Saturday, November 20, 2021

Reading, viewing, listening ...


Kaffe Fassett discussing his quilts at 2021 Festival of Quilts, with Natasha McCarty.

‘Studio Spades’ is a series of posts about textile artists’ work spaces produced once or twice a week by Fibre Arts Australia. You can subscribe to receive an email alert each time a post is made. Alternatively you can simply read the posts at the website. There is currently an archive of fourteen entries:

https://www.fibrearts.net.au/studiospaces

It’s an interesting insight into how and where the artists work, and what they regard as essential to their practice.


In our era of hyperfast consumption, Greg Lauren has a zeal for patience. His slow-made approach to reconstruction finds new life for otherwise unwanted scraps and textiles, a time-consuming process that undermines the typical more-more-more industry mentality.  

So, Lauren's partnership with the Gee's Bend Quilters feels like the designer both paying his dues and paying forward the renown garnered by his own designs.  
Jake Silberi, Highsnobiety, 16 October 2021

 

How Singer Won the Sewing Machine War
The Singer Sewing Machine changed the way America manufactured textiles, but the invention itself was less important than the company’s innovative business … Alex Palmer, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 July 2015

 

Artist Bisa Butler on creating new narratives through portrait quilts

Artist Bisa Butler has been called a modern-day Griot – but instead of using words to tell stories, she uses stitches and cloth. Her quilts have graced the covers of magazines and she created the striking illustration for the soon-to-be-released book "Unbound," the memoir of activist and Me Too movement founder Tarana Burke. Nancy Chen reports.
CBS This Morning, 4 September 2021

Bisa Butler: Portraits
Erica Warren (Editor), et al, Yale University Press, 2020
Bisa Butler (b. 1973) is an American artist who creates arresting and psychologically nuanced portraits composed entirely of vibrantly colored and patterned fabrics that she cuts, layers, and stitches together. Often depicting scenes from African American life and history, Butler invites viewers to invest in the lives of the people she represents while simultaneously expanding art-historical narratives about American quiltmaking. Situating her interdisciplinary work within the broader history of textiles, photography, and contemporary art, contributions by a group of scholars—and entries by the artist herself—illuminate Butler’s approach to color, use of African-print fabrics, and wide-ranging sources of inspiration. Offering an in-depth exploration of one of America's most innovative contemporary artists, this volume will serve as a primary resource that both introduces Butler’s work and establishes a scholarly foundation for future research. 

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