BEAUTY: Fabric Art--Diana Savona

I am drawn to soft sculpture, and fabric and textile art. And Diana Savona often makes textile art about making textile art. I love the meta sense embedded in the narrative. It is like painting paintings about painting paintings! Her technique is marvelous because she includes found objects. This is especially poignant in her piece Tsunami Japan from her Maps series:

After the 2011 tsunami in Japan, I used my collection of Japanese fabrics to suggest an aerial view of the disaster. In Japan, purchases are carefully wrapped. In this piece, each section is also carefully wrapped - except the blackened, flooded sections, which have been ripped open, representing the losses incurred. The tan border is an old sake bag. The ceramic bits (visible below) were dug out of the sand at low tide at the Miyajima Gate.

Her Artist Statement:

How do we learn history? Textbooks give us dates and leaders; students memorize facts for the test, but few people have a deep understanding of how our ancestors lived.

As a child I felt that lessons of wars and nations had little bearing on my family history. It was like studying weather patterns, gusting far above, knowing that my peasant grandparents had survived in thatched huts in Poland. What was their story? My art is created with that question in mind.

The objects I use are collected at my equivalent of archaeological digs: garage and estate sales. In my Passaic neighborhood, there are still large numbers of first and second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe. At these sales I hear the language and find the tools of my grandparents. There, I unearth items that were once commonly used in the domestic sphere – pincushions, darning eggs, crochet hooks – but are now almost extinct. I exhume forgotten embroidery and mending, and present them as petrified specimens.

My textile works are art and archaeology. They are the stories of past generations. By deconstructing past artifacts and preserving them in an archaeological presentation, I hope to change viewer perception of our textile heritage.

Top to bottom: Artifact #1; Fossil Garment #2; Fossil Garment #6; Generational Fossil; Hiroshima 2012; Lost; Strat Markings; Treasure Hunting Jacket; Tsunami Japan; detail of Tsunami Japan

http://www.dianesavonaart.com/

BEAUTY: Collage--Hollie Chastain

Graphic designer and fine artist Hollie Chastain uses the cardboard covers and binding from old school textbooks as a base for her clean-lined collage work. I love how the notes and scribbles from long ago students can still be seen in many of the pieces.

Top to bottom: Act 5, Scene 2; Feeling Alliance; Fool's Gold; Nefelibata; Pleasures Called Pitch; Small Talk

http://www.holliechastain.com/

BEAUTY: Mixed Media--Alexis Arnold

Working with discarded books she has found in the street, San Francisco artist Alexis Arnold petrifies them in a crystal solution, making some rather lovely geode-like formations.

Arnold says, "The Crystallized Book Series addresses the materiality of the book versus the text or content of the book, in addition to commenting on the vulnerability of the printed book. The crystals remove the text and transform the books into aesthetic, non-functional objects. The books, frozen with crystal growth, have become artifacts or geologic specimens imbued with the history of time, use, and nostalgia. The series was prompted by repeatedly finding boxes of discarded books, by the onset of e-books, and by the shuttering of bookstores."

Top to bottom: The Alchemist's Handbook; All's Well That Ends Well; All's Well That Ends Well detail; Catcher In The Rye view and detail; Crime and Punishment; The Dictionary of Superstitions; Linux: The Complete Manual; The Autobiography of Benevuto Cellini

http://www.alexisarnold.com/

BEAUTY: Mixed Media--Kendal Murray

The miniature worlds Kendal Murray creates on top of old purses, old-fashioned compact mirrors, and in second-hand bowls and found bottles are engrossing. I catch myself leaning in to study each inch, to discover each hidden character, and unearth the narrative she presents...

And take a look at the abstract rhyming titles of each piece (listed at the bottom of this post): they add to the understanding or mystique of each tableau.

Top to bottom: Breakfast Time, Just In Time; Come Around, Lost Or Found; Conflate, Restate, Real Estate; Discreet, Sweet Deceit; Disguise, Surprise; Fade, Persuade, Shade; Flower Sellers, Glass House Dwellers; Humming, Forthcoming; Pond, Respond, Abscond; Sublime Climb, Eye Rhyme

http://www.arthousegallery.com.au/artists/murray_kendal/

BEAUTY: Photography--Riitta Päiväläinen

Finnish photographer Riitta Päiväläinen uses clothing in her landscape photography to great effect. She is moved by the history that used garments present and she poses these pieces of clothing as though they are still being worn by their previous owners. Frozen into shape, or animated by wind and natural elements like tree branches, the clothing makes us think of lives gone by.

Her Artist Statement is informative and eloquent:

"Several years ago, an old black dress made of velvet caught my attention in a second-hand shop. I examined the garment carefully. There was no label. The style of the dress was from the twenties. The seams revealed the dress was handmade. The owner of the shop told me that she had bought it in Paris. I tried the dress on and it fitted me perfectly. I became intrigued by the history of the dress. Who was the woman who had had the dress made? What was her life story?

The main theme and primary driving force of my work is my interest in old clothing. In my photographs, I use discarded clothes from second-hand shops and flea markets. I am interested in old garments, because they carry silent, unknown stories and histories. The unavoidable fact that I will never know the actual stories and personal histories connected with the clothes arouses my curiosity. The clothes remain silent withholding their secrets. Little by little, personal histories are absorbed into the collective history.

For me, a piece of clothing represents, above all, its former wearer. It tells you that somebody has been present. However, the person who wore it is now gone. The faded colours and tears in the fabric show the signs of the time passed. By freezing the garment or letting the wind fill it with air, I am able to create a sculptural space, which reminds me of its former user. This "Imaginary Meeting" represents, for me, the subtle distinction between absence and presence."

Top to bottom: Chamber; Facade; Nest; Northern Wind; Pediment; Shelter; Vespertine II: Wind I; Wind II

http://www.helsinkischool.fi/helsinkischool/artist.php?id=9033

Her photographic series reminds me of Christian Boltanski's installation Personnes, a project he created in 2010 for the Parisian art event Monumenta using fifty tons of discarded clothing.

BEAUTY: Sculpture--Amy Brener

Amy Brener embeds found objects (I am pretty sure I see old computer keyboards among other tech trash) in colored resins to create her human sized, free standing sculptures that resemble geodes or crystals. The inclusion of pieces of electronics makes them seem like relics from the future...

Top to bottom: Harbinger; Jotter; Kiosk; mini 4; mini 7; Pillar; Untitled (Disk); Wing 2

http://amybrener.com/home.html