It was great to see new work by Keya Tama and his partner Isolina Minjeong at Court Tree Collective in Industry City. I last saw Tama’s work in Los Angeles in 2019. The woven and ceramic pieces they have created for Defender are charming and reflect their personal backgrounds. The couple have also kept the prices low to encourage younger collectors.
From the gallery-
Court Tree Collective proudly presents “Defender”, a duo exhibition by Isolina Minjeong and Keya Tama. These two young artists work by blending the old with the new and by infusing their cultural heritage into their creations. This new body of work breathes fresh life into traditional art forms. Their work is a vibrant reflection of their identity and experiences, enriching the viewer with diverse perspectives and narratives. The title “Defender” is for upholding traditions in a modern world. The exhibition features folklore history through ceramics, paintings, and tapestries. Combining traditional art forms, while incorporating elements of pop culture brings to light the protection of the past. Exacting the moment of when history becomes relevant in both the past and future.
Playing off each other’s strengths has unified the work as something special. Not only as two artists in pursuit of creating together, but in working in the present to bring a unique perspective on art history.
“Defender” is an exhibition of their collaborative language. Through tapestries, paintings, muralism, and ceramic sculptures, Keya and Isolina protect each other’s hearts. This is their first duo exhibition in New York.
A large heart hangs in netting below the skeleton of a mysterious creature in one of Joy Curtis’s sculptures for Night Hike and Ocean Grandma at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. As you walk around the sculptures you are invited to invent the story behind them. Titles like Ocean Grandma, Sympathetic/ Parasympathetic, and Future Organs, and Night Hike (Epiphytes) provide clues.
Throughout the run of the exhibition, performers activated several of the smaller wearable sculptures. These performances are currently on view on the gallery’s website and Instagram.
From the press release-
Joy Curtis’s new show of immersive textile sculptures takes on a folkloric quality, addressing ideas of evolution, environmental history, continuity, and change. Curtis sculpts with fabrics dyed to align with multiple historical traditions. These soft materials are quilted and sewn onto wire armatures, assembled to imply animal and plant forms, yet veering into abstraction.
Roots, vertebrae, leaves, and organs drape from figurative or animaloid fabric structures, creating canopies with an ambiguous narrative. Curtis hand-dyes her cloth using techniques inspired by Nigerian (Yoruba) Adire and Japanese Shibori processes, employing natural hues such as amber, ochre, iron, and indigo. Some pieces incorporate synthetic elements, such as reflective discs sewn into the works, causing visual sparks or glimmers amidst the more subdued textiles. The mixture of materials creates rich textures, as well as both reflective and absorbent variations in the light.
Some sculptures are large and hang dramatically from the ceiling, allowing the viewer to walk underneath and between them. A series of smaller works hang on the walls, actively wearable as garments. When dressed on individuals, these sculptures transform the wearer into an extension of Curtis’s formal style.
There is A LOT of work currently on view at Summit Artspace for their Winter Exhibitions (see the previous two posts) and it is worth mentioning these shows as well.
People forget to take pictures of things that don’t matter because it’s impossible to photograph qualities such as the feeling of an inside joke, the sound of an exhale through the nose, or dirty silverware that must be returned to the kitchen and replaced. These things act as set, pieces for what make up the rest of our lives. This series is a catalog of work that focuses on memory and candidness of a scene or subject. The people pictured are painted from life or candid photographs which are then emphasized from a naive image to something more. When an image is exaggerated with new colors and shapes it serves to make the mundane more desirable. The paintings are watercolors with a textured surface; the texture creates a sense of play with paper elements. In my work watercolor is often indicative of memory because of its ephemeral quality and transparent layers. This is because of how impossible it is to clarify every element that makes up a color when the layers are all compressed and viewed as a complete state.
Below are works from FRESH, an annual exhibition of local artists juried by Pita Brooks, Executive Director of Akron Soul Train. The website has all of the artists included and their statements and bios- definitely worth taking a look at what is being created in the area.
