Monday, January 3, 2011

Rachel B. Hayes

http://fibercopia.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/rachelbhayes_posted012909.jpg?w=400&h=266
http://www.rachelbhayes.com/Rachel%20Hayes.html

Amy Boone McCreesh

http://bakerartistawards.org/users/15463/conesdetail2_thumb.jpg
http://amyboonemccreesh.com/


Amy Boone-McCreesh currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD

Taking inspiration from celebratory and funerary displays in various cultures, Amy aims to explore decoration and human relationships.

Amanda Browder

http://pitchdesignunion.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/01rapunzel-515x685.jpg




Brooklyn, New York, USA

 
Artist Statement

I  describe my work as "a state of betweenness - 'twixt soft sculpture /'tween orchestrated 

public object installation with a studio affinity for abstraction and minimalism". I am in love 

with the transformative nature of materials, and how the combination of the familiar creates 

abstract relationships about place. This relational objectivity generates an open-ended 
 
narrative, ambiguous situations defined by the choice of materials and work ethic. Central to 

the psychedelic experience, I am drawn to reinventing Pop-Art colors by exploring shifts in 

scale and sculptural perceptions.

Poly Verity

http://www.runningwithheels.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/POLLY-verity.jpg
http://www.celesteprize.com/indi/_pics/4/4/foto_45705_6449355870.jpg
http://www.polyscene.com/

Joana Vasconcelos

http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/Untitled-3-64.jpg 
http://blueart.no.sapo.pt/dizpara/torre_de_belem_por_joana_vasconcelos.jpg
http://www.joanavasconcelos.com/ 

Born in Paris in 1971.  Lives and works in Lisbon.  

Artist Statement

The site-specific interventions in the public art domain assume special relevance in the artist's work.  Some of Joana Vasconcelos' most important public art interventions are: La Theiere, Le Royal Monceau, Paris (2010); Sr.Vinho, Mercado Municipal de Torres Vedras, Torres Vedras (2010); Jardim Bordallo Pinheiro, Jadim do Museu da Cidade, Lisbon (2008); Vitrine, Rua do Alecrim, no. 12, Lisbon (2008); Varina, Ponte D. Luis I, Porto (2008); The Jewel of the Tagus, Tower of Belem, Lisbon (2008); Donzela, Castelo de Santa Maria da Feira, Santa Maria da Feira (2007); Cactus, Forum Almada, Almada (2002).

The nature of Joana Vasconcelos' creative process is based on the appropriation, decontectualisation and subversion of pre-existent objects and everyday realities.  Sculptures and installations, which are revealing of an acute sense of scale and mastery of colour, as well as the recourse to performances and video or photographic records, all combine in the materialization of concepts which challenge the pre-arranged routines of the quotidian.  Starting out from ingenious operations of displacement, a reminiscence of the Ready-Made and the grammars of Nouveau Realisme and Pop, the artist offers us a complicit vision, but one which is at the same time critical of contemporary society and several features which serve the enunciations of collective identity, especially those that concern the status of women, class distinction or national identity.  From this process there derives a speech which is attentive to comtemporary idiosyncrasies, where the usual dichotomies of hand-crafted/industrial, private/public, tradition/modernity and popular culture/erudite culture are imbued with affinities that are apt to renovate the usual fluxes of signification which are characteristics of contemporaneity.

Marcie Miller Gross


http://www.marciemillergross.com/work/06/UseReUse_Detail.jpg

Artist Statement

Within my site responsive drawings, installations and objects, I am fascinated with the interplay between the spatial, conceptual, and architectonic conditions of a place. Through an incremental means of building with utilitarian materials, industrial felt, paper towels, clothing, new and used hospital and bath towels, I make structures that address mass and void, line, weight, density, compression and expansion. Within these qualities, I find parallels in the physical and psychological states of the body, and the human condition. These pliable materials have an intense relationship to the body, and the capacity to carry traces, memory and a potent history of former use. My interest in mundane physical actions of folding, cutting, separating, stacking finds its focus in organization and reduction. The directness of a simple activity of the hand, in addition to issues in the industry of labor and serial repetition, make reference to artistic precedent such as mono-ha and minimalism.

