September Exhibit 2007

NEW FRONTIERS: AN EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY FIBER
ART

Exhibition dates: September 7-29, 2007

In its first exhibition of the season, The Art House
will feature fiber artists from across the United
States and one from Australia. Put aside any
preconceived notions you might have about what fiber
art is, because contemporary fiber art is definitely
NOT the doilies, afghans and sock dolls your
grandmothers made. Contemporary fiber art is a genre
of art that utilizes many traditional techniques such
as sewing, weaving, knitting, crocheting, and printing
on fabric, but it often incorporates many of the
techniques traditionally associated with fine art such
as painting and sculpture. Fiber artists use
traditional fibrous materials such as thread, yarn,
reed, paper, fabric, etc. in new and unexpected ways
or non fibrous materials, such as wire or plastic, are
used with a traditional technique. Many contemporary
fiber exhibitions have expanded the definition of
fiber art to include artwork that has a “fiber”
sensibility. Whatever techniques and materials are
used, the end results fit squarely within the realm of
fine art.

The title of the exhibition, New Frontiers, relates to
the Rio Grande Valley’s status as a frontier and a
place where people come to explore new possibilities
and opportunities to the frontier that fiber artists
crossed in their attempt to develop the medium and to
gain acceptance in the art world.

During the 1960s, materials and techniques that had
been primarily associated with craft and utilitarian
objects started being utilized by people trained in
the fine arts. In the same way that the
impressionists transformed art from strict
representation, fiber artists transformed the
minimalist tradition of modern art. Shape, volume,
repetition and texture were prominent features of this
new art. Freedom to experiment has remained a key
concept in fiber art, and contemporary fiber artists
continue this tradition of utilizing materials and
techniques in new and different ways. Patricia
Tinajero’s Flap-jacks is an example of combining
non-traditional materials (plastic bags and wire) with
a traditional technique (crochet).

Fiber artists are not limited to fiber art techniques,
they may employ any other medium such as drawing,
painting computer graphics, etc. Clare Verstegen’s
specialty is screen printing on fabric, but she will
often draw on the surface after she has printed it,
and the pieces in this exhibition have been etched.
Marjorie Durko Puryear took a found object (a hankie)
and printed it with a digital printer and embellished
it with thread and beads.

The exhibition was juried by the curator of the
exhibition, Linda Lewis, UTPA art professor, Reynaldo
Santiago, and the Director of the Art House, Mayra
Brown.

The curator of the exhibition, Linda Lewis, moved to
the valley in 2005. She received an MFA with a
concentration in fiber art from Arizona State
University. During the course of her study, she
received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the
Danish Design School in Copenhagen, Denmark. In
addition, she received the graduate school's highest
award, the Nathan Cummings Foundation Summer Travel
Fellowship. This award allowed her to travel to any
destination in the world. Her trip included Croatia,
Romania and Turkey. She has an extensive exhibition
record that includes national and international
exhibitions. She has had solo exhibitions at the
University of Arizona and Appalachian State
University, Boone, NC, and had artwork in “Lace for
Fashion,” a juried exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum
in Sydney, Australia and The 5th International Textile
Competition '97 in Kyoto, Japan. Lewis has had
articles and reviews published in the Surface Design
Journal, Fiberarts and American Craft. An exhibition
she curated, “In Stitches: Humor in Contemporary Fiber
Art,” was exhibited in a variety of venues throughout
Arizona and in Texas.

Lewis has several of her own artworks in this
exhibition. Conceptually, her artwork is about the
history of knowledge and its transformation over time.
Lewis states that she normally has a very serious
approach to her artwork, but she pokes fun at herself
in her Bodies of Knowledge. The “bodies” are human
forms The “skin” of the bodies is a lacy see-through
fabric that has been constructed by sewing handwritten
notes and xerox copies of articles from classes she
took while in school. Numbers on the chests of the
bodies are the course numbers of those classes.
Having attended school most of her adult life, Lewis
feels that she is losing most of what she learned.
Piles of confetti lie in heaps on the floor beneath
the bodies to represent this process of
disintegration.

Many of the artists in New Frontiers have already
distinguished themselves in the field. Quite a few
are professors who are imparting their knowledge and
skills to develop the fiber artists of tomorrow.
There are several artists who are in graduate programs
or who have recently graduated. Amy Long was featured
in Fiberarts magazine’s Nov/Dec 2006 issue as an
“artist to watch” in their sampling of notable student
work.