Upcoming

Sep
21
to Sep 29

Approaches to Collecting

  • 276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT, 06897 United States (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

This Fall, from September 21 to 29, 2024, browngrotta arts will explore the innumerable ways that individuals curate their contemporary art collections. Approaches to Collecting: an art survey, will sample different types of art selection criteria — by theme; by artist; and by size and price. Specifically, browngrotta arts will present three groupings — art influenced by water, women artists, and art compiled with size in mind. The exhibitions will include fiber and mixed media works by dozens of artists from the US and abroad. A full-color catalog will accompany the exhibition.

Gallery Dates/Hours:

Saturday, September 21st: 11am to 6pm [Opening & Artist Reception]

Sunday, September 22nd: 11am to 6pm (40 visitors/ hour)

Monday, September 23rd through Saturday,September 28th: 10am to 5pm (40 visitors/ hour)

Sunday, September 29th: 11am to 6pm [Final Day] (40 visitors/ hour)

276 Ridgefield Rd

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Sep
21
to Sep 29

Ways of Seeing — exploring ways individuals envision and curate art collections

This Fall, from September 21 to 29, 2024, browngrotta arts will explore the innumerable ways that individuals envision and curate their contemporary art collections. Ways of Seeing, will sample different types of art selection criteria — by theme, by artist, and by size. The gallery will present three groupings — The Art Aquatic, art influenced by water, Impact: Women Artists to Collect, accomplished artists from the US and abroad, and Right-Sized, art compiled with physical and financial parameters in mind. All told, the exhibitions will include fiber and mixed media works by dozens of artists from the US and abroad. A full-color catalog will accompany the exhibition.
Adela Akers (Spain/US)

Jane Balsgaard (Denmark) 

Dorothy Gill Barnes (United States)

Caroline Bartlett (United Kingdom) 

Polly Barton (United States) 

Dail Behennah (United Kingdom) 

Annette Bellamy (United States) 

Nancy Moore Bess (United States)

Marian Bijlenga (the Netherlands)

Birgit Birkkjær (Denmark)

Yeonsoon Chang (Korea)

Gali Cnaani (Israel)

Lia Cook (United States)

Neha Puri Dhir (India)

Lizzie Farey (United Kingdom)

Paul Furneaux (United Kingdom)

Norie Hatakeyama (Japan)

Maggie Henton (Japan) 

Helena Hernmarck (United States)

Marion Hildebrandt (United States)

Diane Itter (United States)

Kiyomi Iwata (United States)

Ruth Kaufmann (United States)

Anda Klancic (Slovania)

Lewis Knauss (United States)

Masakazu Kobayashi (Japan)

Nancy Koenigsberg (United States)

Markku Kosonen (Finland) 

Lilla Kulka (Poland) 

Kyoko Kumai (Japan)

Lawrence LaBianca (United States)

Gyöngy Laky (Hungary/United States) 

Sue Lawty (United Kingdom)

Jeannet Leendertse (United States)

Jennifer Falck Linssen (United States)

Åse Ljones (Norway)

Federica Luzzi (Italy)

Aby Mackie (Spain)

Dawn MacNutt (Canada)

Rachel Max (United Kingdom)

Mary Merkel-Hess (United States)

Norma Minkowitz (United States)

Judy Mulford (United States)

Keiji Nio (Japan) 

Mia Olsson (Sweden)

Simone Pheulpin (France)

Valerie Pragnell (United Kingdom)

Ed Rossbach (United States)

Axel Russmeyer (Germany) 

Mariette Rousseau-Vermette (Canada)

Debra Sachs (United States)

Toshio Sekiji (Japan) 

Hisako Sekijima (Japan)

Kay Sekimachi (United States)

Naoko Serino (Japan)

Sylvia Seventy (Japan)

Young-ok Shin (Korea)

Karyl Sisson (United States)

Jin-Sook So (Korea/Sweden)

Grethe Sørensen (Denmark) 

Ethel Stein (United States)

Polly Adams Sutton (United States)

Carol Shaw Sutton (United States)

Chiyoko Tanaka (Japan)

Hideho Tanaka (Japan) 

Laura Thomas (United Kingdom)

Claude Vermette (Canada) 

Mercedes Vicente (Spain)

Ulla Maija Vikman (Finland)

Wendy Wahl (Unites States)

