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18k gold with white, black
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Transformations ’08:
Icons & Imagery
Innovative new
work by 32 artists
from 9 countries
Contact SAOA for
more information:
860-487-4199
info@saqa.com
S4Q4
August 14-17, 2008
Festival of Ouilts
Birmingham, England
September 14-16, 2008
South African National
Ouilt Festival
Gauteng, just outside of
Johannesburg
Dec. 21, 2008 - Feb., 21 2009
Coos Art Museum
Coos Bay, Oregon
www.saqa.com
zoom
Preview
O u t o f the Loop
Brookfield Craft Center
Innovations in Hooking
Brookfield, Connecticut
March 22 - May 3,2009
brookfieldcraftcenter.org
Hooked rugs, thought to be
an indigenous American art
form, likely originating in
New England in the 18th-cen-
tury, utilized worn clothing
and other fabric scraps to
warm the floors of drafty
rural dwellings. The technique
involved cutting the fabric
into strips and hooking them
with a simple bent metal tool
into a backing such as burlap,
to create a series of loops.
Today, many artists are show-
ing interest in this traditional
form-always appealing for its
texture-and using it for ex-
pressive purposes. Liz Alpert
Fay, an artist currently im-
mersed in this medium and an
instructor at the Brookfield
Craft Center, has organized
this show of 13 artists, citing
as the criterion for selection,
innovation in design, execu-
tion or concept.
A number of the artists
take the two-dimensional
pictorial format of what is
often seen as a folk medium
in sophisticated directions.
In
Contrasts,
Alice Rudell’s
choice of black-and-white
and her combining of the “tex-
ture and fluidity of paint with
the tactile, repetitiveness
of hooking” create an urban
aura. In her hangings, Lara
Magruder adds silk to the
wool and felting, and stitchery
to hooking for rich surface
texture and pattern. Recy-
cling comes into play in,
among others, Constance
Old’s
Sampler: White with
Buttons,
which incorporates
Photos/Rrad Stanton.
