Friday Fibers Roundup: Basket Case

August 31, 2018

From wall tapestries, to baskets, and everything in between, this week’s roundup features a great mix of weaving articles and exhibitions.

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1) “The Enduring Influence of Ikat Fabric, from Oscar de la Renta to Contemporary Design” by Vanessa H. Larson examines how Ikat patterns have become enormously popular in both fashion and interior design. But most consumers seem to be ignorant of the textile’s cultural origins (via Hyperallergic).

2) “Olga de Amaral’s Tapestries Head to Brussels in First Ever Showing” is about how the Patinoire Royale/Galerie Valérie Bach in Brussels will be become the home for a selection of some 40 works, covering the last 15 years of a creative life that spans six decades (via The City Paper Bogota).

3) “Legend Of The Loom” spotlights the the third London Bengali Film Festival that launches at the Barbican with the UK premiere of the documentary: Legend of the Loom. The film focuses on Muslin cloth, its trade, and the demise of the industry (via Selvedge).

4) “Artist Crafts Large Beautifully Textured Weavings You Can Hang on Your Wall” by Emma Taggart examines Tammy Kanat’s work of large-scale textile wall art inspired by the Australian landscape created from hand-woven plush yarns and chunky wool (via My Modern Met).

5) “The Ancient Tradition of Maya Weaving in the 21st Century” by Benjamin Sutton looks at how Maya Women in Guatemala continue to practice forms of backstrap weaving that have thrived in Central America for centuries, even adapting them to more contemporary uses like handbags (via Hyperallergic).

6) “It’s No Basket Case: This Exhibition Wants to Show You a New History of Weaving” by Anna Zappia looks at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s exhibition: Rooted, Revived, Reinvented: Basketry in America and how it chronicles the history of baskets in the U.S., from their humble origins to contemporary art status (via Metropolis Magazine).

7) “This Summer Something Huge is Coming to San Francisco” looks at how, fueled by the whimsy and lightness of balloons, the artists of Inflatable have infused their creations with a technology, scale, and creative complexity that expands our vision of what contemporary art can look like (via Hyperallergic).

8) Animator and director Ainslie Henderson has seamlessly transformed a demonstration of his stop motion practice into a meta film where his miniature puppets take over (via Colossal).

9) “The Surprising Practice of Binding Old Books With Scraps of Even Older Books” by Jessica Leigh Hester looks at how, for centuries, bookbinders commonly used whatever materials they could get—including entire manuscript pages (via Atlas Obscura).

10) “Where the Weaver Left Off” by Gwen Egg recalls past inspirations and how the tactility of the everyday can be so inspirational to artists, craftspeople, and makers (via Garland Mag).