Art and Design Commons^™

Voyage To Italia: Americans In Italy In The Nineteenth Century, Genevieve Ellerbee

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

ItalY had long been a destination for American travelers, but by the nineteenth century American tourists flooded into Rome and Florence, hunted for picturesque vistas on the Bay of Naples and roamed through ancient ruins in Paestum. Armed with Baedeker guidebooks or the Hand-Book for American Travellers in Europe, Collated from the Best Authorities, they sought the authentic spirit of Dante, Petrarch, and Virgil, and chronicled their lengthy tours in detailed journals and letters to friends. Americans traveled to Italy for various reasons: to gain social prestige, to pursue artistic and literary interests, or simply to enjoy a beautiful …

Dan Christensen: Forty Years Of Painting, Sharon L. Kennedy

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Art critic Clement Greenberg described Dan Christensen (1942-2007) as "one of the painters on whom the course of American Art depends." 1 This retrospective exhibition documents Christensen's life-long quest to understand the possibilities of color, paint, and pictorial space. Though long associated with Color Field painting, Christensen's relentless experimentation with style and technique places him among this country's most ambitious abstract and gestural painters.

Christensen was born in Lexington, Nebraska and grew up outside of Cozad. As a teenager Christensen listened to music on radio stations from Shreveport and Little Rock and grew fond of soul, blues, and pop music. …

Divine Abstractions: Spiritual Expressions In Art, Susan J. Soriente

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

In Northern Europe during the early 1800s, artists began departing from the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the realism of traditional artwork. Their desire to express the mysterious and unseen essence of the divine through their artwork transformed the way we think about art. Called Romanticists, these artists valued subjective experience over reason and the individual experience rather than the collective. They abandoned conventional religious iconography and produced private, intensely meditative images, depicting the divine as something eternal and infinite. These artists believed that material reality hindered experiencing the divine. They sought to fracture the shell of physical reality to …

12th Biennial Symposium Program, Part 1, Textiles And Settlement: From Plains Space To Cyber Space

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As President of TSA, I am delighted to welcome you to the 12th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America. This gathering brings together an impressive number of scholars, artists, museum and gallery professionals, educators, and textile enthusiasts from around the world.

As an organization, TSA selects Symposium venues which through their unique site specific offerings broaden our understanding of diverse museum collections and institutions in different geographic settings, encouraging new and old members to discover what yet another location holds of serious interest to specialists. Each gathering has its own flavor and distinct sense of place. For this …

Head Coverings In The Virtual Umma: The Case Of Niqab, Heather Marie Akou

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A growing body of literature points to the Internet as a place where Muslims are re-imagining themselves as part of a global, interconnected, religious culture—a new virtual umma. Along with issues such as politics, Islamic law, the interpretation of text, and procedures for rituals, hijab (modest dress) is a frequent topic of conversation. Compared to the physical world, where debates are heavily framed by time, place, and the habits of daily life, on the World Wide Web ideas and products flow much more easily. A new convert in Canada, for example, could use the Internet to read translated passages from …

Textiles And Tradition In The Marketplace, Philis Alvic

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles and traditional textile techniques have been part of economic crafts development in many countries for a long time. Many of the schemes for helping the poorest of the world’s poor involve using or adapting textiles and creating products to appeal to the tourist and export markets. Individual styles become marketing tools because they are unique to a particular culture. In coming up with items that will sell, rarely does the product honor the culture that it came from.

While any TSA member would realize the value of traditional textiles, most customers prefer that the fabric be used to make …

Beni Itajime: Carved Board Clamp Resist Dyeing In Red, Masanao Arai, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Throughout Japanese textile history, Kyokechi or itajime shibori has been known as a resist dyeing process wherein a piece of folded cloth is sandwiched between wooden boards clamped tightly to protect selective areas of fabric from dye. This paper introduces a lesser known group of itajime textiles called beni ita, beni itajime, Kyo beni -- fine, lightweight silks patterned by clamp resist using boards carved with pictorial designs of flowers, birds, etc. These silks were used exclusively for under layers -- shitagi, an underkimono worn by women in the latter Edo Period (1603-1867) through the Meiji Period (1868-1912) and into …

Textiles Of Qaraqalpaqstan And Their Relationship To Central Asian Traditions And The Legacy Of Igor Savitsky, Marinika Babanazarova

