Fishing Line Art

Barnacles
Sea Fan Coral
Jellyfish -2

Art made from Fishing Line by Melissa Hirsch in Australia.

At the Cape Gallery
At the Visual Arts Network

She has also made things out of strings of flax fiber. Climate Neutral art. "The pieces I create for galleries are very focussed and time consuming, with the foremost concerns being form, beauty and the environment. In order to engage with others, and for a sense of freedom and autonomy I organise collaborative and ephemeral projects."

I like seeing modern weaving techniques.

More at the Tamworth Regional Gallery - Fiber Textile Biennial.

Jane Ingram Allen

Still Water
No Water
Every Drop Counts

Jane Ingram Allen and Marcia Widenor had a show at the Tenri Cultural Institute last May.

I especially like Jane's works. She uses handmade paper and wildflowers. She has had art residencies in Taiwan and Tanzania that have informed her work. And she incorporates ecological concerns into what she does.

On her website, she describes her work at the Tenri Gallery like this:

...One of the works "Still Water" was made during her recent artist in residency at Taipei National University of the Arts in collaboration with art students at the university. This installation is made up of 200 cast handmade paper water bottles with unique labels created by the students and arranged in a spiral configuration on the gallery walls recalling the trash vortex in the North Pacific and relating to problems of plastic trash in the world's oceans as well as the lack of pure drinking water.

Another installation titled "No Water" is made with handmade paper from plants of Africa created during Jane's January-February 2008 residency in Tanzania, Africa. This work refers to the lack of water in many parts of Africa and problems relating to global climate change. The installation "Falling Water" consists of 10 panels of handmade paper cascading from floor to ceiling. This paper pulp is colored with non-toxic dye and painted with Chinese ink and contains seeds for wildflowers.

Another installation in the exhibition is called "Every Drop Counts" and consists of many handmade paper drops arranged on the gallery wall like water drops on a window. The paper pulp contains seeds for wild flowers and visitors are invited to pledge to conserve water and then take a drop from this installation home with them to water and plant to grow as wildflowers. The installations in the exhibition of handmade paper with wildflowers seeds in the pulp will be recycled into the earth after the exhibition to come back as living blooming wildflowers.

Joan Giordano "Presences"

I also found Joan Giordano from the list of artists at the Tenri Cultural Institute. I think we must be on a similar wavelength.

I'm taking a sculpture class in addition to painting and drawing - and Joan uses some of the materials that I'm interested in - plus has a sense of the natural.

From Tenri

Giordano’s work is part of a continuing series of sculptures that relate to the energies of nature and a deeply felt affinity for the delicate balance between the fragility of the human condition and the power of humanity. Giordano fuses disparate elements such as metal, straw, paper, wire, wood, and other materials that work together in dialogue. In combining these various objects both man-made and natural, she references states of transformation between nature and urban life. Giordano’s work parallels states of growth and deterioration as well as the elements – wind, fire and rain that alter and transform her work’s surfaces while dealing with the processes integral to the evolution of life.

I noticed on Joan's site that she creates paintings (some on handmade paper), monoprints, wall sculptures, and outdoor sculptures.

Sylvia Wald: "Polymorphs"

These are images of Sylvia Wald's from her "Polymorphs" show from the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York in 2004.

Wald has dedicated herself to art making for over sixty years and is considered an American pioneer printmaker and Abstract Expressionist artist. This trailblazer innovated new methods of silk-screening with oil paint instead of ink, during the forties when the genre was still being defined rather rigidly in America. Moreover, in the late thirties Wald contributed political illustrations to publications such as the New Masses for the purpose of bringing about the social changes necessary for the parity that sustains democratic values. In the early forties Wald painted in an abstracted style, dignified figures of African Americans in their army attire while her sculpture reflected the conditions of tenement neighborhoods. Up to 1963 or so, Wald made prints, sculptures and paintings, but has concentrated mainly on sculpture for the past 30 years.

As an Abstract Expressionist Wald would have been exposed to the Surrealist developments that inspired many artists of that period to work with automatism and gesture. This voyage of discovery and use of found objects have been part of Wald's creativity as well as her use of the gesture as seen in her roughly textured built up surfaces. This body of work engages in a certain lyricism seldom found in very finished or pat constructions, but rather due to its ever-developing quality it retains freshness and vitality. Wald's sculptural entities, so called polymorphs in the essay because of their composite character, are composed partly of natural and part manmade materials. One such example is the work In-Flight, 2004, a piece made from chicken wire, cord and feathers. These hybrids interchange metaphor and space to produce fantastic creatures of powerful beauty.The show is accompanied by a deluxe hard-cover catalogue edition with three essays. The first one written by the curator Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos, uses psychoanalytic methodology to study a number of Wald's pieces in terms of Freudian dream mechanisms. The second essay written by Robert C. Morgan, situates Wald within her cultural context in terms of her lifelong dedication to art. And, the third is a piece by Raul Zamudio who brings Wald into the contemporary artistic context.

Joan Snyder

'Lines and Strokes' (1969).

I was browsing and noticed that Joan Snyder had won the The MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 2007. That's cool.

She often uses materials similar to what I do such as: Acrylic, oil, paper-mache, cloth, herbs, glitter.

I expect that her art work has a bit more impact in real life. The dimensionality does not show up much in photos.

From the New York Sun on the occasion of her award:

The leadership of the MacArthur Foundation is notoriously reticent to disclose nomination and selection criteria, but they cited Ms. Snyder's "fiercely individual approach and persistent experimentation with technique and materials."

"At least two major museums in New York own my work, and it sits in the basement," she said, referring to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. "And now the Guggenheim has one, and I hope they hang it."

For some reason - the only images of hers that would post were the pink ones. It wasn't my intention - I had chosen a couple of blue ones originally. A person could get the impression that most of works are pink - and that is not the case at all.