The current show at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz brings together nineteen Hudson Valley artists who work with fabric and fiber. Curated by Karlyn Benson, Homespun features artists who approach their medium in a variety of ways, interpreting textiles and needlework as both fine art and craft. Traditionally a women’s occupation, sewing was often referred to as “fancywork”, a term that brings to mind busy ladies sitting in their parlors, passing the idle hours by engaging in ornamental needlework. But contemporary artists of all genders embrace fabric as an appropriate medium for the representation of women’s rights and cultural issues. If there is a value system attached to working with fabric, it may be found in the necessity of slowing down the creative process. Sewing, weaving, and quilting are time-consuming processes that require deliberation and repetition, which often imbue the piece with a meditative quality. In Small Hours IV, Rachel Mica Weiss strings spools of embroidery thread through eye hooks in a wooden frame, mimicking the weave of a loom. The texture is luminous and seductive, pulling us into its presence but denying access to that which looms beyond its shimmering surface. Melissa Dadourian embraces geometric abstraction, traditionally associated with male artists , by knitting fine threads and yarns into hard-edged shapes. Soft Geometry No. 23 is neither a painting nor a sweater, but lies at the intersection between fine art and conventional feminine craft. Her work is a humorous but pointed interpretation of male art as seen through the female gaze. As one of the two male artists in the show, Paulo Arao’s work is also rooted in geometric abstraction, but the colors and patterns are imbued with symbolism that derives from his Filipino heritage. In his diptych Mixed Signals, the diamond patterns are stylized body parts, containing properties that invoke spiritual and healing powers. Padma Rajendran uses sewing, dyeing, drawing, and screen printing to create fabric pieces that tell the stories of contemporary immigrant women. Dream (Jeans) and chasm in the wind is a large, skirt-like wall sculpture that reads as a narrative, giving voice to the untold stories of migrant women who redefine our understanding of home and family. Kat Howard’s work addresses sexism, female oppression, and the ravages of trauma. In There Is No Calm in Stillness, a large installation that reads as a baroque cloudburst, Howard stuffed hundreds of nylon pantyhose with raw cotton and knotted them into bundles. These bulky tubes read as so many body parts, bound together with strings that shimmer in the low light as they converge on an adjacent wall. But the possibility of transcendence is diminished when we notice the meat hook on which they’re strung, a solemn reminder of the sexualized feminine. Laura Kaufman uses embroidery and watercolor on linen to build upon language and communication. Her works in the show were inspired by the shapes that she used when teaching her son cursive writing. The embroidery thread traces orthogonal lines, creating a bas-relief surface on the graphic shapes, like hidden messages embedded in verse. Ana Maria Farina creates objects that occupy a space somewhere between mysticism, abstraction, and representation. She uses a tufting gun (you’ll have to google it), with its references to male-centered violence, to create images of mythological creatures and Eastern symbology. Like many of the artists in the show, her process is cathartic, a transformative process involving intense labor and exhaustive repetition. Histérica #7 is a contemplative piece that has outgrown any lingering notions of pictorial space to become its own thing. Not exactly a likeness and no longer a rug, it has succeeded in transcending all definitions of what art is or should be. Which could be said about all the works in the show, as they challenge art-world definitions of high art versus the work formerly assigned to craftspersons. In Homespun, Karlyn Benson has offered us a generous glimpse into this vibrant medium, with its rich textures, candid observations, and gender-based contradictions.
Homespun is curated by Karlyn Benson and runs through April 16th.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Paolo Arao | Grace Bakst Wapner | Natalie Baxter | Samantha Bittman | Orly Cogan | Melissa Dadourian | Ana Maria Farina | Kathy Greenwood | Kat Howard | Laura Kaufman | Laleh Khorramian | Niki Lederer | Will McLeod | Rachel Mica Weiss | Courtney Puckett | Padma Rajendran | Hanna Washburn | Deborah Zlotsky | Ishraq Zraikat
IMAGE LIST
1. Museum view of Homespun
2. Museum view of Homespun
3. Museum view of Homespun
4. Kat Howard, There Is No Calm In Stillness, 2023, raw cotton, cotton thread, nylons, polyester thread
5. Rachel Mica Weiss, Small Hours IV, 2023, polyester embroidery thread, maple, brass hooks
6. Melissa Dadourian, Soft Geometry No. 23, 2022, acrylic paint on knit thread
7. Melissa Dadourian, Soft Geometry No. 23 (detail)
8. Padma Rajendran, Dream (Jeans) and chasm in the wind, 2020, dye, polyester, sewing notions, stitching on various fabrics
9. Paolo Arao, Mixed Signals (diptych), 2020, sewn cotton, denim, corduroy, canvas, handwoven fibers, map pins
10. Laura Kaufman, Part of Speech, 2021, watercolor, rayon, watercolor pencil, rabbit skin glue on stretched linen
11. Ana Maria Farina, histérica #7, Baubo, 2020, upcycled fibers on monk’s cloth