Michelle Eisen, “I’ve Made My Bed”, Silkscreen on hardboard
Steven Mastroianni “Fathomable Series #24”, Unique cameraless photogram, silver gelatin print
It’s worth mentioning that along with these exhibitions there are artists studios and galleries also in the building and worth checking out. Summit Artspace is open Fridays 12-7pm and Saturdays 11am-5pm.
Stephen Tornero “Don’t Tell Me” Hand dyed wool, acrylic rods
Chad Troyer “Crashing Waves” (bottom) and “Calming Shores” (top) Jacquard-woven, gradating waffle weave; Cotton, linen, rayon, silk, birch
Jen P. Harris “Oscillator” (left) and “Sphinx” (right) Hand-woven cotton, canvas, gesso, and thread on wood stretcher bars//Hand-woven cotton, canvas, thread, and acrylic paint on wood stretcher bars
Etta Sandry “Pivot: Moi-même” and “Pivot: Big Squish”, Cotton and cottolin, handwoven on Jacquard loom//Cotton and wool, handwoven on Jacquard loom
There are some incredible pieces in Waffle Weave Invitational, one of the current exhibitions at Summit Artspace. A few selections are pictured, but head to the gallery’s website to see all of the work on view.
From curator Stephen Tornero (who also has work in the show)-
This show was conceived as an idea to focus on a specific structural variable of a textile, and see how many different variations artists, artisans, and craftspeople would be able to produce. While researching the development of weaving technology, a loom with the capability to create complex structures was developed around 600 CE simultaneously in different cultures. This structure could have been produced by these looms, but also could have been designed much earlier by hand-manipulation of threads by the weaver. The waffle structure is so unique in its ability to transform a textile- seemingly a two dimensional surface- into a three dimensional object that has depth as shown by many repeated square pyramidal cells. Historically, this structure was used to create a textile that would hold water in its cells for cleaning or drying, or to help insulate the body with tiny pockets of air. This structure can be modified by changing the color of the threads with which it is woven, the fiber content of those threads, or even by expanding the amount of threads used in a cell, expanding the scale.
Statements from the artists about the work pictured above (from the Summit Artspace website)-
Stephen Tornero– Don’t Tell Me– “This piece is part of a continuing study of material, color, and structure in textiles. I have been mesmerized with the “waffle weave” structure and its ability to create large, three dimensional pockets of space. This pieces experiments with the combination of the flexible, fibrous wool yarns with the rigid neon acrylic rods. These two materials are combined in a large textile in order to explore the effects that this unique weaving structure will have on these materials. This use these two opposing materials in the piece creates a dialogue between the traditional usefulness of this wool weaving and its display on the wall as a work of art.”
Chad Troyer– Crashing Waves and Calming Shores– “The gradating structure allows for the weft to float acrost the surface of the weaving for varying lengths, from half an inch to nearly the whole width. The warp is allowed to float for varying lengths, but not nearly as long as the weft. After it was taken off the loom, the weaving was stretched. Parts of it were pulled, and others were left loose, allowing the floats to be accented by the folding and tautness of the cloth. The two pieces are the same piece of cloth cut apart, however they both display a different state of being: turbulent & calm.”
Jen P. Harris– Oscillator and Sphinx– “These small weaving-painting hybrids are part of an ongoing, experimental body of work in which I am developing a heterogeneous formal language that both honors and questions histories and conventions of painting and weaving.”
Trey D. Gehring– Stacked– “Stacked follows a line of investigation by the artist into a poststructuralist analysis of language as a system of symbols that lack meaning beyond context. The piece melds the namesake with the woven structure itself creating a hyper-literal interpretation of the exhibition’s theme. However, an understanding of the theoretical underpinning is unnecessary and secondary to the enjoyment of the whimsical and humorous nature of the work.”
