A Review for Textility

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Textility,  the painting and sculpture show I curated with Mary Birmingham at the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts in Summit, where Birmingham is curator, is long over (January 13-April 1, 2012), but a review has just come out in the Fall issue of Surface Design Journal.

 

In the panorama above: Work by Lael Marshall and Elana Herzog

 

 

"The show . . . was not about textile as a visual arts discipline with a historical and cultural frame of reference. Rather, it focused on the current visibility of cloth and other pliable materials in sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints, collages and architectural installations," writes Patricia Malarcher, a studio artist who is former editor of the magazine and now a contributor to it. If she was disappointed she did not let on. She considered the exhibition "on its own terms" and went on to write appreciatively of about 15 artists in the 28-artist exhibition, and to show two works specifically as well as a panorama.

If you click on the individual pages above and below, they will enlarge for legibility. But let me close with Malarcher's closing words: "Textility was a fascinating and ambitious, provocative show. The curators made a lively contribution to the current discussion on the place of fiber in the larger art world."

 

 

Above: Second half of the panorama in the large first-floor gallery (work from left by Susanna Starr, Leslie Wayne, Nava Lubelski, Susan Still Scott, Peter Weber, Arlene Shechet, Barbara Ellmann, Derek Melander); with insets of work by Lubelski and Carly Glovinski