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Art Craft

Forgotten Household Objects Cloaked in Needlepoint by Ulla Stina-Wikander

Sweden-based artist Ulla Stina-Wikander (previously) continues her signature needlepoint interventions on domestic objects. Items traditionally associated with women’s housekeeping, like electric mixers and sewing machines along with hammers, wrenches, and axes, are cloaked in tightly fitting decorative designs. Stina-Wikander sources the needlepoint samples from flea markets and vintage stores, and is attracted to their connection with the now-anonymous people who made them. “These embroideries have been made by women and are often seen as kitsch and regarded as pretty worthless,” she states on her website. In using them in her interventions, the artist gives the abandoned textile works a new life. Explore more of Stina-Wikander’s work on Instagram.

Art Craft

Colorful Quilts by Bisa Butler use African Fabrics to Form Nuanced Portraits

“Three Kings”, detail

Artist Bisa Butler draws from an array of vibrant patterned fabrics to create portraits of everyday people. She eschews representational colors, favoring layered jewel-toned hues to form the skin of her Black subjects, and often groups figures together into strong silhouettes.

“I have always been drawn to portraits,” Butler explains in a statement on her gallery’s website. “I was the little girl who would sit next to my grandmother and ask her to go through her old family photo albums. I was the one who wanted to hear the story behind every picture. This inquisitiveness has stayed with me to this day. I often start my pieces with a black and white photo and allow myself to tell the story.”

Butler studied fine art at Howard University. In a video interview by BRIC TV, the artist explains that she began using fabric in her paintings in college, and then converted to quilting as a way to continue her dedicated art practice while protecting her young daughter from toxic materials and fumes.

The artist was born in Orange, New Jersey, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is represented by Claire Oliver Gallery. You can see more from Butler on Instagram. (via #WOMENSART)

“Three Kings” (2018), quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 95 x 72 in / 241.3 x 182.9 cm

“The Mighty Gents” (2018), quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 67 x 78 in / 170.2 x 198.1 cm

“The Mighty Gents”, detail

“The Mighty Gents”, detail

“Anaya with Oranges”

“The Safety Patrol” (2018), quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 90 x 82 in / 228.6 x 208.3 cm

“The Safety Patrol”, detail

L: “The Unconquerable Lyric” R: “I Want To Smell The Flowers”

“Black Star Family, first class tickets to Liberia” (2018), cotton, silk chiffon, satin, silk and lace, 79 x 85 in / 200.7 x 215.9 cm

Art

A Programmable 8-Bit Computer Created Using Traditional Embroidery Techniques and Materials

The Embroidered Computer by Irene Posch and Ebru Kurbak doesn’t look like what you might expect when you think of a computer. Instead, the work looks like an elegantly embroidered textile, complete with glass and magnetic beads and a meandering pattern of copper wire. The materials have conductive properties which are arranged in specific patterns to create electronic functions. Gold pieces on top of the magnetic beads flip depending on the program, switching sides as different signals are channeled through the embroidered work.

Art

Overlapping Jewel-Toned Fabrics Fill the Nave of a Former Italian Church in a New Installation by Quintessenz

Thomas Granseuer and Tomislav Topic, known as the art duo Quintessenz (previously), recently completed a new hanging fabric installation at CARME, an arts center located inside a former church in Brescia, Italy. Despite the numerous indoor and outdoor locations the pair have installed their signature semi-transparent fabrics, Carme Genesis is the first time they’ve worked within the architecture of a church. Due to the piece’s position at the center of the nave, guests can walk parallel to the hanging work, or cross directly underneath on the building’s first floor. Each perspective presents a new layering of colors, bringing a shifting dimensionality to the collection of flat, hanging textiles. Carme Genesis runs through March 3, 2019. You can see more of Quintessenz’s installations on their website and Instagram.

Art Craft

Crocheted Masks by threadstories Question How We Portray Ourselves Online

Irish visual artist threadstories crafts wearable textile masks that are often full-coverage, obscuring her face with layers of multi-colored yarn. The works are made with traditional techniques, and inspired by everything from the art of basketweaving to Francis Bacon’s distorted figural paintings. Each work begins with a crocheted balaclava which the artist uses as a base to attach each segment of material.