Etta Sandry– Pivot: Moi-même and Pivot: Big Squish- “My woven work focuses on samples that explore dimensionality in woven cloth using techniques such as multi-layer weaving, pleating, and woven structures that are elastic, self-shaping, and otherwise transformative, like the pocketed cells of waffle weave. This work creates a series of translations between the flat draft and the materiality of the cloth. Weaving is a technically binary structure: a warp thread can be either raised or lowered. When drafted, woven structure is drawn as a flat grid. Woven in multiple layers, cords, and pleats, weaving maintains its inherent binary nature but takes on a new physical dimensionality. Between the flat draft and the woven cloth, there is an unknowable material transformation that reflects the nuance, radical variation, and possibility that emerges from a seemingly set and limited system. In these works, this variation is expressed through two large waffle weave samples that test the limits of the waffle structure. Each piece weaves the same design of increasingly large waffle cells. Moi-même presents a balanced the waffle weave in which warp and weft threads of a similar weight and color draw out a subtle loosening of the structure as the size of the cells increase. In The Big Squish, the waffle structure is boldly packed, extended and distorted by colorful wool wefts.”
The Arts Annual at Creative Pinellas is always a great way to see what the artists in the area are creating. For 2023’s larger than ever edition, there is also a separate space for a video program that includes short films, theater productions, poetry readings, musical performances and more.
Below are some additional selections from the exhibition.
Reid Jenkins, “Holding Court”, Acrylic
Candace Knapp, “What the Blue Heron Sees” and “The Light Within” Acrylic on canvas
Daniel Barojas, “Future Ancestor”, Gouache, acrylic, gold leaf on canvas and “Future Ancestor #3”, Gouache and resin on paper
Rachel Stewart, “Caribbean Currents” Colored pencil, oil stick and collage on Archers archival paper; “Under a Different Sky”, Wall installation Painted relief wood construction with cooper and mixed media materials; Printing Ink and collage on rice paper
Mark Mitchell, “The BurgHive”, Acrylic on Hexagonal canvases
Sketzii,”Out of the Pink Concrete”, “Reclamando Mis Raices” and “A Señora’s Dream”, Acrylic on canvas
Steph Hargrove, “Catch You Later”, Acrylic paint, paper on canvas
Marlene Rose, “Three Bell Tower”, Sandcast glass and “Map Triptych” Sandcast glass
Heather Rippert, “Shakti” (center) and “Hawk 1, 2, and 3”, acrylic on canvas
Launched in 2006 to support the next wave of contemporary portraiture in the United States, the National Portrait Gallery’s celebrated triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is a major survey of the best American portraiture selected by internationally prominent jurors and curators. Now in its sixth edition, The Outwin: American Portraiture Today presents 42 works selected from over 2,700 entries, that foreground the vibrancy and relevance of portraiture today. In addition to paintings, photographs, drawings, and sculptures, The Outwin includes video, performance art, and textiles, highlighting the limitless possibilities of contemporary portraiture.
Open to both emerging and established artists, this year’s entrants were encouraged to submit work that moves beyond traditional definitions of portraiture, and to explore a portrait’s ability to engage with the social and political landscape of our time. The variety of media and subjects featured in the exhibition invite audiences of all backgrounds to find relation in the human experience.
Since its inception, finalists for the exhibition have been determined by a panel of jurors including three Portrait Gallery staff members and four external professionals (critics, art historians, artists). The competition is endowed by and named for Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920 – 2005) who, for 19 years, volunteered as a docent at the Portrait Gallery. Her commitment to advancing the art of portraiture is continued through the support of her children.
Below are a selection of works from the show and information about them from the museum.
Alison Elizabeth Taylor– Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning, 2020 (pictured above)
On walks around her Brooklyn neighborhood during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Alison Elizabeth Taylor encountered the hair groomer Anthony Payne, who,with his workplace shuttered, had taken his scissors, mirror, and chair to the streets. Payne sought to financially support the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and turned over proceeds from his donation-based haircuts to organizations advocating for social justice.
Taylor’s process, one she developed and named “marquetry hybrid,” incorporates vivid paints, inkjet prints, and the natural grains of over one hundred veneers. Marquetry, with its inlaid combination of woods, can “memorialize,” Taylor notes. She acknowledges the history of the craft, which was favored by Louis XIV (1654-1715) when he was acquiring furniture for Versailles. By giving Payne this “royal treatment,” Taylor aims to pay tribute to him.”I want him to see how much his example meant to me,” she explained.
