Blog – Page 5 – FiberArts Guild of Pittsburgh

Happy 2016! Time to PoP, Open FI16 and Meet the Steel City Fiber Collective!

June 25, 2024January 5, 2016

Happy New Year! There is so much to look forward to in 2016. FGP’s public art installation PoP des Fleurs ,designed by Rae Gold, opens at the Carnegie Library main branch in February and continues to PoP throughout the library system leading up to our critically acclaimed Fiberart International 2016 opening at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the Society for Contemporary Craft in May.

But we are not the only group with big plans for the new year. Recently FGP President Susan Swarthout and I met with the newly formed Steel City Fiber Collective. Anna Sylvester, Becca Kreiger, Cheryl Koester and Nora Swisher met through a local Stitch n’ Bitch group and together they saw a need for a warm and inviting place where fiber artists and crafters could meet and share. Members would join for a fee and have access to space, tools and equipment that is often too expensive or cumbersome to buy as an individual; think Tech shop but devoted to all things fiber and is affordable.

Akiko Kotani and Risë Nagin: Group A “Works”

December 28, 2015

Black on White #1 2004 Akiko Kotani — *Black on White #1* 2004 Akiko Kotani

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get out of the studio during the dark and dreary days of winter to see more art. There is so much going on in the region, beginning in our own back yard: the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Now through January 17th you can see works by two of our most accomplished members, Akiko Kotani and Risë Nagin, who were selected to participate in “Works,” juried by Todd Keyser. Group A is a small invitation-only guild which “…provides exhibition opportunities for its members and fosters an active dialogue about visual art concepts and practices.”

Akiko Kotani’s series Black on White is breathtaking in its simplicity. She uses black silk thread on hand woven white silk canvas to create a bold line that references organic forms yet has a contemporary graphic appeal. In the first work of this series she creates the feeling of movement by working predominantly with one shape as it appears to replicate itself across the canvas.

KtB and Allegheny County Council

November 3, 2023December 8, 2015

Knit the Bridge was in the Post Gazette once again — but we’re not so happy this time. Diana Nelson Jones reported on the vote before Allegheny County Council to remove the never enacted 2% set-aside for public art. In the article, Amie Downs, official spokesperson for County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, cited KtB as an example of why the set-aside was unnecessary with an ambiguous description of the type of support the county provided to the project. “We have focused our time and efforts on cataloging and maintaining existing public art, while encouraging and supporting public art in the community. The Knit the Bridge installation is just one such example.”

FGP President Susan Swarthout contacted the KtB team concerned that using it as an example sent the wrong message to the arts community and the entire region. The KtB team agreed and on Tuesday November 17, Knit the Bridge lead artist and co-director, Amanda Gross, co-director Penny Mateer and current and former Presidents of the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh Susan Swarthout and Sherri Roberts all provided comment at the County Council’s bimonthly November meeting. FGP recommended that County Council vote no to the elimination of the 2% set aside and yes to the creation of the arts board.

Sherri Roberts shares her blogpost on Creativity and Productivity

March 8, 2023November 30, 2015

After a crazy few weeks I needed a jump start back into the blog scene. Flipping through images on Facebook I caught a glimpse of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and her words echoed “there’s no place like home.” So I turned to our guild for some help. Did you know that some of our members are not just amazing artists and makers but writers as well? Well Sherri Roberts is one of them and with just one click I was immersed in her blog Galil Threadworks and got just what I needed. We asked Sherri if we could share this gem of a post and she graciously agreed, just in case you need to get your groove on.

Do Something! by Sherri Roberts

After recently tweaking the “elevator-speech” description of my artwork, I was able to identify the latest bug in my brain; how to keep creativity and its fraternal twin, productivity, flowing.

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.