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Karakalpak people are a semi-nomadic, Turkic-speaking tribe situated near the southern end of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, whose textile folk art forms a distinct thread in the larger fabric of the Central Asian textile tradition. The I.V. Savitsky State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakstan in the northwest of Uzbekistan near the southern end of the Aral Sea houses the world’s most comprehensive collection of Karakalpak textile art. Passionately collected by Igor Savitsky despite Soviet prohibitions, he singlehandedly preserved records of a dying culture. This presentation will focus on aspects of the collection as it relates to …

Oriental Carpets, Spatial Dimension, And The Development Of Linear Perspective: From Grid To Projective Grid, Carol Bier

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Studies of the origins of linear perspective in European painting tend to focus on developments in treatment of the spatial dimension, with attention especially devoted to mathematical principles that underlie the representation of three-dimensional space. The theoretical understanding of this is first articulated in Alberti’s treatise De pictura (1435). Given that carpets are relatively flat objects, and that their patterning, no matter how complex, was intended to be viewed as two-dimensional, the linking of carpets to the representation of three-dimensional space would seem to be paradoxical. But the relationship may actually find a basis in historical reality.

Carpets produced in …

Progressional Journeys: Compelling New Directions For Three “New Basketry” Artists, J. Penny Burton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The “New Basketry” movement of the late 1960s and the early 1970s was essentially spearheaded by Ed Rossbach. Many leading fiber artists and educators have been touched by this lasting legacy in some manner, whether from their own experiences as students of Rossbach’s, or merely from studying the fine technical and innovative basketry works that emerged during this period. Personal interviews with three dynamic women, who were active early on in this movement—Dorothy Gill Barnes, Patricia Hickman, and Kay Sekimachi—have revealed that an enduring engagement with materials remains central to their ongoing artistic practices. This has resulted in their exploration …

Natural Dyes, Our Global Heritage Of Colors, Dominique Cardon

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the past, each civilization throughout the world has selected its own specific range of plant and animal sources of color, each from their respective natural environments. These included dyes and colorants that were used for the hair and skin, for everyday or festive food, for clothing and furnishing textiles, matting, etc. Scientific research into the colorants present in historical and anthropological textiles and objects have revealed a common empiric logic for this selection, and astonishing parallels can be found in the technical processes developed by ancient and traditional dyers of all continents. This lecture will consist of a discussion …

The History And Analysis Of Pre-Aniline Native American Quillwork Dyes, Christina Cole, Susan Heald

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Before beadwork, Native Americans used brightly-colored porcupine quills to decorate objects from moccasins to bags to wall hangings. Though the know-how of folding quills to create floral and abstract designs has survived, very little is known about the materials used to color the quills, particularly on the pre-aniline dyes used by communities east of the Mississippi, as historical recipes tend to be more reflective of Plains and Pacific Northwest quillwork traditions. Additionally, Native American artisans have expressed interest in having museum collections analyzed to further their knowledge of traditional materials. To address the literature gap and answer community questions, a …

Fueled By Silk: Victorian Crazy Quilt Mania, Patricia Cox Crews

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Crazy quilts captured the imagination of American women who made thousands of them between 1880 and 1900. But, what sparked this craze at this particular period in time? Most scholars agree that several factors sparked the national rage for Crazy quilts in the late 19th century, the most important factor being the Japanese and British decorative arts displays at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. The other factor mentioned is the availability of affordable silk fabrics.

Specifically, scholars note how fascinated Americans became with the exotic goods displayed at the popular Japanese pavilion at the Centennial Exhibition. Scholars agree …

Kyrgyz Felt Of The 20th And 21st Centuries, Dinara Chochunbaeva

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Kyrgyz people, representing the ancient nomadic civilization of Central Asia, manufactured felt from time immemorial and utilized it in all aspects of their lives. The portable house of Kyrgyz tribes, the yurt, was covered by felt, while the interior decoration and richly ornamented rugs, household goods, clothes, and toys were felt as well.