Katherine Westphal (United States)

Merja Winqvist (Finland)

Grethe Wittrock (Denmark)

Jiro Yonezawa (Japan)

Carolina Yrarrázaval (Chile)

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Jul
5
to Aug 10

Dialogues with the Beast

  • Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art Gallery (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

anta Fe, NM– Chiaroscuro is pleased to present a solo exhibition for Santa Fe based textile artist Polly Barton titled, Dialogues with the Beast, from July 5 – August 3, 2024, with opening public reception with the artist, Friday July 5 from 5-7pm. As a contemporary artist working with textile the exhibition brings together her most recent body of work, with abstract imagery and vibrant color, in large and small scale ikat weavings.

___________

“These are dialogues in ikat – my chosen medium— intertwining color and threads, giving life to imagery with my desire for color, pattern, texture, movement, and shifts. Ikat has become my embodied language; my way of processing and understanding these turbo-charged times. I take unreachable, unspeakable, intangible thoughts and weave a response in silk, paper and pigments.”

Polly Barton is a nationally recognized artist who has been working in textile for over thirty years and is known for adapting the ancient Japanese weaving technique of ikat tying and dyeing into contemporary woven imagery. Dialogues with the Beast is a special exhibition, as Barton has pushed herself into new territory by employing new materials and processes into her practice.

“Painting and layering unfamiliar and raw materials directly onto thread brings forth the veils of color with pigments, stains, glazes, blurs, globs that are necessary in these conversations. There is precision in this technique yet the translation is raw, my gesture unscripted. Nothing is clean and clear. The tension of encountering a stranger within is central to my new work and I have found a new enthusiasm.”

Barton approaches each piece as a dialog with materials, process and her ideas, working on multiple pieces at once. The exhibition begins to take shape as months and months of weaving pass by. The dialogue expands and contracts as she works through the labor intensive process of shuttling thin strains of uniquely dyed silk and spun paper into the whole. Barton explains, “Each work in this show embodies more than I may wish to speak of. They embody emotions, history, gesture and a multitude of voices.”

Polly Barton studied Art History at Barnard College and has lived and traveled in Paris, Florence, Rome and India. Formative for the young artist was working as a personal assistant to Helen Frankenthaler. In 1981 she moved to Kameoka, Japan to study with master weaver, Tomohiko Inoue, living in the religious heart of Oomoto Foundation.

Barton continues to weave on her Japanese tsumugi silk kimono looms and shows her woven ikat paintings widely. The majority of her materials and media come from Japan, and an experimental attitude embodies her artistic practice. Her work has been collected by the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. She is widely published including Hali Magazine, Fiber Arts, Surface Design Journal and American Craft. Barton is a member of the Textile Society of America and other textile organizations in the US, including locally, Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center.

This is Barton’s second solo exhibition at Chiaroscuro and will include ten new ikat weavings presented in the main downstairs gallery at 558 Canyon Road. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10am – 5pm, and the exhibition will be on view for 4 weeks.

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Apr
23
to Jul 13

On Weaving

On Weaving celebrates the many facets of woven textiles by exploring the traditions and innovations of works made both on and off the loom. By presenting these techniques as a focal part of creative practice, exhibitions and related program activities highlight weaving as key to the continued history of textiles and foundational to fiber art as a contemporary art discipline.

On Weaving deepens our engagement with the work of talented, diverse fiber artists with an invited cohort of nationally recognized artists who will be exhibiting, teaching, and talking about the processes and inspiration that feeds their practices. Of these artists, we have asked: what about weaving – woven structure, the freedom, constraint, complexity or simplicity of it – keeps you at the loom? We hope by engaging the broad sensibilities of weaving that the extraordinary works on exhibit will inspire our in-person and virtual community appreciators, makers, scholars, students, and professionals to recognize the significant contributions of textiles and fiber arts to the vocabulary and discourse of contemporary art.

On Weaving includes works that emerge from a simple frame loom to the complex structures of digital age hand-jacquard. Focus on woven structure is not just a physical aspect of fiber art work, but is an expression of the way artists think. Techniques employed in creative practice reveal a great deal about what motivates an artist and how they problem solve. From loom assisted and loom controlled weaving, to hand interlacing, from technology to anti-technology, from preserving tradition to innovating to both amplify and defy it, from cultural to environmental to social influences—the labor intensive processes used in weaving carry myriad personal narratives, shared by each artist through their featured works.

