Hidden Tapestry: Jan Yoors, His Two Wives, and the War That Made Them One by Debra Dean reveals the story of Flemish-American artist Jan Yoors—artist, photographer, painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and tapestry creator. This biography recounts Yoors’ rise to fame in New York City, his two concurrent wives, and how they wove his well-known tapestries. …
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Jason Pollen’s Ancestors/Descendants show at The Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln showcases his most recent body of work. Pollen, an established presence in the fiber arts world (and SDA’s President Emeritus) has been anything but retired since he left his role as the chair of the fiber department at the Kansas …
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Sheila Pepe: Hot Mess Formalism at the Phoenix Art Museum is the first mid-career review of Sheila Pepe’s work. The exhibit was curated by the Selig Family Chief Curator Gilbert Vicario and includes Pepe’s signature yarn installations as well as drawings, video, and votive works in a variety of media. It is exciting to see …
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This fall, James Cohan gallery in New York featured an exhibition of Northern California fiber artists under the enigmatic title, A Line Can Go Anywhere. The group show is curated by Jenelle Porter, who organized the 2015 survey, Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present, which traced, in Anni Albers’ phrase, “the language of thread” through the efflorescence in …
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Pleating: Fundamentals for Fashion Design by Leon Kalajian & George Kalajian (with Foreword by Jack Sauma) is a beautiful book that eloquently explains the an array of pleating techniques in an accessible manner. With over 300 images and illustrations, Pleating is an essential reference for any artist, fashion designer, craftsperson, or pattern maker looking to …
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Weaving can be viewed as a handcraft, an ethnic tradition, a global commodity, and a prototype for binary systems. It can also be viewed as embodied cognition, a term that came up frequently during a recent conference, Weaving: Cognition/Technology/Culture at Columbia University, New York. The purpose of the conference was to challenge the common assumption …
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