into these works, and it comes in many different shapes and forms," Lederer points out. "There'll be an apparent formalistic approach to the way a piece is made, but the actual material is imbued with familial history or memory. There is a push and pull that makes for a puzzling feeling."

Diana Craft takes found domestic objects as her starting point, favoring furniture, toys and decorative figurines. Her piece Knickknacks in Mourning is a collection of kitschy china figures retrieved from flea markets. Craft transforms them into a sculptural whole by carefully sewing each into its own funereal black velveteen cozy. Although each piece has its own identity and history, their shrouds point up their collective, universal "objectness." "I'm interested in the intimate meanings and memories that pre-owned objects carry, and in giving visual voice to these intangibles," she says.

Many of the artists in the exhibition grew up in families where sewing played an economic role, or they learned how to sew at an early age. Now, as artists, they use the needle with a freedom and ingenuity that both incorporates and transcends their formal training. Kerry Vander Meer creates soft sculptures made of sewn nylons and other fabrics. Their exotic, sensual or insect shapes are sometimes accentuated with anchoring threads that stretch or suppress them. Kiki Revoir sews thick woolen fabric into tightly coiled shapes that resemble sea sponges or brain cells, then adds another dimension with masses of sewn-on buttons. Ulrike PaImbach sews plump pigeons out of army blankets. They perch, with zippered breasts, on a wire strung across the gallery. Other works in the exhibition focus on series and arrangements, like Amy Berk's blue Styrofoam boards stuck with pins at different depths to create starlike, otherworldly patterns, or Alexandra Feit's massed piles of soft, tactile "fuzzies."

These works, on the other side of Lederer's "bridge," are an exuberant celebration of needlework's liberation from conventional uses. "Needlework has become an accepted art form," she says. "We have always worn sewn things, they are on our beds, on our walls-they're a part of everyday life. But the medium is now beginning to be used in an open way. There is a new appreciation for using the needle to create art, or even to be part of or a subject of art." The strength of "Needle Art" is that it shows us the application of this ancient and universal implement unhampered and unhemmed.

(Among the artworks in the Bedford Gallery's exhibition that reflect a fresh approach to using the domestic needle and thread are: Kiki Revoir's "Binary," of tightly coiled fabric with buttons; Daphne Ruff's "Ruff-Wear," a dress of dress-pattern tissue, Alexandra Feit's massed pile of fuzzy orbs, "All Balled Up", - and J. Spear's "Support Gamblers,"mixed media on a towel. On facing page, lower left: Cheryl Coon's "Norma Jean" is a booklike assemblage, upper right, Angela Lim's "Cockaigne: Small R's Condemning..." is mixed media with embroidery.)

Needle Art: A Postmodern Sewing Circle

showcases often-overlooked art form

Melissa McCrary

2/14/05

Gallery 210 at UM-St. Louis is currently displaying the crafts and skills associated with embroidery, quilting, beadwork, stitching and upholstery in the "Needle Art Postmodern Sewing" exhibition.

Although the art of needlework has been considered a past-time hobby for thousands of years, it was not until about 10 years ago that artists began using different materials combined with sewing.

Terry Suhre, director of Gallery 210, described the transition and new approach to this form of art.

"The work in the Needle Art exhibition is an extension of the new approach to art materials that was being explored as early as the mid 1970s," Suhre said. "Much of the dialogue around fiber arts centers on women's issues as fiber arts, such as weaving and quilting were seen as women's work, however I feel that there are many more men looking to the fiber arts as the material best suited for articulating their ideas."

Suhre said that after reading about this exhibition, which comes from ExhibitsUSA, a vendor of traveling exhibitions located in Kansas City, he thought it would fit well at the gallery.

According to the exhibit's brochure, these contemporary artists use ordinary items such as beach towels, bicycle tires, Styrofoam, baseballs and different patterns to create a piece of work that to some might be considered bizarre, political, feminist or simply humorous.

Some of the pieces in this exhibit include gloves, robes, pictures, tools, blankets, decor, canvas art, paper art, frocks (which resemble doll clothes) and scarves.

Over 40 different artists, including Nora Auston, Amy Berk, Bruce Chaban, Susan Hyde and John Spear, have their work on display. When creating each individual piece of art, some of the artists, using their life as inspiration, design pieces that reveal information about themselves or just select random materials to see what the outcome would be.

"The art forms represented in this exhibition embrace a wide variety of topics, from clothing made from traditional felted wool to a small wall sculpture constructed from Lifesavers candy, false eyelashes and long sewing needles," Suhre said. "The content of the work addresses gender and social issues as well as forms created with unorthodox materials intended to expand the aesthetic notion of what fiber arts are and can be."

Lisa Kokin is just one the artists who stitched together a sewn photo sculpture to represent life and past memories. Kokin's piece creates a photo montage metaphor while focusing on history. In Cheryl Coon's, "My Dear Edna," the artist created a book filled with bobby pins, pearls and fabric to portray her grandmother. Joe Davidson, on the other hand, created an illusion of what a baseball might look like if it were stretched out and re-stitched.

Most of the pieces consist of materials like felt, wood, beads, buttons, clay, thread, fabric, spools, wire, sequins, ornaments and coffee tins.

"One of my favorite pieces is the newspaper with Publishers Clearing House. It is very hard to sew on paper and this piece shows good condition with no folding," Melat Mandefro, sophomore, civil engineering, said. "The thread perfectly matches with the ads and creates unique pattern designs."

"Needle Art: Postmodern Sewing" will be on display until March 12 and can be viewed Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

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In her piece, "Frocks," Rose Kelly uses found objects as a medium for her art. Kelly´s work is on display at Gallery 210 along with other sewing artists. The "Needle Art Postmodern Sewing Exhibition will be on display until March 12, and visitors can view the art Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. The exhibit features more than forty artists.