Context

I visited a show this week that took my breath away. “This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospect” takes up so much oxygen that I felt it in my physical being, although it started in my mind. That wall piece, full of words that museums post as you enter the gallery is important stuff. It gives you context in a swell of visual stimulation, too much to manage in just one visit.

The scale of the wall collages by Aldwyth are larger than life, the details within each giving the feeling that life is flashing in front of you. A universe of tiny people and things float on a circle, the size of a planet.

When scale is diminished (in a good way,) an alphabet of twenty-six cigar boxes stretches across the length of the room on a shelf. Perfectly positioned for peering into each , I see bones, and hair, and snakes in alphabetical order, among other alliterative objects.
The seeing goes beyond the boxes if you let it.

Cigar Box Encyclopedia series

Cosmic

Along other walls are object collections, tucked in the spaces of found and repurposed miniature ‘shelves’, libraries of a silent art process below the surfaces of wood and metal.

There is an invitation to touch, the interaction a gift from the artist.

I have to admit, I feel kinship with Aldwyth. Her ingenuity speaks of resilience and her collections remind me of my own jumble of branches and bones.

The Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head Island, has done an impeccable curation of work in their gallery space. Go see it!

Mint

A quick visit to Charlotte, NC to pinch-hit as grands, gave us one morning to visit the Mint Museum, Randolph. The grounds are a stunning expanse of greenest lawn and mature trees surrounding a modern structure that houses an expansive permanent collection as well as special exhibits crossing millennia. Here are some of the highlights for this artist.

Description on left

A museum educators dream 

Weavers tool box

Pre-Columbian weaving

Quipu

I am duely inspired.

Also, a link to Sleeping Beauties , a ‘wow’ exhibit at the Met.

From My Worktable

Threads color-coded for my next stitching project

I wish you (and myself) a cooler August. Summer in South Carolina is unbearable outdoors, unless you love sweating. I hear that even the pool water is too warm to be refreshing. For me, it’s a matter of working exclusively in the small bedroom I call my studio, where I can draw, and paint, and stitch. Messy projects in the too-hot garage studio must wait, but making never takes a day off.

I’m starting stitched projects, delightfully slow, mesmerized by the thread colors I’ve chosen to convey the narrative.

I am finishing projects that have served as in-process artifacts for a time. Their back and inner workings exposed to view during my USCB show. (Photos on my website.)

I continue to ponder the projects that linger in the psyche, waiting for their story to unfold.

I am in the planning stages of a Journal Keeping Workshop for the Fiber Guild of the Savannahs.

So I practice what I teach in the times between, using the journals I make, to mark time, and narrative, and reveal the intuitive.

Hope you are creating.

Roxanne

Street Ghosts completed 12” x 44”

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Eye Spy Magic

Ideas in Cloth

This past month has been another busy one with a solo show @landaugallery and @pamconnollyphoto featuring a series of my Chromatograms and the collaboration with my friend. I wrote about it in @InspirationalArtMagazine.

Please support working artists by purchasing a copy at the link above.


A sweltering weekend in Washington, DC was cooled by the delightful exhibits I was encouraged to see in person.  The air conditioning at the Smithsonian didn’t hurt either.

So rarely am I able to come face-to-face with the breadth of art that resides in our National Museums.  From South Carolina, it takes eight hours by car to arrive within viewing distance. Temperatures hit the 100’s last weekend, but we managed to visit three museum buildings which currently honor women’s fiber art.

I won’t say much, except I am always deeply inspired by the textures, colors and atmosphere of these revered spaces and the gems they present. I humbly share the art and the artist’s words.

“I’ve just always loved yarn. I’ve loved paint. I’ve loved anything that could rely on color or just line.”

Emma Amos

“I wanted to see how far I could stretch the fiber and still have it say fiber.”

Claire Zeisler

“The weaving tradition - at least in Latin America- seems inseparable from the concept of sacred landscape…one must ask what landscape is inhabited by the weavers.”

Olga de Amaral

“Embroidery is to sewing what poetry is to prose; the stitches can be made to sing out as words in a poem.”

Mariska Karasz

“Judith’s hands move deftly, without pause…powered by a deep internal vision.”

Joyce Scott, Judith’s sister

“There are very few relationships in which you can share everything and trust that there is going to be support and understanding.”
 Maria Castagliola

“I want these objects to be specific mysteries. They glow and sparkle; you are pulled toward them, compelled to approach and see them.”

Joyce Scott

“I don’t want to go do something I know how to do. I want to go do something I don’t know how to do.”

Shiela Hicks

“I left everything in Chicago. I just brought a couple of things…a refrigerator and my cat and my loom. And I didn’t know whether I’d stay but I stayed. I immediately felt free.”

Lenore Tawney

“[Embroideries] are like symphonies that move and develop and change and contain a lifetime of growth, of power, and tenderness; if sharp contrasts and delicate nuances.”

Marguerite Zorach

“I question the negative connotations of fabric, of ribbon, of lace. I turn these symbols of our imprisonment around.”

Miriam Schapiro

Another Solo

It has been a very productive year.  So much so, that I have found little time to write about it.

JANUARY marked my solo show at the University of South Carolina, Beaufort. “Stitching Ghosts” opened after a year of planning. I installed thirty pieces of stitched and woven two and three-dimensional artwork.  The exhibit represents the nine years I’ve lived in South Carolina, processing my life in cloth and thread.

The show photos (courtesy @pamconnollyphoto) are posted on www.roxannelasky.com.  Please take a look at the revamped site as a lot has changed.

One view of “Stitching Ghosts”

UPCOMING: Another opening.  We are rolling out the process shots for my next show.  This is a virtual exhibit that will appear on IG and other “socials,” a long term creative collaboration that promises to tease your sense of scale and nostalgia.

Pam Connolly Photo

Conceived by Pam Connolly during the pandemic, the Laudau Gallery is an architect-built replica of a storefront gallery from her past.  It is built in 1:12 scale miniature where artwork is shrunk to create the illusion of reality in dollhouse form. Photography is common thread.

“unEARTHed” is an exhibit of my foray into taking the soils and plants I collect and interpreting them through the process of chromotography.   Simply put, it is a technique used by farmers and scientists to detect the quality of soil.  Photographic chemicals are used to elicit delightful circular patterns on filter paper.

Sample Chromatogram

We are excited to be bringing this exhibit to Instagram in all its stages. Please like, comment, and share with followers and friends.

(Where’s the textile? I have taken inspiration from the results to create small tapestries with cloth and thread. )