Felt also had sacral meaning and played an important role in the social life of the tribe. The elected leader was lifted up by tribe members on a piece of white felt, symbolizing public acknowledgment of his power; in funerary traditions a piece of felt was used …

Trousseaux: From Weaving Handwoven Textiles To Collecting Mass Commodities, Kimberly Hart

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In rural Turkey, trousseaux are a personal and socially representative collection of textile practices, economies, and desires. This paper addresses the questions of how, when, why and in what forms handweaving gave way to the collection of mass-produced commodities and handmade goods reflecting urban styles in trousseaux. It considers how local communities abandon cultural heritage production for their own consumption and make the transition to desiring, making and buying decorative goods, which reflect current fashions in both local and national terms. The paper is based on long-term ethnographic research in rural villages in western Anatolia, where handweaving once demonstrated cultural …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 22:1 — Winter 2010, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Symposium Planners Announce Native American Program Focus [Textiles and Settlement: From Plains Space the Cyber Space, 12th Biennial Symposium, Lincoln, Nebraska, October, 6–9, 2010]
From the President
TSA News
TSA Member News
Book Reviews
Tour Reviews
Textile News
Events Calendar-Conferences & Symposia, Exhibitions, Lectures, Workshops, Tours
Publication News

Mapping Textile Space: Stitched And Woven Terrains, Elizabeth Ingraham

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Mapping is a fundamental way of converting personal knowledge to transmittable knowledge and maps are unique in the way they use space to represent space. Maps are selective in what they choose to represent, seductive in their contours and calligraphic marks and powerful in their ability to locate, describe, demarcate and ground.

I will present a visually rich journey through the work of contemporary artists who use stitching and weaving to map both literal and metaphorical terrains in a textile space. Among the artists we will look at are:
• Linda Gass, whose stitched topographic reliefs are at once descriptive …

Geometric Abstraction In Pre-Columbian Tapestry And Its Enduring Influence, Susan Iverson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Making art requires looking back and looking forward while maintaining a strong presence in the current cultural world. As a tapestry weaver, when I look back, I look at pre-Columbian weaving for inspiration. It is looking at the art and architecture of these ancient cultures that has allowed me to appreciate weaving as the basis for geometric pattern and abstraction. With an understanding that they developed their images for completely different reasons than those of the contemporary artist, I respond to their respect for the woven grid and their apparent desire to work with this structure instead of against it. …

Handwork As A Conceptual Strategy, Jane Kidd

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will discuss my commitment to the material identity of woven tapestry as an artistic practice and my interest in the handmade as a conceptual strategy and counterpoint to the immediacy and temporal nature of contemporary culture.

Much of the work in the milieu of contemporary fibre is moving away from the handmade object to embrace installation, intervention, digital technology and hybrid approaches to material and process. The discreet material identity of traditional textile processes like woven tapestry seem out of step, bringing into question the value of skill, disciplinarity and the handmade object.

Throughout my practice, skill and …

Low Tech Transmission: European Tapestry To High Tech America, Christine Laffer

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

European tapestry techniques reached the U.S. in several waves of cultural transmission, starting in the late 1800s when the first tapestry studios were established on the east coast. The differences between the two continents and their focus on different types of technical knowledge appeared almost instantly. In Europe, institutions guarded the logic and purity of their techniques through systems ranging from educational programs to state-run tapestry studios over several hundred years. In the U.S., tapestry existed primarily as a commercial enterprise serving a small sector of the population over a few decades. Further, the lack of an educational component prevented …

Kitab Al-Hadaya Wa Al-Tuhaf: A Unique Window On Islamic Textiles, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the first millennium, a rare kind of literature evolved in the Islamic world that provides a fascinating window on the interest and importance of material objects. A unique example of this literature, entitled Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf [Book of Gifts and Rarities] was translated into English, annotated and published in 1996 by Kuwaiti curator and scholar Ghada al Hijjawi al-Qaddumi. It is an anthology of anecdotes referring to the period between the sixth century and the twelfth century, probably compiled in the late twelfth century by an official in the Islamic Egyptian government.

Although the historical veracity of the …

Order And Complexity In My Woven Work, Janice Lessman-Moss

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

My art practice revolves around an interest in abstract systems and digital design in combination with the mechanical, mathematical, and material aspects of weaving. The process of weaving conjures images of the sequential mapping of linear time along the length of the warp, while designing on the computer implies speed and layering as in circular time. These two concepts are integrated in the construction and visual interpretation of my woven work. Using the generative capabilities of the computer, sharply defined and regular patterns of shapes are integrated with more organic and seemingly random systems. Their interplay seeks a balance that …

Red Gold - Raising Cochineal In Oaxaca, Eric Chávez Santiago, Hector Manuel Meneses Lozano

