Art Review | New Jersey Where Fiber Art Meets Hot Fudge Sundae
By
BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
The New York Times, January 8, 2010
Until
recently, the contemporary art world politely ignored the encroachment
into artists’ studios of techniques more commonly
associated with traditional practical and domestic arts. “Knitted,
Knotted, Netted” at the Hunterdon Art Museum confronts this
trend head on, presenting work by a dozen artists made using the
methods of the title.
Each of these techniques is quite ancient,
according to the exhibition catalog, probably dating to Paleolithic
times, when humans first
began to fashion clothing and hunting instruments from plant
fibers and animal materials. Each is characterized by looping of
a thread
or cord, in contrast to, say, weaving or braiding, in which the
elements may interlace but not necessarily loop.
Contemporary
artists have pushed these old techniques in fascinating directions,
as is evidenced by the beauty, variety and inventiveness
of the works in this show, organized by Hildreth York, one of the
museum’s curators. In addition to using natural materials,
artists now work with all sorts of industrial and synthetic substances,
enabling the creation of far more dynamic looped structures.
Each artist is represented by multiple works, grouped together
in clusters around the main gallery on the first floor. The arrangement
gives viewers an overview of the individual artists, highlighting
their preoccupations and interests as well as the sorts of materials,
methods and techniques they employ. It also enables meaningful
comparisons from one body of work to the next.
The show is so diverse that it is difficult to generalize about
it. Everything is extremely well crafted, but that goes without
saying in an exhibition of this kind. Most of the artists are also
concerned with exploring the formal properties of their chosen
materials rather than making social and political statements. This
is artwork made to be looked at and enjoyed.
Ed Bing Lee provides one of the show’s most
irresistible offerings, intricately knotted life-size sculptures
like a hot
fudge sundae and a bucket of popcorn. Each sculpture, made of cotton,
ribbon and linen thread, requires thousands of knots patiently
tied over many hours. The artist also knots together surprisingly
evocative little three-inch-square sculptural landscapes, including
a beautiful one of Tasmania.
Numerous styles
and methods of knitting are on display. Abigail Doan and Leslie
Pontz use crochet, in which loops of yarn are pulled through
other loops. Ms. Pontz is especially inventive, blending cotton
thread with wire, fabric, iron and chain to make abstract botanical
forms. “Cactus Arm Flowered # 1” (2006) is a surreal
plant construction with a metallic blossom.
Ms. Doan’s
works are endearingly casual assemblages in which plant materials,
chunks of wool, thread, found objects and various other things
are crocheted, twined and hand spun into little balls. In addition
to being powerfully original, they are filled with surprises;
one of her works here, “Flotsam Fiber Forms” (2009),
incorporates bits of fiber, debris and detritus including a deflated
party balloon.
Much of the
work can be classified as sculpture, whatever that catchall term
means to us today. It ranges in scale from Karen Ciaramella’s
enormous, cloudlike objects made of dense accretions of thick,
white scoured wool, some of them with knotted appendages that
flow onto the floor, to Noriko Takamiya’s “Untitled
#3” (1997), a delicate, knotted object made of strips of
ramie.
Ms. Takamiya,
along with Hisako Sekijima and Kazue Honma, make up a small but
notable contingent of Japanese artists in this show. The three
artists have a great deal in common, from a preference for natural
fibers to a love of simple geometric construction, usually using
knotting. All three are pioneers in the contemporary sculptural
basketry movement.
As
with any group show, there are also works that defy categorization.
Carol D. Westfall’s dense bundles of compressed weaver’s
knots are so simple-looking yet oddly alluring that it is difficult
to know what to make of them. Here the collapse of the boundary
between art and craft is complete: these works are less pretty
objects to be admired than they are the residue of an idea. Let’s
call it conceptual craft.
The
show closes with a rare social statement, Ruth Marshall’s “Ivy
the Snow Leopard” (2006) — a leopard hide, accurate
in detail and size, knitted out of colored yarn and stretched
on a bamboo frame. Here we are invited to consider faux pelts
as a desirable alternative to the harvesting of skins belonging
to endangered species. The work is a plea for conservation.
“Knitted,
Knotted, Netted,” Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center
Street, Clinton, through Jan. 24; (908) 735-8415 or hunterdonartmuseum.org.
