| ‘Doll Brain Tracks’ by Lia Cook and other works are on exhibit at River House Gallery in Perrysburg (Photos courtesy of the River House Gallery) |
PERRYSBURG – About one year ago Sandra Jane Heard staged her return to the art world with an exhibit of
her fiber work at the River House Gallery.
She thought after that she’d like to bring more fiber art to gallery, including pieces by prestigious
national artists.
She approached her former teacher from the California College of Art, Lia Cook. Cook’s jacquard
tapestries have found a place in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian.
Heard was hoping for one work. She received three, including the artist’s newest piece, "Doll Brain
Tracts" – "it’s fresh off her loom."
The title refers to Cook’s work with a psychiatrist in Pittsburgh looking at how the brain is stimulated
by art.
Cook is one of eight artists displaying in "Transforming Touch," an exhibition of contemporary
fiber art curated by Heard.
The exhibit opens with a reception Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the gallery at 115 W. Front St. The show
continues through June 18. Other artists exhibiting are Heard, Jeanne Butler, Erin Endicott, Susan
Iverson, Jennifer Maestre, Stephanie Metz and John Paul Morabito.
In organizing the show Heard was seeking work that used a "restrained palette" and that had
strong artistic concepts as well as being finely crafted.
Fiber art grows she said from a single fiber nurtured by the artist’s touch.
She said when she tells people she’s curating a fiber show they think about the fabric crafts, some even
mentioning macrame.
These pieces are works of art, she said, that speak in a very direct way to the human condition. They
project a sense of place and self.
While the exhibit does not include examples of all fiber art techniques, the eight artists do use of
variety of approaches.
Metz uses felting to create small white creatures as a commentary on how humans control and manipulate
the animal kingdom to suit their own appetites.
| Artwork fashioned from pencil stubs by Jennifer Maestre. |
Maestre stretches the concept of fabric furthest. "She creates her own creatures using a material
you’d never expect," Heard said. The urchins are fashioned from pencils, glued together into
fabric-like sheets that she twists into shape.
Butler fashions quilts using a limited color scheme of variations of white using handmade paper,
cheesecloth and canvas, drawn on with graphite and oil paint.
Yet for all the muted textures they convey "a real sense of energy," Heard said.
Morabito weaves fine, almost transparent fabric, then systematically burns small holes in it so his work
"incorporates creation and destruction," Heard said.
Endicott also uses fine fabric in her pieces. In this case they are vintage pieces of embroidery and lace
handed down through her family that using walnut oil she stains with splashes of brilliant red and
brown. It is the image, Heard said, of inner wounds made visible.
Iverson’s tapestries also employ uses more vibrant tones. But Heard said she is struck by the artist’s
"fine sense of editing of symbols and colors."
Heard’s own work is a further extension of what she exhibited last year, a blend of found objects such as
old maps, measuring tape and tiny doll hands with twigs and other natural elements projecting in their
homely simplicity a sense of the profound.
