Thursday, August 25, 2011

Tour The Opulent Object in Wood, Metal and Fiber: Richard Mafong, Mike Harrison, and Jon Riis Exhibition with Tapestry Artist Jon Eric Riis

Sunday, October 23, 2011
1:00 - 3:00 pm
Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), 1315 Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30309
Cost: $20 for individual SEFAA members and $25 for non-members (includes MODA admission)
Go to http://www.fiberartsalliance.org/home/classes to print out the registration form. Mail the completed form with your payment to: 125 Parkerwood Way, Alpharetta, GA 30022.
Maximum Number of Participants: 30
Registration Deadline: October 16, 2011

Join us for an in-depth tour of the tapestry portion of The Opulent Object in Wood, Metal, and Fiber exhibition with artist Jon Eric Riis. Jon's exquisitely woven and embellished tapestries "reference myths, beliefs, and ideals of past cultures and examine issues of identity, life, and the human condition." You won't want to miss this chance to experience Riis' tapestries and to understand their concepts, designs, and execution firsthand. Light refreshments will be available after the tour and you'll also have time to view the concurrent exhibition "The AIDS Memorial Quilt" on your own.

Jon Eric Riis is an internationally-known and collected fiber artist. His tapestries are included in many permanent collections, including The Louvre, The Art Institute of Chicago, the American Craft Museum in New York and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Museum of Art in Washington DC. His most recent solo exhibition "Jon Eric Riis: Thinking with Threads" just concluded in Paris. Jon is also the recipient of many awards and grants including the 2011 Master's of the Medium award from the Renwick Alliance, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Fulbright Grant, and an Honorary Award at the 10th International Triennial of Tapestry, Lotz, Poland in 2001.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

SCAD Museum of Art presents “The Art of Faith Ringgold: Story Quilts and Freedom Quests”

Note: We debated on which of blogs to put this one! It could go in history, education, arts... we opted for our Craft Conduit blog 'cause it had the word "quilt' in it. We could have closed our eyes and pointed just as well! Maybe we'll add it in one of our other blogs later, also. - gfp staff
The SCAD Museum of Art presents its first major exhibition of 2011 with “The Art of Faith Ringgold: Story Quilts and Freedom Quests,” on view Jan. 31 through April 15 at the SCAD Museum of Art, 227 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The exhibition will open with a lecture by Ringgold 7 p.m. Jan. 31 at SCAD’s Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St., followed by a book signing. The lecture and exhibition are free and open to the public.

Ringgold, a celebrated African American painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist and illustrator, has works in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and numerous others. The artist, who has recently celebrated her 80th birthday, is the recipient of numerous honors, among which are 22 honorary doctorates. Her painted story quilts include series such as the French Collection and the American Collection. Her children’s book Tar Beach has won Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Awards. Ringgold explores diverse historical and cultural traditions in art as well as complex themes of freedom, feminism and race through her rich visual imagery.

The exhibition, “The Art of Faith Ringgold,” will feature 60 pieces from across four decades, including a number of Ringgold’s most recent works directly from her New York gallery that will be on view in a museum for the first time. Seven story quilts and tankas from the Coming to Jones Road series of 2000 and 2010 capture evocative and memorable visions of a late 18th-century epic journey to freedom by a group of slaves combining dramatic episodes, and counterpointed by heroic icons from Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman to Martin Luther King Jr. Some scenes are set within hauntingly sumptuous nocturnal landscapes; all are described with a vibrant palette and set off by text-enriched backgrounds and borders. The large-scale paintings resonate with family and national historic narrative. Ringgold’s characteristic duality of beautiful imagery and deceptively simple characters and storylines repeatedly challenge the viewers to reexamine mythologies of cultural memory and identity.

The exhibition includes examples in various media by the artist, such as masks, dolls, soft sculptures, painted story quilts, drawings, prints and illustrations. In addition to Coming to Jones Road, other highlights include the Declaration of Freedom and Independence quilt (2009), Jazz Stories (2004), and the complete illustrations for Tar Beach (1991) and Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail (2007).

The SCAD Museum of Art, Trustees Lecture Series, Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, and the Savannah Black Heritage Festival sponsor the exhibition and lecture, with generous support from the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation (www.jacobandgwenlawrence.org). The SCAD Museum of Art is open Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. For more information, call 912.525.7191 or contact museum@scad.edu.
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