browngrotta arts will present Field Notes: an art survey this May 3 – 11 in Wilton, CT

Wilton, CT. February 01, 2025 – Fiber art is having a moment. It’s “the new painting” according to Art in America. Artsy calls fiber art a trend that will “take hold across the contemporary art world in 2025.” Exhibitions of art textiles are opening across the US and Europe, including Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction which will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in April.

“The field of fiber art is currently experiencing a profound shift, gaining recognition as a respected medium within contemporary art. This growing appreciation affirms textiles’ versatility and expressive potential, establishing it as a powerful medium for storytelling and innovation in the current art world.” Aby Mackie (SP)

In Field Notes: an art survey (May 3 -11, 2025), browngrotta arts will provide a high-level view of this medium, informed by its 30+ years specializing in the promotion of art textiles and fiber sculpture. More than two dozen accomplished international artists will share what’s on their minds, what’s on their looms, and what’s inspiring their art process, as the art form’s popularity crests. Rarely seen works by pioneers in the medium, Kay Sekimachi (US), and Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (CN), will also be included.

Anxiety and Aesthetics
“After a dark period, there will always be new perspectives,” Anneke Klein (DK)

The inspiration for Laura Foster Nicholson’s (US) weavings, Sheds, comes from using landscape and form to project a mood. “The mood springs from my anxiety about the climate change,” she says. “The farms, which seem so evocatively. beautiful, are contributing radically to climate change.” For Wendy Wahl (US), disquiet is palpable and imbued in her work. “In November, my mantra became ‘what the F#%&,’” she says. “It feels appropriate in many situations these days. I’m working on a piece where the different scrolls of map, index, and top text paper are laid in the pattern of my mantra through Morse code disguising the message.” Anneke Klein’s (NL) new work takes a more positive approach. Entitled Prospects for Hope, the series reflects her view that “after a dark period, there will always be new perspectives.”

Exploring Material and Methods
“Fiber is the most appropriate material for my artwork because of its multidimensional perspective, physical characteristics, psychological stability, cultural nostalgia, and its ability to capture both sight and touch.” Sung Rim Park (KO)

Other artists in Field Notes explore the physical properties of fiber. In Totems, made with optical fiber, Włodzimierz Cygan (PL) considers what kind of emotional message might be implied by a converging group of warp threads. He was influenced by the use of convergent perspective in Renaissance painting. “The simple logic of the composition and traditional raw materials allowed me to build, using the simplest weaving method, a systemintriguing with its internal rhythm and energy,” he says.” The introduction of the motif of changing light into this system turned this small weaving form into a magical, magnetizing object, encouraging meditation.” Sung Rim Park’s (KO) work explores repetition. Her work employs repeated knots, which in multiples, permit three-dimensional construction. The tightly tied knots, and the threads connected to them, are built up to form a spatial matrix. Having discovered a simple weaving technique using a continuous strand, Hisako Sekijima (JP) was interested in exploring its potential for more detailed structures. She built her own weaving board and using ramie fibers from her garden, she has created stacks of “mats” woven by this method. This new approach,”reversed my pre-fixed judgments about weaving and made me reconsider relation of fabrication method and form of material,” she says.

Learning from the Past
Susie Gillespie (UK) has an interest in archaeology and fascination with early textiles. Sa, featured in Field Notes, was made of homegrown, hand-spun linen, antique linen yarn, embroidery thread, bees wax, gesso, and oak tannin. It was inspired by the linen tunics the Egyptian Copts wore. “These surviving textiles give me a sense of the people who made them,” Gillespie says, “processing bast fibers into yarn and spending many hours at the loom.” The past is also present in Field Notes in works from the 1960s by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (CN) and Kay Sekimachi (US), artists who were important in the evolution of contemporary art textiles. Sekimachi studied with Bauhaus weaver, Trude Guermonprez, and works are from that period of study, will be included in Field Notes. Mariette Rousseau-Vermette worked with Dorothy Liebes and shared her love of vivid and unexpected color combinations, evident in Reflets de Montréal, woven in 1968.

About browngrotta arts
Founded in 1987 in Wilton, Connecticut, browngrotta arts showcases art textiles, unique sculptural, and mixed media works with an emphasis on concept, supported by technique. Museum-quality artworks by more than 100 international artists are represented through art catalogs, art fairs, partnered exhibits at public spaces, and on browngrotta arts’ online gallery. Representing many of the artists who have helped define modern fiber art since the 1950s, browngrotta arts reflects the aesthetic of its co-curators, husband and wife team, Tom Grotta and Rhonda Brown. Twice a year, they open their private home — a two-story barn built in 1895 expanded and contemporized by architect David Ling in 2000 for “Art in the Barn,” unique salon-style exhibitions. browngrotta arts has published 60 art catalogs and two books. The firm has placed works in private and corporate collections in the US and abroad, including the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Arts and Design, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. They regularly work with architects and interior designers offering consultation for commissioned artworks and site-specific installation for commercial and residential spaces. A selection of works is on view and available for sales inquiries at browngrotta.com.

Exhibition Details
Visit Field Notes: an art survey at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897 from May 3 – May 11, 2025.

Gallery Dates/Hours
276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 06897
Saturday, May 3rd: 11AM to 6PM [Opening & Artist Reception]
Sunday, May 4th: 11AM to 6PM (40 visitors/ hour)
Monday, May 5sth – Saturday, May 10th: 10AM to 5PM (40 visitors/ hour)
Sunday, May 11th: 11AM to 6PM [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour).

Safety Protocols
• No narrow heels please (barn floors)

Additional High-Resolution Images available.
Tom Grotta: art@browngrotta.com or 203-834-0623