Kira Nam Greene, “Kyung’s Gift in Pojagi (From the series “Women in Possession of Good Fortune”)”, 2019 Oil, gouache, colored pencil, and acrylic ink on canvas
Kira Nam Greene– Kyung’s Gift in Pojagi (From the series “Women in Possession of Good Fortune”), 2019
In this mixed-media work, by Kira Nam Greene, the artist Kyung Jeon faces us with relaxed self-assurance. She is carefully positioned on her couch as her long black hair falls over her orange and turquoise tunic. In the foreground, a wooden cylinder containing paint brushes reveals her medium of choice. A plate with persimmons, consumed during the harvest festival Chuseok to celebrate good fortune, brims with potential while the rest of the painting pulsates with action.
Greene situates her friend in a fantasy world that echoes Jeon’s artwork and their mutual interest in the traditional Korean fabric quilting technique of pojagi. Two rabbits, representing Jeon’s Chinese zodiac, appear to be concocting a potion. Flowers sprout as kaleidoscopic patterns envelop her. The reference to pojagi, the visible paint drips in the background painting, and the hands of the sitter- left unfinished- invoke the role of tradition, process, and exploration in artmaking.
Stuart Robertson, “Self Portrait of the Artist” from the “Out and Bad” series, 2020, Aluminum, earth, acrylic paint, enamel, paper,metallic bubble wrap, sequins, and gold foil on wood
Stuart Robertson– Self Portrait of the Artist from the Out and Bad series, 2020
“In my world, skin is high-tech, amorphous, and armored,” the artist Stuart Robertson observes. “Blackness is percussive, lustrous, flexible, and indestructible.” Self-Portrait of the Artist depicts a fragment of a man- half of his face and his upper torso-shiny and monumental. A black beard delineates his jaw, and a small gold hoop adorns his ear. Although the figure is cropped beyond recognition, the work’s title provides a clue.
Through the alternation of flat and repoussé aluminum sheets, Robertson achieves a hypnotic effect, a poignant tension playing on what he reveals or hides from us viewers. His refusal to depict his entire face or figure challenges the notion of what a portrait should be and blocks the objectification of the Black male body, so often sexualized in visual culture. Simultaneously, Robertson delivers an irrepressible, resplendent image of that body, one inspired by the aesthetics of Jamaica’s dancehall culture.
Vincent Valdez, “People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana)”, 2019, Oil on canvas
Vincent Valdez– People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana), 2019
An elderly couple faces us with the gentle authority that old age provides. People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana) is a portrait of Vincent Valdez’s maternal grandparents. “My grandparents spent most of their time outside,” the artist recalled. “Grandpa spent his entire life working under the blazing Texas sun as a carpenter and yard worker, cutting lawns in the wealthy communities of San Antonio right up until he passed away. Grandma was constantly working with her hands–raising kids, washing, sewing clothes, and tending the plants in her yard.”
The Santanas are depicted in a space defined by details the artist remembers: their vintage AM radio, their plants, their homemade clothes. The bedsheet, like the Virgen de Guadalupe’s aura, signals their spiritual role in the family. This portrait connects the pair to the Indigenous and mestizo cultures of the American Southwest, including the Aztec and Maya, who honored the sun.
For more work from the exhibition, please head to page 2.
This exhibition includes my organically shaped geometric art quilts from various series from 2020-23. I utilize improvisation, repeat patterns and shifts in scale while incorporating colors, textures, and structures representative of the diversity of the people and the natural surroundings of my current home in South Florida.
I use diversely toned second-hand, gifted, or saved fabrics and dyes from locally sourced plants and rust. Textiles are also manipulated with burning and staining with inks and acrylic paint. Other materials, such as neoprene, sequins, and faux leather, reference Miami’s pop culture.
Along with my constant interest in American Folk-Art Quilts, geometric-abstract artists from the mid to late twentieth century are my influencers, including Gees Bend quilters, Elizabeth Murray, Helen Frankenthaler, Anni Albers, and Gego. These artistic voices have driven me to create quilts of scale with strong personal symbolism and narrative.
