The Queue: Sara Trail
Sara Trail is a quilter and educator and the founder of Social Justice Sewing Academy. Highlighted in the Spring 2021 issue of American Craft, this grassroots organizations facilitates workshops and projects that create community while addressing the consequences of systematic oppression.
https://www.craftcouncil.org/post/queue-sara-trail
How The Sewing Machine Gave Power — And Fashion Cred — To African Women
The African Lookbook has a different agenda: images that present a stereotype-busting way to look at African women, their relationship with fashion — and their ability to turn the sewing machine from a tool synonymous with toil, lack of choice and oppression into a means for them to achieve economic power.
An Expansive Exhibition Pairs Two Indigenous Artists to Explore the Power of Socially Engaged Artmaking
A monumental patchwork wolf, warriors sparring with a fang-bearing snake, and an abstract woolen tapestry made of restored blankets comprise Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger. The expansive exhibition—featuring 26 mixed-media sculptures, installations, and wall hangings—joins two of the leading Indigenous artists working today in a manner that distinguishes both the connective threads and nuances within their bodies of work.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/05/marie-watt-cannupa-hanska-luger/
At 94, Kay Sekimachi weaves her way to solo show at BAMPFA
A vast survey of the decades-long Berkeley resident Sekimachi’s work will be unveiled May 28 and on view until Oct. 24, at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). It is among the museum’s first exhibitions since its COVID-19 closure. Titled Kay Sekimachi: Geometries, the show is Sekimachi’s first major solo exhibition at BAMPFA, though not her first museum show.
Ornate Jewel-Toned Stitches Embellish Common Household Objects Made From Textiles
Whether a corded rotary phone or humble water pitcher, Sue Trevor’s household objects are all made from the same materials. The artist meticulously stitches ornamental sculptures that resemble common domestic items and vintage electronics. Covered in crisscrossed seams and textured rows, each piece is a product of combining embroidery, appliqué, and quilting techniques, and the resulting jewel-toned works are heavily adorned with flowers and other organic forms, shapes she derives directly from her garden in Loughborough, Leicestershire.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/05/sue-trevor-textile-objects/
Baltimore Museum Showcases Work by Underrepresented Artists, Funded by 2018 Deaccessioning
The museum has used the funds from the $16.1 million sale of works by artists including Warhol and Rauschenberg to acquire 125 works by underrepresented artists and artist collectives.
quilts as women’s art: a quilt poetics
The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like in yourself what was only adored or ignored by your mother, or other objects of your love or your lovers;
The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like the work of another woman, and the passing through of all rejection and neglect by another woman or man;
The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like yourself as a little old lady and an old little girl and a new little sister;….
https://judys-journal.blogspot.com/2021/05/quilts-as-womens-art-quilt-poetics.html
Kurt Brereton: Zen and the art of making by hand
Australian artist Kurt Brereton has enjoyed careers as a visual and digital media artist, a writer of books, performance art and films and a creative arts and design academic. He now focuses on being a full-time artist…He focuses on fibre, delighting in its intense colours and tactile materiality. Combining it with paint and linocut, he chooses to specialise in hand embroidery, valuing it as an ancient method of image-making that openly and honestly combines the mind and body.
https://www.textileartist.org/kurt-brereton-zen-and-the-art-of-making-by-hand/