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‘Holding Space: Woven Works’ explores rich, intricate history of weaving

“Holding Space: Woven Works,” on the first floor of Fowler-Kellogg Art Center, runs through Aug. 4.
Dave Munch / photo editor
“Holding Space: Woven Works,” on the first floor of Fowler-Kellogg Art Center, runs through Aug. 4.

The history of weaving, fiber and textiles is a rich, intricate one, and the exhibition currently displayed on the first floor of Fowler-Kellogg Art Center aims to explore it with a selection of woven works. Curated by Associate Director of Chautauqua Visual Arts Galleries Erika Diamond, “Holding Space: Woven Works” is on view through Aug. 4.

While weaving is an overarching, general term that encompasses many variations of the technique, “Holding Space: Woven Works” focuses specifically on jacquard weaving, tapestries and basket weaving. The result is a detailed exploration of contemporary woven work.

For Hope Wang, tapestry-making is a way of understanding time and impermanence. Her tapestries are born out of reflection and rumination on her surroundings, particularly in regard to how they ebb and flow, changing with time.

“So much of my work comes as a symptom of living,” Wang said.

Skye Tafoya’s “rr-shapes.”
Dave Munch / photo editor
Skye Tafoya’s “rr-shapes.”

She enjoys the temporality of her subject matter and finds weaving a suitable way to portray it because of the medium’s depth and texture, as well as the way it lends itself to abstraction. Wang said she is interested in arbitrary boundaries, whether physical or psychological.

For ceramicist Anina Major, weaving became a way to connect with her culture in a more permanent medium.

Originally from the Bahamas, Major wanted to connect with the place where she grew up and explore how she navigates living in a place that isn’t as familiar. She found an outlet to do so through her art. She said her work first came from a place of guilt, but has since evolved.

“I think I’ve evolved from guilt to a deep appreciation for what it offers in my development now as a person,” she said.

Major sought out a way to preserve her heritage through a method she was certain would not be prone to environmental and time-based deterioration.

“There’s a challenge within craft,” Major said. “My grandmother was a craftswoman and I have the objects that she made, but those things deteriorate over time and I can see them deteriorating because I actually have them. It was about, ‘What material can help me preserve something, but also speak to the poetic nature of what I’m dealing with?’ Clay seems to do that to me.”

Carrie Hill’s intricate basketry navigates her experiences as an Indigenous woman. Using traditional techniques she learned from her aunt, she has found herself connecting with the form and material in a meaningful way.

“She’d show me how to do the different weaves and different curls and all of those techniques. I picked it up like it was something I was supposed to do,” she said.

Her piece “Broken & Beautiful” is a woven basket made by echoing the form of a broken pottery piece. She views the work as being reminiscent of a journey through life.

“You go through so many things and so many situations that aren’t necessarily favorable, but those are the character-builders and those are the things that give you who you are,” she said.

Hill’s piece “Haudenosaunee Woven — Still Here” is a reflection on her identity; she made the piece “to show that we’re the original people and we’ve always been here.”

“Slowly, we’ve been touched by colonization, modernization, technology, other people’s religion, but we’re still here and we’re not going anywhere,” Hill said.

Skye Tafoya also cites her Indigenous identity as integral to her work. According to her biography, Tafoya comes from a long line of basket makers on both sides of her family, and she used to make red willow baskets with her dad.

“My dad and I used to gather red willow and weave willow baskets during the winter, and some of my earliest memories of my maternal grandmother were watching her naturally dye and weave baskets out of honeysuckle vines, and white oak,” Tafoya wrote in her artistic statement. I have my art practice because of these loving memories.”

Austin Ballard’s “Dappled Dune 15.”
Dave Munch / photo editor
Austin Ballard’s “Dappled Dune 15.”

She is influenced by basketry and draws on themes of cultural teaching, Cherokee language preservation, motherhood, and personal and familial narratives, according to her biography. Tafoya’s weaving practice is born out of a desire to honor her loved ones and her ancestors.

Austin Ballard’s organic, far-reaching sculptures sit on pedestals in the gallery, inviting the viewer to explore his portrayal of movement and never-ending expansion through his work.

