A brief rant and a short story
“Fiber art is finally being taken seriously.”
Beware the article in T’s current issue, as its framing is nothing new. Somehow, a version of the same one gets trotted out every time there’s a major museum show featuring fiber art. I’ve also worked in media and online long enough to know that it isn’t the bylined writer who engineers the headline, but the condescension doesn’t stop at the hed: Quoting a circa-1986 diss against fiber arts as a contemporary example. The description “high art… and its ignoble cousin, craft.” Or, most egregious, citing Sheila Hicks as the peg for this entire article, the very Sheila Hicks who has been renowned in the art world since the 1960s. Never fear, by the end, Sheila gets the last word.
(Brief aside: I hear Chicago’s Volume Gallery is mounting a fiber exhibition this winter, curated by a West Coast-based design legend who recently left her auction house gig.)
Now for my own Sheila Hicks encounter: Back in 2014, my job at Dwell entailed—among many other things, Dwell being proudly “multiplatform” before that became the buzzword for media “brands”—directing front-of-book content. Front-of-book is tricky because as any magazine editor will tell you, writing short can be more of a challenge than writing long. You can’t really report something quickly, or research something halfway, you just have to take an entire volume of material and distill it to a few sentences at most. Sometimes this works to one’s advantage, if one is nosy and enjoys spending time with octogenarians. In my case, covering one Sheila Hicks installation at the Palais de Tokyo for some front-of-book package on color led to quality time with Ms. Hicks herself in both New York, at the Ford Foundation, and in Paris, at her Left Bank atelier.
In Paris, I asked Sheila my nosy questions while she talked and worked on a hand loom, making a piece she described as a “portrait.” As I recall it*, she told me she started making small-scale, sketch-like portrait weavings when she was in her 20s, on a Fulbright scholarship, gallivanting around Venezuela with an architect boyfriend. Said boyfriend—whom she met at Yale where he was a student of Louis Kahn’s and she of Josef Albers’s—introduced her to the concept of monumental art intertwined with contemporary architecture at the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, then under construction. This experience is what inspired her to start weaving big and collaborating on site-specific installations, and that juxtaposition of SOFT against HARD is what makes Sheila Hicks so very superb. (Remember the oversized embroidery floss bundles she hung from Marcel Breuer’s coffered ceiling at the old Whitney for its last biennial in the best building in Manhattan??? SOFT against HARD: We love to see it.)
By the way, Sheila speaks French fluently but with a determinedly stubborn Nebraska accent. No notes!
Window shopping
Quick plug: Herman Miller’s first vintage drop is LIVE. We worked with the unparalleled team at Wright to bring this to fruition, and did a little preview last week in Los Angeles to mark the occasion. If I were in the market for no-brainer, perfect-condition-plus-patina furniture, I’d advise the following: No-longer-in-production Eames EC175-8 swivel chair; an extremely groovy Nelson contract bench upholstered in yellow-and-orange stripe Girard fabric; this pair of cherry red steelframe dressers, also by George Nelson; a Perch stool by Robert Propst that screams #officecore; or one of several classic Eames tables.
Official work aside, I am paying close attention to how people are doing retail. Two friends—one in Charleston, one in Connecticut—have recently opened shop(s) that are highly expressive of their individual tastes. Neither has e-comm, at least not yet; instead, the joy is in visiting in person or drooling from afar. Similarly, the best multi-brand store in Oaxaca City, Marchanta, doesn’t sell online. Ponytail opens on September 27; Deep River Home is open now, and absolutely worth a leisurely drive up from New York.
Fashion newsletter, this is not, but I’m compelled to mention a Marimekko dress I picked up on sale this summer that has garnered urgent inquiry each time I’ve worn it. (For someone who doesn’t really wear dresses anymore, this is dangerously affirming.) Mine is sold out now, but here’s the Jokapoika stripes shirtdress in another color, and here’s the shirt-shirt version. Most importantly, here’s the history behind the iconic Piccolo stripe, designed by Vuokko Nurmesniemi for Marimekko in 1953.
To bring it back to our earlier discussion on fiber art: Don’t those stripes pair well with a 1979 tapestry by Bay Area artist Mark Adams? Or one of his JELLO WATERCOLORS from the same year?
Miscellaneous
An architectural renovation close to my heart hit the airwaves this week, courtesy of friend Evan Erlebacher of Also Office, whose refit of a Bed-Stuy brownstone is barely recognizable to moi, someone who used to live on the top floor. Colony designed the interiors, and offhand I spy a Camaleonda, a Chiclet, and an Alky.
Also ~while in LA~ I tagged along with a friend to a Dike Blair exhibition opening at Karma Gallery. If you like intimate observed moments, tiny paintings of seemingly inconsequential things, and an insanely rendered oil painting of a stainless steel elevator wall (mememememeeeeeee), then this show’s for you.
Finally, to round out the SOFT-yet-HARD theme, Vancouver industrial designer Calen Knauf has been producing one-off side tables that are covered in felt “shammies” which have been soaked in epoxy resin before setting in an archetypal table silhouette. Wow tables: wow indeed.
That’s it until next time!
Kelsey
*For an official record, do visit the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art for an oral history interview with Sheila Hicks, circa 2004, in which she relays the full story.
🤍🤍🤍
❤️ that Marimekko dress: please share any thoughts on sizing. And of course you know Jennie, who is a friend of another friend. Looking forward to seeing the shop in person someday soon.