Fiber Arts Studio
Saturday, February 21 from 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
All programs are free with admission
An entire day devoted to the fiber arts, including artist-in-residence open studios, a documentary screening, artist presentations, and a conversation on new directions in the fiber arts.
Open Studios, 11:00 AM - 1:30 PM
Guest Artist-in-residence: Suzanne Tick,
Are you wondering what to do with all your dry cleaning refuse? Bring them to the MAD Studios so artist, designer Suzanne Tick can weave them into art structures. In Tick’s current project Refuse DC, she explores of the everyday debris we live with from dry cleaners. As an experiment, Tick asked her neighborhood dry cleaners to keep any debris brought back from their customers. As plastic, wire, paper and cardboard tubes started accumulating; it became clear what Tick needed to do…create woven structures, constructive and beautiful.
Guest Artist-in-residence: Grethe Wittrock
From refuse to the precious. Danish artist Grethe Wittrock works in one of the world’s most treasured materials, gold. Wittrock’s wall hangings consist of thousands of goldthreads. In the MAD Studio, she works on the ‘little sister’ to a large gold wall hanging completed in her New York studio during 2008. The goldthreads she uses are custom dyed Japanese silk, gold and other metals that she attaches to a metal sheet using a hand-knotting technique. The knotting is repeated again and again with small variations. Both the process and the presence of the repetitions refer to meditative states of mind.
Screening
Contemporary Fiber Artists, Maker Profile: Norma Minkowitz, 11am-1pm
The documentary video by Graham Eccles and Val Burnett on Norma Minkowitz and her process of using crochet and waxen cotton to produce open haunting forms, often figurative and life-size incorporating twigs and other natural elements, will be screened through out the day.
Gallery Tour
1:30 PM- 2:30 PM
Associate Curator Jennifer Scanlan will focus on fiber arts as she leads a gallery tour of the MAD exhibitions. The tour will begin on the 6th floor.
New Directions: Fiber Arts
Artist talks and Panel Discussion, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Join artists Norma Minkowitz, Suzanne Tick, and Grethe Wittrock for presentations of their current work and a conversation of contemporary directions in the fiber arts lead by fiber, film, and performance artist Sabrina Gschwandtner in the theater.
About the Guest Artists
Norma Minkowitz, known for fiber sculpture, received her B.F.A. from Cooper Union Art School, NY, in 1958. Focusing on the human form and landscape, Minkowitz’s work suggests fragility and implies psychological complexity. Minkowitz draws in fiber with an interlaced technique using a basic stitch, a stitch that is never repeated exactly the same way. Her technique conveys intimacy and the imperfection of the human hand in a movement akin to the cross-hatching in a pen and ink drawing.
Minkowitz is featured in many museums both internationally and across the country including MAD; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of International Folk Art, NM; and the Kwang Ju Museum, Kwang Ju, Korea. She is also included in various publications such as Sculpture Magazine in an article entitled “Writing Around Space” and in the Oral History program at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
Suzanne Tick received her B.F.A. in woven design from the University of Iowa and an associate degree in Applied Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Museum exhibitions include her stainless steel woven structures shown at the Museum of Modern Art, as part of an exhibit Structure and Surface in 1998, and fabric imbedded panels of Imago in 2002 as part of an exhibit entitled US Design 1975-2000 at the Denver Art Museum.
Taking inspiration from unusual materials, new technology, and the hand made has always been a key element in her work as an artist and designer.
Suzanne Tick currently heads up Suzanne Tick Inc., specializing in material development for commercial and residential interiors, including textiles, hard surfacing, glass, carpet, woven metal screens, and lighting. Her clients include KnollTextiles, Tandus Carpet, and Skyline Design architectural glass.
Grethe Wittrock was born in Denmark and is a graduate of The Danish Design School and Kyoto Seika University, College of Fine Art in 1992. She is currently residing in New York City, working towards having an exhibition of her work in the United States. Using ancient techniques to create contemporary work, Wittrock's meditative process of repetition allows her to create simple, strong, poetic works of art. She hand weaves, knots and braids thousands of strings of silk, gold and paper yarn, custom dyed in Japan.
Wittrock's work has been exhibited throughout the world in cities such as Copenhagen, London, Munich, Hong-Kong, Paris, Sao Paolo, and Kyoto. She has won numerous international awards and in 2001 she received the prestigious three-year grant from the Danish Art Foundation. During the 1990’s she produced a paper based clothing line and large scale commission works for companies and institutions.
At her New York studio, Grethe Wittrock is currently working on a series of wall hangings, consisting of thousands of knotted goldthreads. This work tells the story of the Danish gold reserves that were shipped to New York just before World War II, to be stored safely – and out of reach for the Nazi’s - in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank. The value of the piece consists of both the precious gold and silk threads and the skillful work of the hand of the artist.
Sabrina Gschwandtner is currently one of our MAD Open Studio artists. She is an artist who combines photographic and textile media in works that bridge the fields of contemporary art, craft and social history. She has exhibited her work internationally and was included in two exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2007. She is the author of "KnitKnit: Profiles and Projects from Knitting's New Wave," and has lectured extensively on the revival of handcraft in popular culture. She has written articles and reviews for a variety of publications including American Craft, Cabinet, Fiberarts, Interweave Knits, Craft, Rowan, Selvedge, Vogue Knitting and the Journal of Modern Craft. She received a BA in art/semiotics from Brown University and an MFA from Bard College.