Portfolio Vol 20: Kay Sekimachi (USA)

Jack Lenor Larsen & Yoshiko Wada; Foreword by Kenneth R. Trapp, Curator-in-Charge, Smithsonian


The publication of Telos's Portfolio Collection: Kay Sekimachi is a most welcomed monograph in a series that encourages the study of contemporary fiber as an art form. Sekimachi's art is the essence of purity. Studied, thoughtful, contemplative, deliberate, assured, quiet and calm, her art expands our restricted world to embrace fibers as wondrous materials for creative expression. When I behold Kay Sekimachi's boxes, hanging or standing sculptures, and her woven structures, I am reminded of this: her art has the strength of a spider's web and the fragility of bedrock in an earthquake zone... [from the Foreword by Kenneth R. Trapp, Curator-in-Charge, Smithsonian Art Museum]

ISBN: 1 902015 77 0 (softback)


Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 21: Emily DuBois (USA)

Suzanne Baizerman and Melissa Leventon, poetry extracts from Elizabeth Robinson


"Emily DuBois is part of a long tradition of artists whose subject is nature. For DuBois, it is elemental patterns revealing motion or growth - ripples in water or sand, cloud formations, the ikat-like feather variegations and shell patterns - that fascinate her and inspire the seemingly abstract compositions of weaving after weaving. DuBois' art is informed by her philosphy of life, which is strongly influenced by her practice of Tai Chi Chuan...Later DuBois also used some of her Jacquard-woven textiles as material for actual collage; Stills 10, for example, is constructed from sections of Jacquard- and Dobby-woven fabric that she has cut up, pieced together, and embelllished with surface stitching and painting...Her barkcloths currently resemble her recent collaged textiles quite closely, but, given her revived interest in painting, they may evolve into something quite different." [from the essay by Melissa Leventon]

ISBN: 1 902015 38 X (softback)


Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 22: Gyöngy Laky (USA)

Janet Koplos; Foreword by James Melchert


Only in her earliest works did she regularly plait, weave, twine or use any other technique of fine basketry. Instead she has made a partice of simply gathering together somewhat stiff materials and fusing them in overlapping relationships sufficient to suggest a container form...Laky's favoured basketry material is the prunings that she obtains from public and private sources such as park or street trees and orchards....to these materials she adds unusual complements, such as screws and telephone wire...'Industrial prunings is a term she has frequently used, paired with 'orchard prunings'. It's a clever way of expressing availability and selection from the modern world, without restriction. [extracts from the essay by Janet Koplos]

http://textiles.ucdavis.edu/laky/gyongy1.0/index.html

ISBN: 1 902015 39 8 (softback)


Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 23: Virginia Davis (USA)

Laurel Reuter; Foreword by Carrie Lederer

"Davis uses the loom to create works of enormous visual appeal that are enriched by illusionistic effects and subversive conceptual complexity. Confronting the historic distinction between craft and fine art, Davis deliberately blurs the boundaries between weaving and painting. Using a fine linen thread, she weaves a cloth that closely resembles the most expensive painter's canvas. She may also paint the threads with acrylic pigment prior to weaving so that she not only weaves a cloth that is a painter's canvas, she actually weaves a painting into it... Davis is undoubtedly one of the finest weavers at work today." Carrie Lederer, Curator, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, California

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Portfolio Vol 24: Piper Shepard (USA) last few copies

Angela A. Adams and William Easton

"Shepard patiently brings her sizeable works into being through the repetitive processes of sewing, cutting, printing, etching and dyeing"...A.A. Adams. "Piper Shepard's work is refined, luxurious and perhaps a bit treacherous. She creates simple and elegant spaces which embody surreptitious dualities and where surface is an enticing but deceptive layer ...Her lace-like structures may be skin or bone, inside and outside seem interchangeable. Nature is tamed by culture as the organic form of a rose is domesticated by pattern, while fragility and solidity appear to be cut from the same cloth. Small monuments to obsessive detail, her work insists on time, process, and history, taking the handmade to an extreme. The delicate becomes vast and suggests the material form of space, perseverance and time." [Laura Burns]

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Portfolio Vol 25: Valerie Kirk (Scotland/Australia)

Robert Bell, Dr Grace Cochrane and Anne Brennan


Head of Textiles at the Australian National University, Canberra, this Scottish born tapestry weaver creates elegiac explorations of issues around migration, and beautiful evocations of Australia’s bush.

ISBN: 1 902015 37 1 (softback)
30 colour photos, 48 pages, 22cm square

Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 26: Annet Couwenberg (USA)

Elissa Auther, Adam Lerner & Debra Rubino


Annet Couwenberg makes elegantly obsessive objects which subtly entwine the private and the social, the monumental and the familiar. Couwenberg works with materials generally associated with the domestic, such as cloth, lace, feathers and flocking. Her pieces, which require weeks of painstaking and meticulous handwork, can be read as a celebration of the hand and of female labour, as well as an exploration of patience, time and devotion. Her work involves the intense precision of sewing, tucking, pleating and embroidering, reminding us that a narrowing to detail and an insistence on small, intimate gestures have traditionally been the creative work space of women. For Couwenberg, that space is enlarged to include guardianship of family and family history, and the culture of her Dutch origins. [Laura Burns].

