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Women's work, overshadowed no more
"Narrative Thread' at Wexler Gallery
Marilyn MacGregor
Your assignment: consider the "thread" of the story, then discuss, with specific examples, how plot, characters and setting spool out over time and imagination.
At Wexler Gallery in Old City, this directive is not the province of English teachers and literary critics but of art. "Narrative Thread"— part of Fiber Philly, the annual citywide celebration of the fiber arts— presents five artists who work strong magic with unconventional adaptations of the domestic arts.
All five use simple materials and simple techniques: paper, thread, cloth, beads, wrapping, folding, twisting, stitching— the sort of means that women have worked quietly for millennia. Amid the giant shadows cast by the brasher, brawnier accomplishments of men, the world rarely noticed that these unsung women creating the basic essentials of life— home, shelter, clothing— were also, consciously or unconsciously, creating beauty of form and decoration to enrich and satisfy the soul.
No wonder Greek mythology takes its cue from women's work, placing human lives in the hands of the Fates to be measured, cut and spun.
Doll-like clothes
Contemporary art has been rethinking the domestic arts for some time, laying claim through landmarks like Judy Chicago's feminist icon, The Dinner Party, to current sprees of yarn-bombing that make resonant sense of blurred boundaries of identity and traditions. The artists at Wexler, all of whom happen to be women, contribute to this continuing story in personal, idiosyncratic ways, each writing her own chapter of the overall narrative.
Donna Rosenthal's witty and playful doll-like clothes, meticulously crafted of paper, pun directly on the idea of narrative. Each pair is as graphic as restroom icons— suits for boys, dresses with fluffy, frilly skirts for girls— and so charming that the viewer is drawn close to examine every finely made detail, including Rosenthal's clever subtext of form and content: He Said, She Said is created with pages of romance novels; You are so beautiful/You're everything I hoped for is made from sheet music. Born to be Wild, a larger, brightly colored single piece— with the same frilly fluffy dress— is made from superhero comics.
Nostalgia and dread
Orin Endicott walks a fine line of competing associations with her stained and embroidered antique textiles, many of them children's clothing. A strong sense of nostalgia, not only from the fabrics but the sepia color of the stains (reminiscent of old photographs), wrestles with a creeping sense of dread in the spreading patches of blood red and silver embroidery.
Nostalgia also abounds in Diem Chau's gentle combinations of old china and textiles, but the overall effect in her work is clean and quietly droll. With fine threads and filmy organza, she hints at stories— a hand or an arm, a cropped figure— that leave the endings up to the viewer.
In Chau's A Rose by Any Other Name, a figure, delicately worked with stitches, like etching strokes on a scrim over a teacup, trails a long red thread. Where does it lead? Does it connect the figure or control it?
"Narrative Thread," a show full of ideas, nuance and detail, compels viewers to pick up the threads and continue the stories on their own.
At Wexler Gallery in Old City, this directive is not the province of English teachers and literary critics but of art. "Narrative Thread"— part of Fiber Philly, the annual citywide celebration of the fiber arts— presents five artists who work strong magic with unconventional adaptations of the domestic arts.
All five use simple materials and simple techniques: paper, thread, cloth, beads, wrapping, folding, twisting, stitching— the sort of means that women have worked quietly for millennia. Amid the giant shadows cast by the brasher, brawnier accomplishments of men, the world rarely noticed that these unsung women creating the basic essentials of life— home, shelter, clothing— were also, consciously or unconsciously, creating beauty of form and decoration to enrich and satisfy the soul.
No wonder Greek mythology takes its cue from women's work, placing human lives in the hands of the Fates to be measured, cut and spun.
Doll-like clothes
Contemporary art has been rethinking the domestic arts for some time, laying claim through landmarks like Judy Chicago's feminist icon, The Dinner Party, to current sprees of yarn-bombing that make resonant sense of blurred boundaries of identity and traditions. The artists at Wexler, all of whom happen to be women, contribute to this continuing story in personal, idiosyncratic ways, each writing her own chapter of the overall narrative.
Donna Rosenthal's witty and playful doll-like clothes, meticulously crafted of paper, pun directly on the idea of narrative. Each pair is as graphic as restroom icons— suits for boys, dresses with fluffy, frilly skirts for girls— and so charming that the viewer is drawn close to examine every finely made detail, including Rosenthal's clever subtext of form and content: He Said, She Said is created with pages of romance novels; You are so beautiful/You're everything I hoped for is made from sheet music. Born to be Wild, a larger, brightly colored single piece— with the same frilly fluffy dress— is made from superhero comics.
Nostalgia and dread
Orin Endicott walks a fine line of competing associations with her stained and embroidered antique textiles, many of them children's clothing. A strong sense of nostalgia, not only from the fabrics but the sepia color of the stains (reminiscent of old photographs), wrestles with a creeping sense of dread in the spreading patches of blood red and silver embroidery.
Nostalgia also abounds in Diem Chau's gentle combinations of old china and textiles, but the overall effect in her work is clean and quietly droll. With fine threads and filmy organza, she hints at stories— a hand or an arm, a cropped figure— that leave the endings up to the viewer.
In Chau's A Rose by Any Other Name, a figure, delicately worked with stitches, like etching strokes on a scrim over a teacup, trails a long red thread. Where does it lead? Does it connect the figure or control it?
"Narrative Thread," a show full of ideas, nuance and detail, compels viewers to pick up the threads and continue the stories on their own.
What, When, Where
“Narrative Thread.†Work by Dem Chau, Orly Cogan, Erin Endicott, Flore Gardner and Donna Rosenthal. Through April 28, 2012 at Wexler Gallery 210 N. Third St. ((215) 923-7030 or www.wexlergallery.com.
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