Midwest Happenings!

What can you do with an entire harvest of flax or 1,000 wool sweaters? The possibilities are endless and entwined.

Since graduating from the Eindhoven Design Academy, Christien Meindertsma has become known for her research-oriented work that explores the potential of raw materials and reveals processes that have become obsolete due to industrialization. Her prototypes, documentary videos, and finished objects highlight our relationship to the materials and products in the world around us and address concerns of environmental sustainability.

This exhibition showcases two of Meindertsma’s recent projects. For Flax Project (2012–present), she purchased a harvest of flax from a farmer in order to study methods of production from unprocessed material to final products. On display in this exhibition is each step involved in transforming raw flax into an entirely biodegradable chair, one that won Meindertsma the Dutch Design Award in 2016. The designer shifted her focus to a different production process for Fibre Market (2016–present), using fiber-sorting machines to scan and sort 1,000 wool sweaters based on their material content. The scanned results revealed frequent inaccuracies in the information provided on the sweaters’ labels, making evident the fact that common clothing is often made from a wider range of materials than indicated. After sorting, the sweaters were shredded and made into fibers that Meindertsma developed into a yarn and then a bespoke Donegal tweed. This recycled fabric can be used in many ways, including as an upholstery fabric for one of her biodegradable Flax Chairs—bringing Meindertsma’s design process full circle.

By exploring the often hidden lives of products within their social, political, and material contexts, Meindertsma invites us to reconsider the value of objects, especially the potential of undervalued resources such as flax and recycled wool. Her projects suggest that intelligent processes and design can play an important role in addressing the overconsumption of resources and prompting positive change.

Guided tour with artist: August 7, 2019 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. More info

SPONSORS
Christien Meindertsma: Everything Connects is the second exhibition in the Franke/Herro Design Series, which highlights the work of important design talent. This exhibition is made possible by Jay Franke and David Herro.

© The Art Institute of Chicago

FASHION REDEFINED: MIYAKE, KAWAKUBO, YAMAMOTO

In the 1980s Japanese designers challenged the principles of Western fashion by introducing clothing that draped and wrapped the body, concealing its contours and silhouette. Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto and other avant-garde Japanese fashion designers rejected the idea that women’s clothing had to fit an idealized hourglass-shaped female body. Their innovative designs set new standards for shape and proportion and coined a contemporary definition of “universal beauty.”

Image courtesy of Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.

The opening reception for Ohio Quilts  is Thursday, July 18, 2019, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Remarks at 6:00 p.m.

The history of quilts in Ohio is in many ways a reflection of the history of Ohio itself since the early nineteenth century. Just as early settlers boasted a variety of origins ranging from migrants from New England to Germans who arrived either directly from Europe or from earlier settlements in Pennsylvania, their quilt traditions reflected their diverse origins. Quilt making took off around the middle of the nineteenth century owing to improvements in textile and thread production which made materials accessible and increasingly affordable. Inventions such as the power loom then cylinder printing ultimately led to the production of large quantities of printed cottons. Changes in women’s fashion also favored a growth in the creation of decorative quilts. By the 1860s women’s clothing was increasingly shaped from pieces of cloth rather than utilizing the entire width of the fabric. This created fabric scraps which could be pieced into quilts. More affordable textiles mean that rather than completely wearing out clothing, new dresses could be purchased, thus freeing up the old clothes to be repurposed into quilts. The widespread adoption of sewing machines by the end of the century also made the creation of clothing less time consuming and freed up women’s time for making quilts.

With two layers of fabric and a layer of batting in between, quilts served a critical function of providing warmth. Quilts could be quite utilitarian with little decorative stitching or at the opposite extreme they could be highly ornamental, created out of lightweight silk with little batting. Difficult to clean with their delicate fabric and embroidery, crazy quilts represented a luxury that was widely embraced across the United States in the 1880s. They reflected their era not just in their embodiment of Victorian taste with an exuberant combination of colors and textures but in their very impracticality. At the other extreme Amish quilts reflected their makers’ adherence to strict rules and rejection of the whims of fashion.

One of the most extraordinary quilts in the KSU Museum’s collection is attributed to Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. Born a slave, Keckley learned dressmaking then bought freedom for herself and her son. She lived many years in Washington, DC where she worked for the wives of many prominent politicians including Mary Todd Lincoln. The quilt is pieced together from pieces of dress fabric which appear to be from the 1860s. Keckley lived in Ohio when she served on the faculty of Wilberforce University.

This exhibition assembles quilts which reflect a variety of techniques including appliqué, piecework, crazy quilts, whitework, and embroidery. These different styles represent evolving taste. The quilts also reflect changes in technology, women’s lives, and forms of expression.

The exhibit is located in the Higbee Gallery at Rockwell Hall on campus.

Established in 1919, acclaimed German art school the Bauhaus was home to an innovative weaving workshop whose influence stretched across the Atlantic.

Like the larger institution, the weaving workshop embraced the principal of equality among artists and the arts alike. Although the realities of the Bauhaus never quite matched its utopian vision, the workshop nonetheless served as an effective incubator of aesthetic and pedagogical talent. In the decades following the school’s forced closure in 1933, the Bauhaus went on to have a wide-reaching impact on American art—due in part to the large number of affiliated artists who immigrated to the US, where they continued to practice and teach in the spirit of the school’s educational system and theories.

Presented on the centenary of this foundational organization, Weaving beyond the Bauhaus traces the diffusion of Bauhaus artists, or Bauhäusler, such as Anni Albers and Marli Ehrman, and their reciprocal relationships with fellow artists and students across America. Through their ties to arts education institutions, including Black Mountain College, the Institute of Design, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Yale University, these artists shared their knowledge and experiences with contemporary and successive generations of artists, including Sheila Hicks, Else Regensteiner, Ethel Stein, Lenore Tawney, and Claire Zeisler, shaping the landscape of American art in the process.

Gallery Talk: Weaving Beyond the Bauhaus August 27, 2019 More info

(Cedarburg, WI) — Cottage Tulip With Victoria Findlay Wolfe

Make a big, beautiful statement with vintage-inspired circular tulip blocks. Build a colorful, fat-quarter friendly quilt one block at a time! We will learn tips for successful block construction based on my acrylic template set. Master Y-seams and curved piecing; build confidence in and design all through PLAY! Kit fee: $42 for VFW Quilts’ Cottage Tulips Template set and instructions set (if you haven’t previously purchased it).

Artist Biography:

Victoria Findlay Wolfe is a New York City-based Award-winning quilter, designer and author of 15 Minutes of Play: Improvisational Quilts; Double Wedding Ring Quilts: Traditions Made Modern; and Modern Quilt Magic: 5 Parlor Tricks to Expand Your Piecing Skills (C&T publishing). Her work has been exhibited, written about, and featured on Sewing with Nancy and many other TV and online shows. Her quilt Double Edged Love, won Best in Show at the first QuiltCon in Austin, Texas, 2013. Victoria has exhibited at the WMQFA, taught there multiple times, and serves on the museum’s Curatorial Advisory Board.

Saturday and Sunday, September 21 – 22, 2019 9:30 – 4:00 p.m.
$295