The integration of form, structure and materiality with an architectonic response to space, is critical to this work. Analyzing the experiential and psychological aspects of space has led me to explore drawing methods of articulating form through lines of axis, spatial movement, and in the Japanese concept of ma, a combined sense of place and time. Through examining plan, elevation and section of a space, I blur boundaries of wall, plane and object within the geometry of their architectural context.

Guerra de la Paz

http://www.booooooom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/guerradelapaz_01.jpg
http://www.guerradelapaz.com/

Guerra de la Paz is the composite name that represents the creative team efforts of Cuban born artists, Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz- who live and work in Miami, Florida - and have been consistantly producing collaboratively since 1996. 

Artist Statement

Our work is based on a combination of traditional disciplines and experimentation with dimension and the use of unconventional materials.  It is inspired by an essential familiarity with the ready made and the archeological qualities that found objects possess.  Encapsulating an energy that reveals underlying meanings and depicts the significance of mass produced refuse on our society.
Through a common aesthetic, we create work with a universal message.  Using recycled objects as our medium and the guidance of the unrelenting amounts of information that fuels todays mass consciousness and it's subversive parallels.  Allowing us ways to reinvent historic themes and classic icons while still commenting on contemporary culture.
Our close proximity to the Pepe businesses that once thrived in Little Haiti has been a major source of inspiration.  Gaining access to an overubundance of discarded clothing - relics that once helped define an individual's personality and communally speak of environmental issues, mass consumption and disposability - opened the doors for us to working with garments as a material.  We often see ourselves as vehicles guided by their essence and silent histories.

Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor

http://www.elisabethhigginsoconnor.com/images/3-Object/8.jpg
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lde82aLGIG1qbkblwo1_500.jpg
http://www.elisabethhigginsoconnor.com/index.html

Sandra Norrbin

http://www.lkv.no/img/sandra-norbin-a1.jpg
http://artnews.org/sandranorrbin/?s=2

Artist statement

I work with sculptural installation that emerges in relation to the architecture of a place. I want to challenge physical space. The way that material and surroundings meet is important. It’s about a dynamic collaboration between the room, the material and myself.

A material’s physical expression and its history are the starting point for the installations. I often use industrial materials that have an inherent capacity that we usually are oblivious to. In a warehouse for construction materials we see only a product’s function. I want to see the materials from another point of view—in this way we can see that the materials have their own expression.

In the materials’ own history there manifests the fact that everything is part of an enormous cycle. Nothing disappears, it just takes a different form: the isolation mats, for example, in the installation "Triumph and Disaster" that consist of used clothes and textile industry surplus. Clothes have followed people’s lives literally very closely—with all that this implies. All of history adds further layers to the work, allows it to be seen in a continuing context.

I do not tie myself to a fixed plan—place and material guide me. That is why the process is clearly visible in the finished piece. I want to achieve an immediate and vital expression. The work can appear to be a moment frozen in time in a process that may at any instant continue.

I work with contrasts: the open-and-closed, building-up-and-knocking-down, place-no-place. The installations are a kind of landscape filled with elements that seek coherence.

Most often a catastrophe is not final but rather a definitive turning point. The place where one falls becomes fertile ground, upon which one can build something new and by which one can go forward. The balance between the destructive and the constructive is just as important in my working process as in life as a whole.

Ulla De Larios

 http://www.ulladelarios.com/

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Jared Steffensen

Fernando Brizio

Viktor and Rolf

Regine Rack

Annie Collinge

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/commercial/2009/9/23/1253704416418/Woman-with-ribbons-tied-a-001.jpg
http://www.collinge.com/

Born 1980 in London, England and based in Brooklyn, New York.

Jo Deeley

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-xFMXApoFtDRBND2hhcYhF8_JLtGFTVq8KPtZ9vg7_DadgY9uWQ84UXVSKrVg535mqb4s70P_mVxo4siUssdxeiYugLfUyr7Aip1KiGmvPvVtjkvyy-cE9BgAd_g5wFYIvM9TJsVaDDR/s320/ssem2s058.jpg
http://www.jodeeley.com/


UK based textile artist who studied Multi-Media Textile Design.