ISBN:  1 902015 79 7 (softback)


Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 27: Susan Lordi Marker (USA) (last copies)

Ilze Aviks and Hildreth York

"Marker's richly worked textiles have presence and seem to have absorbed past lives and places. Images and text are alternatively submerged and revealed in fragile transparencies suggesting half-finished conversations and narratives. Her more recent landscape-inspired work conveys the shifting, elusive patterns underlying nature, recorded from attentive observation. The astonishingly detailed surfaces seduce the viewer into further contemplating the layers of meaning.The sensory impact of Marker's textiles goes beyond good aesthetics...When cloque is used, effecting a a fascinating surface reliuef, the viewer must share some feeling of the intense patience and vision involved in building cloth so architecturally from micro to macro." Extract from the introduction by Ilze Aviks

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Portfolio Vol 28: Agano Machiko (Japan)

Laurel Reuter; Foreword by Takeo Uchiyama


New reprint now available
Professor of Textiles at Kyoto Seika University, Agano is a poet who explores the patterns of nature using materials such as fishing nets, bamboo, organza, soil and manila hemp. "Machiko Agano uses various materials for her work, but she never forces them to obey her intentions. She uses the characteristics and inherent nature of each material. They can be described as the fruits of her free heart. Because of her sensitivity to nature, Machiko Agano accepts its whispering voices and does not fail to notice their subtle changes of expression. [From a Foreword by Takeo Uchiyama, Director, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto].

ISBN: 1 902015 59 2 (softback)
Bilingual edition, Japanese and English.

Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 29: Fukumoto Shihoko (Japan)

Marianne Erikson and Uchiyama Takeo


"The nature of indigo synchronises with my nature. My sense are developed through the process of indigo dyeing. Indigo allows me to interact with nature". Materials include indigo dye, shibori, hemp, Turfan cotton, gold leaf, Japanese paper, abaca, linen

ISBN: 1 902015 61 4 (softback)
Bilingual edition, Japanese and English.

Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 30: Cynthia Schira (USA)

Christa C. Thurman and Joan Simon


Cynthia Schira is one of the contemporary textile world’s most influential figures. She has been using computerized Jacquard looms since 1983 to create complex woven textile structures and was one of the first fiber artists to fully appreciate the potential of computerization for the handweaver. Schira's work is always referential, mostly recalling the ebb and flow of nature, weather, seasons, times of day, or geological changes, hoping to convey less analysis and more feeling about life and its many cycles. Her connection to the land has been described as very American and is thought to have been influenced by time spent in the open plains of Kansas. Schira says she values textiles because of their relations to daily life and humble things. Textiles are a part of us from the moment we are born, when we are wrapped in cloth, until the time we die, when we are again wrapped in cloth. Cynthia Schira received the Gold Medal from the College of Fellows of the American Craft Council in 2000, in recognition of her lifetime of achievement, and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from RISD in 1989. Her work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, and many others. She currently lives and works in Westport, NY.

ISBN:  1 902015 63 0 (softback)
for information about a forthcoming major exhibition in New York please visit http://www.lakegeorgearts.org/2007%20exhibitions.htm

Price:  £14.50

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Portfolio Vol 26: Annet Couwenberg (USA) ( seconds)

Elissa Auther, Adam Lerner & Debra Rubino

Annet Couwenberg makes elegantly obsessive objects which subtly entwine the private and the social, the monumental and the familiar. Couwenberg works with materials generally associated with the domestic, such as cloth, lace, feathers and flocking. Her pieces, which require weeks of painstaking and meticulous handwork, can be read as a celebration of the hand and of female labour, as well as an exploration of patience, time and devotion. Her work involves the intense precision of sewing, tucking, pleating and embroidering, reminding us that a narrowing to detail and an insistence on small, intimate gestures have traditionally been the creative work space of women. For Couwenberg, that space is enlarged to include guardianship of family and family history, and the culture of her Dutch origins. [Laura Burns].

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Portfolio Vol 29: Fukumoto Shihoko (Japan) (cut price seconds)

Marianne Erikson and Uchiyama Takeo

"The nature of indigo synchronises with my nature. My sense are developed through the process of indigo dyeing. Indigo allows me to interact with nature". Materials include indigo dye, shibori, hemp, Turfan cotton, gold leaf, Japanese paper, abaca, linen

Bilingual edition, Japanese and English.

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Portfolio Vol 30: Cynthia Schira (USA) (half price seconds)

Christa C. Thurman and Joan Simon


Cynthia Schira is one of the contemporary textile world’s most influential figures. She has been using computerized Jacquard looms since 1983 to create complex woven textile structures and was one of the first fiber artists to fully appreciate the potential of computerization for the handweaver. Schira's work is always referential, mostly recalling the ebb and flow of nature, weather, seasons, times of day, or geological changes, hoping to convey less analysis and more feeling about life and its many cycles. Her connection to the land has been described as very American and is thought to have been influenced by time spent in the open plains of Kansas. Schira says she values textiles because of their relations to daily life and humble things. Textiles are a part of us from the moment we are born, when we are wrapped in cloth, until the time we die, when we are again wrapped in cloth. Cynthia Schira received the Gold Medal from the College of Fellows of the American Craft Council in 2000, in recognition of her lifetime of achievement, and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from RISD in 1989. Her work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, and many others. She currently lives and works in Westport, NY.

ISBN:  1 902015 63 0 (softback)
for information about a forthcoming major exhibition in New York please visit http://www.lakegeorgearts.org/2007%20exhibitions.htm

Price:  £7.25

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