Conceptually, the masks question how we portray ourselves online and how this is influenced by a rapid decrease in personal privacy. “The masks deny the viewer the full story of who the sitter is, echoing the curated or false personas we portray and view online daily,” threadstories tells Colossal. “The masks are mutations of our private and public selves.”

You can see a short film that more deeply explores the process behind threadstories’s practice and masks in this film made by Sixbetween, and view more of her textile works on Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Out of it #mask #anticeleb #constantcontentcreator @threadstories

A post shared by threadstories (@threadstories) on Sep 30, 2018 at 9:02am PDT

 

View this post on Instagram

 

False Hoods currently at @ndcgallery as part of group show Obj curated by @noraomurchu @dccoi 🎥 made with London based filmmakers @sixbetweenfilm #anticeleb #falsehoods #objexhibition

A post shared by threadstories (@threadstories) on Sep 26, 2018 at 7:39am PDT

Craft Food

Crocheted Seafood and Knitted Loaves Top the Menu of Kate Jenkins’s Food-Focused Exhibitions

Photo by Emma Wood

Brighton, England-based textile artist Kate Jenkins has been recreating veggies, seafood, and other favorite foods in wool for the last 12 years. Jenkins got her start in knitwear design, but has begun to focus on knitting feasts rather than fashions. In 2015 Jenkins made her largest installation to date, crocheting dozens of sardines, mussels, clams, shrimp, prawns, lobsters, crabs and other delights from the sea for a full-size fish counter titled “Kate’s Place the Stitchmongers” in Alexander Palace in London. For inspiration Jenkins knits or crochets from life, always purchasing the food she plans on recreating for accurate scale and texture.

Jenkins is currently working on her follow-up exhibition to “Kate’s Place” titled “Kate’s Bakes” which will switch from seafood to wheat in a life-size bakery that will be exhibited at the Handmade Festival in Barcelona this May. She hopes to tour the piece around the world, stopping in London, Paris, and New York, and incorporate localized treats for each destination. If you like Jenkins’s immersive knitting and crocheting experiences you might also like Lucy Sparrow’s felted corner stores and bodegas which have popped up in both London and New York. You can see more of Jenkins’s crocheted treats on her website and Instagram. (via Atlas Obscura)

Photo by Emma Wood

Photo by Emma Wood

Photo by Emma Wood

Photo by Emma Wood

Photo by Emma Wood

Photo by Emma Wood      

Photo by Emma Wood

Art

Traditional Lace Patterns Spray-Painted onto Museums, Residences, and Walls by NeSpoon

Museum of Fine Art and Lace (Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle) in Alençon, France (2018), all images courtesy of NeSpoon

Polish artist NeSpoon (previously) creates spray-painted murals and textile installations based on traditional lace motifs. Her public paintings often stretch the height of multi-story urban structures, while her yarn works cling to passageways and trees like enlarged spiderwebs. Recent public pieces include a mural for the Museum of Fine Art and Lace (Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle) in Alençon, France based on the designs of French lace makers Brigitte Lefebvre and Thérèse Lemoine, a piece for the Emergence Festival in Valverde, Sicily, and textile installations across Finland, Armenia, Germany, and Poland. You can follow her upcoming travels and view new installations on Instagram and Behance. (via Colossal Submissions)

Museum of Fine Art and Lace (Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle) in Alençon, France (2018), all images via NeSpoon

NO LIMIT Festival, in Borås, Sweden (September 2017)

Póvoa da Atalaia, Portugal (2017)

Emergence Festival in Valverde, Sicily (2018)

Pasila District, Helsinki, Finland (June 2018)

Lofoten, Norway (2017)

Lofoten, Norway (2017)

Mural painted for Urban Nation, during opening weekend of Urban Art Museum in Berlin (2017)

NO LIMIT Festival, in Borås, Sweden (September 2017)