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Oaxaca’s diversity may be appreciated in its geography, people, and food. Therefore, artistic expressions throughout the state are truly rich in their variety. Textiles are one of the major expressions that have transcended through time and among the vast offer of materials, cochineal has been one of Oaxaca’s treasures. Capable of producing many different shades, cochineal has been widely used for dyeing since Pre-Columbian times. After reaching a point of extraordinary production as an exporting good, the cochineal cultivation started to decrease as the use of synthetic dyes started to spread. The Museo Textil de Oaxaca (Textile Museum of Oaxaca …

Colcha Embroidery As Cartography: Mapping Landscapes Of Memory And Passage, Suzanne P. Macaulay

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Stitching is one of the oldest forms or technologies of textile craft – if we regard technology in its elemental sense as artistry, process, invention or method. This presentation explores the notion of embroidered maps as creations of a cartographic visionary imagination. In terms of the Symposium’s theme promoting new links between traditional textile-based concepts and contemporary digital processes, these cartographic embroideries are viewed as compositions of space-time in which landscapes are rendered as illusions of three dimensions (space) with an implied fourth dimension (time). In these pictorial embroideries, time melds with memory in order to transcend the physical division …

Shipibo Textile Practices 1952-2010, Claire Odland, Nancy Feldman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

indigenous Shipibo communities. In Part One, we will describe our work with a 1952 film on the Shipibo by Harry Tschopik, Jr., Associate Curator of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History. In 2007, one of the presenters compiled this footage into a DVD, called El Pueblo Shipibo: Men of the Montaña. This silent film is unique; no other historic film of these people and their heritage has been found to exist. Shipibo communities at preliminary screenings in 2008 reacted with delight as they saw images validating their ancestral knowledge. Men of the Montaña provides authentic visual images and …

Metalling With Fibers: A Design Series Exploring The Reuse Of Metal Findings Through The Use Of Technology, Eulanda A. Sanders

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When analyzing “socially responsible” along the supply-chain of apparel production, there has not been an emphasis on the purchase of findings used in production of clothing and how surplus items are used or discarded. Hawley (2006) describes the mechanical sorting of findings to assist in the post-consumer recycling of apparel to aid in reclaiming fiber from products. Her research raised the following questions: 1) What happens to these findings after they are removed from the garment? 2) Is it possible to use these items in wearable or fiber art projects? 3) Where are additional sources for obtaining or reclaiming surplus …

Woven Images: All Techniques Considered, Tommye Mcclure Scanlin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

What motivates an artist to create images using textile media? What weaving techniques are suitable for image making? Weavers through the ages have taken colored weft threads in hand and inserted them into the warp, row-by-row, building shape upon shape in the powerful and nuanced, yet structurally simple, technique of weft-faced tapestry. With the invention of the jacquard loom, the kind of complex image making that was previously only common in tapestry weaving became mechanized, and available on a commercial level that involved faster production rates, lower costs and the creation of multiples. In recent years, the innovations in, and …

Agents Of Change: Mexican Muralists And New Deal Artists, Judy Zlotsky, Norman Zlotsky, Blana Salazar

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Agents of Change: Mexican Muralists and New Deal Artists features works by artists from Mexico and the United States and demonstrates the close ties between them in the 1930s and' 40s. The exhibition is organized into four sections to include Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA); the Mexican Muralist Movement; a mural study by WPA artist Lucienne Bloch; and the Taller de Grafica Popular.

Mexican muralism, a government public art initiative, sponsored after the 1910 Mexican Revolution, encouraged social change by depicting the ideals and struggles for independence, while elevating and glorifying the indigenous heritage of Mexico. The Mexican …

Women Artists In The Collection

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

This special exhibition of the permanent collection focuses exclusively on the contributions of American women artists. The fact of women's historical exclusion from the art world is part of the exploration, "Why have there been no great women artists?"-art historian Linda Nochlin famously asked in a 1971 essay. Her findings pointed to the past exclusion of women from working with male nude models, hence apprenticeships, then professions and academies, to which we add commercial gallery exhibitions, art criticism, and art history. Over the centuries this vicious cycle has shaped the current phenomenon: the predominance of male artists in museum collections …

Hooked: Between Personal And Public Space, Patricia Tinajero

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores the proliferation of sculptural forms made exclusively by crocheting. Crochet is explored as a tool and medium that create sculptural forms and installations of grand scale.

My presentation compares and contrasts the connections between personal and private space as they are presented in the artwork of Andrea Zittle “Uniform Project” with the public and collective artwork of artist, Jennifer Marsh, and her “International Fabric Collective” project. The scope and scale in which these artists work present two different methodologies for developing large-scale projects that are based on the use of crochet techniques.