Between 1915 and 1970, in the wake of racial terror during the post-Reconstruction period, millions of Black Americans fled from their homes to other areas within the South and to other parts of the country. This remarkable movement of people, known as the Great Migration, caused a radical shift in the demographic, economic, and sociopolitical makeup of the United States. A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration brings together twelve contemporary artists to consider the complex impact of this period on their lives, as well as on social and cultural life, with newly commissioned works ranging from large-scale installation, immersive film, and tapestry to photography, painting, and mixed media. Featured artists are Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems.
A Movement in Every Direction presents a departure from traditional accounts of the Great Migration, which are often understood through a lens of trauma, and reconceptualizes them through stories of self-possession, self-determination, and self-examination. While the South did lose generations of courageous, creative, and productive Black Americans due to racial and social inequities, the exhibition expands the narrative by introducing people who stayed in, or returned to, the region during this time. Additionally, the Brooklyn Museum’s presentation centers Brooklyn as another important site in the Great Migration, highlighting historical and contemporary census data about the borough’s migration patterns. Visitors are encouraged to share their own personal and familial stories of migration through an oral history “pod” available in the exhibition galleries.
About Robert Pruitt’s work, pictured above, from the museum’s wall information plaque-
“A Song for Travelers” celebrates the individual and Black collective experiences that have shaped the histories of rural East Texas and Houston’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards. In this drawing-based on an early 1970’s photograph of a reunion of the artist’s family in Dobbin, Texas -sixteen people gather around a seated central figure about to embark on a journey. During the creation of this work, the masked traveler became a stand-in for Pruitt, who had recently left his hometown of Houston.
Pruitt often draws inspiration from his and others’ family photographs while examining historical events that have impacted Houston’s Black communities. Wearing costumes and adorned with items that reference various aspects of Black culture found in schools, social clubs, and religious spaces, the figures in the work reflect the numerous networks that remained and flourished in the South. Merging the Great Migration period with the present, Pruitt centers the Black neighborhoods across the southern region that served as safe havens and rich sites of cultural expression for migrants during the twentieth century. This link extends to today as many Black Americans leave the northern and western cities that once attracted their elders and return to the South.
Allison Janae Hamilton’sA House Called Florida, below, takes the viewer on a journey through part of northern Florida’s natural beauty.
From the museum’s information plaque about the video installation-
Allison Janae Hamilton produced the three-channel film installation A House Called Florida in her hometown region of northern Florida. The breathtaking landscapes of Apalachicola Bay and the swampy Blackwater Lakes of Florida’s Big Bend frame musicians, dancers, motorists, a Victorian house, and a slow resounding rhythm.
The artist references French Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar’s 1946 short story “Casa Tomada.” (“House Taken Over”) about ghosts that slowly take over a home and eventually push out its owners, room by room. Hamilton echoes the story’s theme of displacement with two regally dressed, spirit-like protagonists who move about the house engaging in mark-making and ritual performances. Hamilton’s film pays tribute to the Black Floridians who remained in the Red Hills and the Forgotten Coast regions, despite the racial violence and environmental precariousness they faced throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Carrie Mae Weems‘ personal and moving contribution is in two parts- a series of photographs and a unique digital video installation.
The museum’s description of the work-
Carrie Mae Weems explores a painful family story: the disappearance of her grandfather Frank Weems, a tenant farmer and union activist who was attacked by a white mob in Earle Arkansas, in 1936. Presumed dead, he narrowly escaped and made his way to Chicago on foot, never again reuniting with his family. Frank Weems may have followed the North Star to Chicago. Weems’s series of seven prints, The North Star, makes an apt metaphor for Frank’s life. In Leave! Leave Now! Weems conjures the figure of her grandfather with a Pepper’s Ghost, a late nineteenth-century form of illusion first used in theater. By weaving historical events with fragmented family stories, photographs, poetry, music, and interviews, the artist reveals the tragedy of her grandfather’s disappearance and the aftermath.
This exhibition will close on Sunday, June 25th, 2023.
