fiberAdmin – Page 3 – FiberArts Guild of Pittsburgh

Focus On: Beading, one stitch at a time

March 12, 2018August 28, 2015

Welcome to the last entry in our August, 2015 blog series celebrating the final days to enter your artwork for consideration into FI2016! We’re highlighting different artist’s interpretations of fiber art that we’ve loved seeing in past Internationals.

According to textile scholar Elizabeth Wayland Barber (Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years), some of the very oldest evidences of fiber we know about are the strings and sinews that were used to link pieces of bone and stone together: the very first beads.

Textile artists have come a long way from stringing shells together. We’ve developed embroidering, weaving, looming, stitching: all ways of bringing thousands of glittering separate pieces together to create a work of art. Flat or sculptural, as an ornament for fabric or as a dense, shimmering fabric of its own, beadwork is a significant part of the fiberart tradition.

Urban Artifact Undulation — Annette Tacconelli, “Urban Artifact: Undulation” featured in FI2007. Found metal, beads, and thread; weaving with beads, loom construction and assemblage. 6.5″ x 1″ x 8″

Focus On: Fiber content… or technique?

March 12, 2018August 18, 2015

Welcome to our ongoing August blog series celebrating the final weeks to enter your artwork for consideration into FI2016! We’re highlighting different artist’s interpretations of fiber art that we’ve loved seeing in past Internationals.

All work must be either fiber in content or executed in a fiber technique.

Sometimes artists ask if the International accepts multimedia work, and we point them to the above line from the Entry Requirements page on the FI2016 prospectus. Does it sound prescriptive? Restrictive? Well, this is a show about fiber art, after all. The host galleries, the Society for Contemporary Craft and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, should be full up with cottons, linens, wools, and silks. Right?

Sort of. And sometimes they are. But sometimes, they are full of other things. Like moss. Lottery tickets. Glass. Plastic feed sacks. Metal tape measures. Zip ties. Pipe cleaners. Anything, in fact, that can be woven, knotted, stitched, quilted, felted, dyed, spun; or made to look like it is. Anything that makes use of our human relationship with fiber to comment on the world. Anything that uses or references a fiber technique. What seems restrictive on the surface can be a pretty deep pool.

Oh Those Last Minute Entries — it must be Fiberart International Time

March 8, 2023August 18, 2015

Blogpost 2_edited-1 — Penny Mateer’s FI-friendly design wall. Smaller than 8’6″, no problem.

The deadline for FI2016 is fast approaching. Are you like me, do you wait until the last minute to enter? I know the deadline months in advance so I must be ready to upload today, right? Not exactly. What is this last minute business all about?

To choose the work, gotta look at the restrictions — and thankfully there aren’t many. The size limit is 8’6″. I have that problem licked from the git-go, my design wall is only 7′ tall and 6′ wide when fully extended. “Can’t weigh more than 100 pounds and has to be easily handled by 2 people.” Last I checked I couldn’t find an assistant to help make that cumbersome piece, the help I keep longing for. You know that humble acolyte, the one you always see bustling around the huge, light-filled studios of major artists, effortlessly juggling huge elements, or better yet just listening intently as “the artist” brilliantly discusses the work, that person? Not happening here. Definitely less than 100 pounds for this gal.

Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor at SCC

August 14, 2015

Meet the artist and share her vision

At a recent guild-sponsored lecture at Contemporary Craft, featured Bridge 13 artist Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor talked about the evolution of her style and body of work. Guild secretary Wanda Spangler-Warren took her usual meticulous notes and lent them to us for this post. Thanks, Wanda!

The huge, grotesquely charming, animal-ish forms lumbering around SCC’s gallery owe their existence to a series of happy accidents involving drywall screws, the Iraq war, and a truckload of discarded cushions. Which is just another way of saying O’Connor never met a random input she couldn’t use.

Detail: Wanna do right...but not right now — Detail: Wanna do right…but not right now

As a resident artist in Kohler’s Arts/industry Program, O’Connor learned the slip casting method of making vitreous china, a technique she would later intentionally corrupt by using found objects, creating animal hybrids with ceramic heads and fabric bodies. Perhaps more importantly, Kohler made available to her a huge inventory of hardware – screws, wires, and grommets – which she used to assemble her figures in obvious and deliberate ways.

Focus on: Embroidery: a “gorgeous gut punch”

March 12, 2018August 11, 2015

Welcome to our ongoing August, 2015 blog series celebrating the final month to enter your artwork for consideration into FI2016! We’re highlighting different artist’s interpretations of fiber art that we’ve loved seeing in past Internationals.

The Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, who produce the International, started life as the Embroiderer’s Guild back in the ’60’s. As embroiderers, they were technically excellent at their craft.

But something happened to change their focus. Jay van Wagenen writes in the Summer 2015 issue of Fiber Art Now:

Back in 1976, the needlewomen of what was then the Embroiderer’s Guild of Pittsburgh looked forward to their biennial member show. Their best work, meticulously crafted over the previous two years, had been submitted to the juror and preparations for the event were well underway. But the juror declined to cooperate. Instead, he delivered the verdict that changed the direction of the group: “Technique is not enough to carry the craft to art form.” There was no show.

A period of voracious research and reevaluation followed, and by the 1980’s, the Guild was producing Fiberart International in the more expanded, challenging format we’d recognize today. But even though the tablecloths and pillowcases disappeared, embroidery remains.

Last Word — Kate Kretz, “The Final Word” Featured in FI2013. Black cotton velvet, French knots, embroidered. 20″x16″ United States

Focus On: Using Fabric to Tell a Story

March 12, 2018August 6, 2015

If you’re just joining us, this is Entry #2 in our August, 2015 series celebrating the different interpretations of fiber art that we’ve loved seeing in past Internationals.

Fiber artists are particular about sourcing our materials. Mindful material use might enrich a work that focuses on a specific time or place, or help us achieve just the end result we want. We can grow our own dye plants, spin our own thread, weave just the right fabric to carry our point across. That’s part of the beauty of fiber as a medium.

But access to ready-made materials is an important part of our tradition too. The same eye for detail that leads one artist to hand-gather thousands of seeds for a project can lead another to source a pre-made fabric that infuses a piece with meaning and creates just as much impact on the viewer as something custom.

Hosting the Artist Panel at Quilt National ’15

April 23, 2023July 10, 2015

Getting accepted into Quilt National 2015 is an accomplishment many of us would envy. But FGP member Patty Kennedy-Zafred didn’t stop there. At the request of SAQA, the Studio Art Quilt Association, she jumped into the proceedings and hosted a panel of participating artists. We asked her to tell all and she graciously obliged…

By Patty Kennedy-Zafred
http://www.whitby.co.uk/prednisone-5mg/
Lightening struck again, and the jury gods nodded in my favor. Dusting off the disappointment of two recent rejections, I was exhilarated by a fun filled weekend of art and activity at The Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio.

The Opening Reception was packed; a record number of 64 exhibiting artists from all over the world, along with many guests. But for me, the most exciting event came the next day when I hosted a panel of four exhibiting artists. SAQA had requested that the Artist Panel not repeat recent SAQA speakers, but other than that, I had free rein. Talk about a tough choice!

Meet the Jurors for FI2016: Chunghie Lee

March 12, 2018June 18, 2015

“I see this patchwork as a metaphor for human life. We may feel ourselves to be as random pieces of fabric, alone and without meaning, but God’s hand places us together in a beautiful composition which has great harmony and meaning.”

∼ Chunghie Lee

Tina Williams Brewer

March 8, 2023May 19, 2015

Inaugural Exhibition at the State Museum in Harrisburg

One of the great things about being a member of FGP is the opportunity to meet, know and learn from accomplished fiber artists. Tina Williams Brewer, Master Visual Artist, is one of the most distinguished in our region. I had a chance to chat with Tina recently about her inclusion in the special Inaugural Exhibition at the State Museum, Harrisburg, Pa January 20, – February 15, 2015.

PRINT FUN WORKSHOP

March 8, 2023May 8, 2015

FGP “silkscreen on fabric and cloth” workshop at Artist Image Resources (AIR)

Over the past couple of years our programs committee has run this popular printing workshop several times, and it nearly always sells out. More and more fiber artists, may of whom already dye their own fabrics, are intrigued by the opportunity to control and create another element that goes into their work. In fact, guild member and award-winning quilter Patty Kennedy-Zafred has noted that quilters she meets around the country are so envious of the printing resource we have in AIR, right here in Pittsburgh. We asked Petra Fallaux, another amazing quilter, to take us along as she experiences the workshop for the first time…

By Petra Fallaux

Recently a handful of FGP members got together for a guild-sponsored “silkscreen on fabric and cloth” workshop at Artist Image Resources (AIR) on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

Workshop leader Jennifer Rockage introduced us to the various steps in preparing a photo emulsion silkscreen from a drawing or photo. All of our screens were prepared in advance, so we were quickly off to making our own prints, one after another. Through multiple iterations, we figured out how much ink and pressure would make a perfect image from our screens.