Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC

Last month I reviewed DY Begay's transcendant show of weavings at the Museum of the American Indian.  On the same trip to DC, I also saw Subversive, Skilled, Sublime, a survey of modern and contemporary fiber works at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.  The Renwick show is   up only through January 5, 2025, so it's last call if you want to see it in person!  

The introductory wall text for the exhibit makes the point, still apparently obligatory even after a flurry of major fiber art exhibits over the past few years, that "fiber has long inspired women artists, although their ingenuity with threads and cloth was often dismissed by art critics as inconsequential within twentieth-century American art.  The artists in Skilled, Subversive, Sublime [sic] refuted the marginalization of fiber art and asserted its validity as a powerful and expressive medium."  No matter which order you put the adjectives in for the exhibit's title, we get it:  fiber artists will be ignored and disrespected no more. 

The show is a diverse selection, ranging from weaving to embroidery to mixed media and 3D work.  I was thrilled to see in person work by some of my longstanding fiber art heroines:  Lenore Tawney, Lia Cook, Olga de Amaral, Kay Sekimachi, . . . and to discover a couple new heroines:  Emma Amos, Cynthia Schira, and Mariska Karasz.   My selection of photos is unabashedly my own favorites from a rich and diverse show; no doubt another viewer would make a different selection.  

I took more photos of Lenore Tawney's Cloud piece than of any other work.  It was beautifully positioned in the gallery to take full advantage of viewing from all angles and to maximize the play of light and shadow. 

Lenore Tawney, Box of Falling Stars, 1984.  Cotton canvas, linen thread, acrylic paint, and ink

 

 

Lenore Tawney, Box of Falling Stars, detail, 1984.  Cotton canvas, linen thread, acrylic paint, and ink

Gazing at this piece was pure magic for me.  Weavers know the beauty of angled light on an unwoven warp, the threads pregnant with possibility, fragile-seeming yet powerfully capable of bearing image and meaning.  What struck me is Tawney's pure daring to imagine--and then to pull off--a fiber work that is not woven and yet still so expressive.  

I also greatly enjoyed Tawney's other piece in the exhibit.  This one had both weft and warp, but the weft was so loosely sketched in that the weaving remained ethereal, making cast shadows again a vital part of the viewing experience.  

Lenore Tawney, In the Dark Forest, 1959.  Woven linen, wool, silk.

Lenore Tawney, In the Dark Forest, detail, 1959.  Woven linen, wool, silk.

Tawney's work was in conversation with this piece nearby, Reflections by Cynthia Schira.  Where Tawney's pieces are weaving stripped down to a bare minimum, Schira's weaving is maximal, using supplemental wefts, woven and twined, in wildly varying widths and paths to make a richly textured and shimmering surface.  I stood back to get the full sweep of the forms and shifts in light and color, then I moved in close to savor the textures. 

Cynthia Schira, Reflections, 1982.  Woven and bound resist-dyed cotton and dyed rayon

Cynthia Schira, Reflections, detail, 1982.  Woven and bound resist-dyed cotton and dyed rayon

Other weavers pushing the limits of the medium included Olga de Amaral, in this textile of woven strips that are themselves woven into a meta-weaving.  It lacks the dazzling shimmer of some of her work but was nonetheless a pleasure to see one of her signature techniques up close. 

Olga de Amaral, Cal y Canto, c. 1979.  Linen and gesso.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Olga de Amaral, detail, Cal y Canto, c. 1979.  Linen and gesso.

Lia Cook's work was also meta, pieced together sections of weaving cheekily made from painted fabric and paper.  Is it a quilt?  A weaving?  A painting?  Cook is quoted:  "I wanted to push the boundaries of weaving.  What could I make weaving do that no one had done before?"  I studied this piece for awhile and still wasn't quite sure I knew how it was made.  I love that blurring of methods and categories. 

Lia Cook, Crazy Too Quilt, 1989.  Acrylic paint on dyed rayon woven with pressed abaca paper.

Lia Cook, Crazy Too Quilt, detail, 1989.  Acrylic paint on dyed rayon woven with pressed abaca paper.

This work by a maker new to me, Mariska Karasz, blew me away.  Though the label text refers to only embroidery, it appears to me to consist of a very loosely woven base layer topped with stitch and perhaps looping or knotless netting.  Again the artist seems to blur the boundaries between techniques, making a delicate layered web of pattern, color and texture.  "Embroidery is to sewing what poetry is to prose; the stitches can be made to sing out as words in a poem,"  Mariska Karasz said. 

Mariska Karasz, Breeze ca. 1958.  Embroidered linen, plastic, and mixed fibers

Mariska Karasz, Breeze detail, ca. 1958.  Embroidered linen, plastic, and mixed fibers

Mariska Karasz, Breeze detail, ca. 1958.  Embroidered linen, plastic, and mixed fibers

Finally, two other, very different,  pieces stood out for me:  Susan L. Iverson's tapestry Ancient Burial IV--Night and Kay Sekimachi's Nagare VII.  Where Iverson's tapestry is sturdy and boldly graphic, weft-faced weaving at 6 epi, Sekimachi's sculpture is, like Tawney's, nearly not-there, an ethereal, vaguely helical form of woven monofilament. Both speak powerfully in distinct voices and tones.  Iverson layers three woven panels in a strongly architectural manner evocative of Peruvian weaving and culture.  Sekimachi makes fibers twist and interlace to suggest the flowing waters of a flowing river, nagare in Japanese.

Susan L. Iverson, Ancient Burial IV--Night, detail,1989.  Wool on linen warp. (Apologies for the skewed perspective of the photo.)

Susan L. Iverson, Ancient Burial IV--Night, detail,1989.  Wool on linen warp. 

Kay Sekimachi, Nagare VII, 1970.  Woven nylon monofilament.

Kay Sekimachi, Nagare VII, detail, 1970.  Woven nylon monofilament.

It was hugely stimulating and inspiring for me to see this show in the same weekend as DY Begay's Sublime Light.  I walked away confirmed in my belief that weaving is a capacious and expressive language, one that weavers--and thoughtful viewers--never tire of speaking.