Exhibiting Artists:

Polly Barton, New Mexico

Marianne Fairbanks, Wisconsin

Neil Goss, North Carolina

Erica Lynne Hanson, Arizona

Kathe Todd-Hooker, Oregon

Michael Rhode, California

Wendy Weiss, Nebraska

Bhakti Ziek, New Mexico

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Feb
29
10:00 AM10:00

Lesser Know Ikat Traditions Virtual Program

I will be participating in a virtual program “Lesser Know Ikat Traditions” Feb. 29th at 10:00 EST and speaking at 11:30 on Ikat in Contemporary Art. All are welcome to tune in and the program is free. Register for the program here.

The global patterns of ikat textiles have captivated the imagination of researchers, collectors and enthusiasts around the world. For centuries, the technique has been used to create extravagant clothing and other fabrics of deep cultural meaning. The distinctively blurred, feathered or jagged patterns of ikat-dyed textiles are found everywhere from Japan to the Americas, including vast areas of Southeast Asia, India, Central Asia and the Middle East. 

In this virtual gathering, scholars and artists who contributed to the book Global Ikat: Roots and Routes of a Textile Technique examine some of the lesser-known ikat traditions, including examples from the African continent, Laos and Thailand, and new interpretations by contemporary artists.

Introduction and moderation
Rosemary Crill, former curator, Victoria and Albert Museum

Ikat on the African Continent  
Duncan Clarke, textile dealer and author

Ikat Traditions of Thailand and Laos   
Linda McIntosh, research associate, Tracing Patterns Foundation

Ikat in Contemporary Art  
Polly Barton, artist

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Feb
24
to Jun 1

Irresistible: The Global Patterns of Ikat

Prized worldwide for producing vivid patterns and colors, the ancient resist-dyeing technique of ikat developed independently in communities across Asia, Africa and the Americas, where it continues to inspire artists and designers today. This exhibition explores the global phenomenon of ikat textiles through more than 70 masterful examples from countries as diverse as Japan, Indonesia, India, Uzbekistan, Côte d'Ivoire and Guatemala.

I will be participating in a virtual program Lesser Know Ikat Traditions February 29th at 10:00 EST and speaking at 11:30 on Ikat in Contemporary Art. All are welcome to tune in and the program is free.

For more information visit The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, www.museum.gwu.edu

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Dec
15
to Jan 6

Holiday Group Show at Chiaroscuro Santa Fe

Our Annual Holiday Group Show brings together recent work from gallery artists in a fresh unique installation with geometric abstraction as the conceptual underpinning. Wood and steel sculptures from Peter Millett; oil on canvas and charcoal on paper from Daniel Brice; contemporary ikat weavings from Polly Barton; and acrylic on linen from Siddiq Khan make of the bulk of the show.

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Jul
2
to Nov 5

Indigo at the Denver Botanic Gardens

  • Denver Botanic Gardens (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Rich and alluring, the striking blue color known as indigo has inspired weavers, dyers, designers, and sculptors across the globe.

Discover contemporary artists from the United States, Nigeria, Japan and South Korea highlighting this plant-derived dye. With a winding history that spans millennia and traverses thousands of miles, indigo holds a complex and influential place in global art, trade and culture. Explore sculpture, textiles and works on paper that tell a story woven through with history, botany and beauty.

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IKAT: A WORLD OF COMPELLING CLOTH
Mar
9
to May 29

IKAT: A WORLD OF COMPELLING CLOTH

SEATTLE – The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth (March 9–May 29, 2023), an immersive exploration of the complex textile created in regions around the globe. Organized by SAM, Ikat features over 100 textiles made from the 12th century to the present, drawn from the museum’s collection and gifts and loans from the Seattle-based Collection of David and Marita Paly. On view will be kimonos, furnishings, robes, and other cloths from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The exhibition also features a large-scale installation by contemporary artists Roland and Chinami Ricketts that offers the experience of walking into an ikat.

Ikat is known for its jagged or flaming edges that have been adapted in fashion and design in a factory-made, printed form. True ikat is the result of a meticulous and time-honored process of dyeing threads to create handwoven patterns that continues as a living tradition today. The exhibition explores this process as well as the various social significances and symbolic meanings of ikat. As an ancient and contemporary art form, ikat offers a reminder of the power of slow fashion and the sacredness of clothing as art.