“My first introduction to art objects were actually functional objects,” Ballard said. “They were pots that were thrown, baskets that were used and tools that were used for actual functional purposes, so that was my foray into these mediums as an art form.”

His sculptures are first fleshed out with coils of epoxy clay and then further developed using cane webbing to build out the structure.

Ballard said he hopes viewers will find familiarity in the materiality of his sculptures, drawing connections to furniture and functional objects that use cane webbing, but still be surprised by the unconventional use of the material.

“It’s not something that is foreign as an idea or material, and I think that’s what allows the material to go far, because I’m not trying to confuse you or trick you in any way,” he said.

“I feel like the work succeeds when the viewer or audience has a sense of awe, a sense of unsureness of what they’re looking at and, therefore, a little bit more contemplation on how to digest the form,” Ballard said.

Sarita Westrup’s woven, airy sculptures are bright and vibrant, contrasting with the neutral, earthy tones of Ballard’s contained sculptures.

Westrup’s works know no boundaries, in part because her work analyzes her own understanding of land borders, having grown up along the Texas-Mexico border, according to her artistic statement.

The contemporary basket weaver’s mixed media and woven sculptural forms draw on themes of “tension, movement and containment, joined and permeable space and the bi-cultural aesthetics of her home,” according to her biography.

“The use of baskets — a domestic tool meant for transporting, carrying, and cradling — conveys tenderness and concepts of home,” Westrup wrote in her artistic statement.

For John Paul Morabito, weaving tapestries is a way of understanding identity and queerness.

They said they were much more concerned with technical expertise early on in their career, but they’ve shifted to a focus on the meaning and complexity of a piece since mastering the weaving techniques.

“I compare weaving a lot to language, in a way. There is a grammar and a technical apparatus that you have to work with, and once you have a fluency with that, you’re able to express so much more than you would otherwise,” Morabito said. “Language allows us to say straightforward sentences or speak poetry, and weaving has the same capacity.”

Morabito is interested in the intersection of their queer and ethnic identities and their work aims to explore this overlap through imagery of the Madonna.

Sarita Westrup’s “Klein bottle brush.”
Dave Munch / photo editor
Sarita Westrup’s “Klein bottle brush.”

“In a way, this work is not the painting, it’s not becoming the painting, it’s not becoming the icon of the Madonna,” they said. “Through its failure to become that, it’s offering something else.”

Nearby, Susan Iverson’s abstract tapestries challenge the viewer to engage with the tactile quality of weavings. Her works aim to portray the fleeting hues of dawn and dusk skies through fiber and textiles. 

“You get those incredible colors that most people find mesmerizing, and they transport you to a different place,” Iverson said. “Your memory of them is much stronger than the actual moment that it happens because it’s so fleeting.”

Because weaving is such a tactile art technique, it becomes very engaging for viewers who can easily liken it to painting and similar mediums.

“You get this sense of this very common material that everyone touches every day of their lives,” she said. “(The artists) have employed it to make this thing that we hope visually engages the viewer as an art form and they have a whole different experience with a textile.”

Wang said she appreciates how the exhibition subverts restrictive expectations of what weaving is or is not. She hopes viewers will leave thinking about the connections between the art and how the artists are using different techniques and portraying different ideas to engage in conversation with one another.

“I think that so much of what ties all of this work together, besides process, is using this process to give context to our daily lives and our different experiences,” Wang said. “Ultimately, what successful art does is really allow you to hold on and think more broadly about how things are connected.”

“Even though we all have similar skill sets,” Hill said, “we all did something vastly different with our creations and our mediums.”

Tags : Austin BallardChautauqua Visual ArtscontemporaryErika DiamondexhibitionHolding Space: Woven WorksSarita WestrupSkye TafoyatapestriesThe Artsvisual artsweaving
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The author Julia Weber

Julia Weber is a rising senior in Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College where she is majoring in journalism and minoring in art history. Originally from Athens, Ohio, this is her second summer in Chautauqua and she is excited to cover the visual arts and dance communities at the Institution. She serves as the features editor for Ohio University’s All-Campus Radio Network, a student-run radio station and media hub, and she is a former intern for Pittsburgh Magazine. Outside of her professional life, Julia enjoys attending concerts, making ceramics and spending time with her cat, Griffin.