Artist Statement

I work with different textures and methods to create sculptural shapes and designs. I am particularly interested in making three dimensional fabrics using traditional methods, weaving, knitting, plaiting and knotting as well as more untraditional methods by folding and pressing fabric.
My ideas develop and change over different projects and are reactions to images seen and research built up in my sketchbooks. Pieces are often driven by the process or technique I am using, but I am also inspired by patterns and structures in nature as well as man-made buildings and constructions. I also use museums as a great source of information and learning which informs my work.

David L. Johnson

Shelly Goldsmith

http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/29595-large.jpg
http://www.shellygoldsmith.com/page.php?5


UK trained and based textile artist.

Shelly Goldsmith is amongst the foremost artists working with textiles in the UK at the present time.
Millar,Lesley, Revealed:Nottingham's Contemporary Textiles, Catalogue 


In 2000 Goldsmith created Dew Point, made from cotton and wool, the piece was a site-specific tapestry installation deconstructed over 42 days.
In May 2008, Goldsmith presented an exhibition called Indelible: Every Contact Leaves a Trace at Fabrica gallery, Brighton, UK.
This work was made exploring the residue of latent experience and imagery within cloth and clothing.  Laser technology was utilised to sear, scorch and scald imagery and experience onto reclaimed garments. Also the embossed and imprinted residue of archival plant material was printed onto the interiors of used clothes.


CRAFT MAKER INTERVIEWS taken from V&A Museum
Shelly Goldsmith
Goldsmith has exhibited at major galleries and museums in Britain, Europe, the USA and Japan. In 2002 she was awarded the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize for textiles.
Her work is in many notable public collections including: the V&A, Nottingham Castle Museum, the Crafts Council and the Whitworth Museum. During 1991 to 2006, she was Head of BA (Hons) and MA Textile Art at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.

Did you undertake formal training in college or within the industry, or did you find your way into crafts via a different route?

I undertook formal art school training, firstly within the Textiles Department and latterly on my Masters degree within the Fine Art Department at the RCA. I learnt much of the craft and professional practice issues from working with other artists/makers.
1982-1985 BA (Hons) - Textiles. West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham.
1985-1987 MA - Tapestry. Royal College of Art
1984 Student placements and professional posts with a variety of studios/makers, such as West Dean Tapestry Studios, Jennie Moncur, William Jefferies, Sally Greaves Lord.

How would you describe your work and your position within the Crafts world?

I locate myself on the cusp of craft and fine art. Process and making are very important to me, my work is underpinned by ideas or concepts. The concepts dictate the choice of materials, methods and context in which the work is explored and produced.

What type of materials do you prefer to use?

I use range of materials that are appropriate to the ideas I am exploring at that time and so this necessitates a wide engagement with different approaches and methods. I am interested in the craft of weaving, especially woven tapestry, and stitch related to clothing. I have used materials as far-ranging as silk, wool, glass and coal.

What would you most like to make that you haven't made so far?

I would like to make a piece that extends the use of scale in my work. Generally I tend to work quite small, and I think  this is due to lack of concentrated time in the studio over the last few years.  I would like to work on a large installation and/or commission.

Emma Sulzer

Lacy Jane Roberts

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZpMUdERKlfI18sKzx4uxFXm84zdFm7oJk1A36d-ASv2Uiq8Dudu1wnwjD_XsDaSNnuxzorO35OQTfNAQL8eEe69YXMl3oSqslHS9EHPw-yZ3y4v_4trrPvsoLLrTAI1rWbzR0QW5tsj4/s1600/lacey+jane+roberts.jpg
http://www.laceyjaneroberts.com/

 
b. 1980 in Royal Oak, Michigan, USA.
“My current work merges craft with objects of violence and control to examine large structures of power and how they might be interrupted by ways of making that are often labelled as gendered, amateur and low.  By hand-weaving razor wire fences that have been ensconced with yarn knitted on children’s toy knitting machines and morphing seminal craft tools like spinning wheels into cyborg like creatures, notions of what it means to ‘master’ (one’s tools) are thrown into question.  To ‘master’ is to wield power over others, but to ‘master’ in the context of craft is to possess a self-sufficient creative agency over materials and tools.”