Ikat offers several interpretive experiences. “Living labels,” or videos near select works, offer perspectives from experts and community members. A tour available via visitors’ smartphones features multimedia content exploring the exhibition’s textiles. And a portable learning station provides an opportunity for tactile, hands-on experiences with raw weaving materials. Also, SAM Shop will be adjacent to the galleries, with handwoven examples of ikat and other goods created by textile artists available for purchase.

“Ikat embodies a commitment to slow and meaningful creation,” says Pamela McClusky, Oliver E. and Pamela F. Cobb Curator of African and Oceanic Art. “This exhibition is a rare opportunity to see stunning examples of this art form up-close. I’m thrilled to share these works from SAM’s collection and the generous new gifts and loans from the Paly Collection with our visitors; I hope they come away in awe of the artists’ dedication to this intricate process.”

Please see the Seattle Art Museum Press Release for more information.

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Jul
2
to Jul 31

DARE REVEL DIVE

  • Chiaroscuro Gallery (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Barton's first solo exhibition at Chiaroscuro will present her most recent large scale, abstract double-ikat weavings in our main gallery.

Opening Reception: Friday, July 2, 5 - 7pm

https://chiaroscurosantafe.com/

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May
8
to May 16

Adaptation: Artists Respond to Change

Artists make changes in their art practice for many reasons — a move from one country to another, interest in a new technique, a change of physical or personal circumstances, an exhibition challenge and, in the last year, the preoccupations wrought by a global pandemic. At browngrotta arts’ Art in the Barn exhibition this Spring, 48 artists explore the theme of change and its influence on their art in Adaptation: Artists Respond to Change.

Several artists changed the size or subject or the nature of the way they worked in reaction to Covid-19. Others artists offer earlier examples of change: a work of repurposed gloves found bicycling after a move from the country to Copenhagen; another reflecting a change in ceramic shape spurred when the artist’s kiln was destroyed in a mudslide in Japan and still another that was the winning entry in a competition to create a gift from Canada for the US. Adaptation will be documented in a full-color catalog (browngrotta arts’ 51st).

Hours:

Opening: Saturday, May 8th, 11am to 6pm

Sunday, May 9th, 11am to 6pm

Monday - Saturday, May 10th - 15th, 10am to 5pm

Sunday, May 16th, 11am to 6pm

Safety protocols:

Limit of 15 visitors per hour • Appointment and masks required • Socially distanced path through the exhibit • Contact-less check out for art and catalog sales

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Oct
13
to Oct 19

Ikat: The Building Blocks and Beyond

  • Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts

Useful to weavers at all skill levels, ikat is a knot-tying technique that’s wonderful for adding complexity and vibrancy to your woven work. During this workshop, students will design and weave a single ikat warp, and weft and combine it into a double ikat. Starting with a basic design, you leave with an understanding of how to use this technique to further design your own work. Come prepared to tie a lot of knots and bring rubber gloves for dyeing with indigo and other natural dyes. And come to weave! Open to all skill levels.

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May
17
to May 31

Fiber as Metaphor at Fritz Gallery

The Española Valley Fiber Arts Center (EVFAC) is dedicated to growing the appreciation of the fiber arts, building the community through collaborative efforts and fostering economic sustainability. Organized by EVFAC, the annual New Mexico Fiber Crawl honors New Mexico's rich fiber arts heritage and contemporary culture while showcasing its diversity. EFAC plans a collaborative exhibit called Fiber as Metaphor with galleryFRITZ to increase the visibility of the conceptual side of fiber art by giving artists a platform to exhibit their work. With a combination of local and national artists, the exhibition should draw attention to this deep and diverse artform.

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May
17
to May 19

New Mexico Fiber Crawl - Open Studio

  • 205 Vitrina Court Santa Fe United States (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

This year I will be opening my studio as a gallery celebrating Threads and Tea. Guests are invited to come for a bowl of Tea in my Japanese Tea Room and enjoy demonstrations on my loom and discussing my work, and the intimacy of textiles in and out of the tea room. There will be some new items for sale as well!

My studio is conveniently located just off Bishop's Lodge Road, 1.5 miles north of the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. Located on the ground floor, my studio is easily accessible and there is plenty of parking.

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