Unraveling Narratives
June 6 – July 25
Curated by Elana Kundell & Peter Tyas
This summer we will mark the 250th anniversary of our nation with an exhibition of contemporary fiber art. The exhibition will feature a diverse range of artists whose work redefine textiles through merging traditional techniques like weaving, knitting, and embroidery with modern themes of identity, sustainability, and activism.
The exhibition takes the long view of the history of a nation and this place that we call home. Fiber itself has a deep symbolic meaning, recalling generations of domestic labor, the struggles embodiment of memories in the everyday objects that fill our homes. The exhibition considers the natural process and the geological time which has shaped the land upon which we stand, as well as the layers of materials culture which sit beneath the surface of our modern lives.
You are invited to take part in creating an artwork within the exhibition. Cyrena Nouzille will install a massive artist made ‘nest’ in our sculpture garden, made from driftwood and barbed wire and bound with fibers and other found objects. Starting on April 12, community members are invited to write upon long strips of paper with personal narratives, memories, or messages that reflect this moment in history. These strips of paper will then be woven together around the rim of the nest to replicate the patterns of lives and thoughts bound together in place that shape the place where we live.
Exhibition events
Opening Celebration
Spinning Paper into Yarn
Gallery events
Hemisphere
Altered Bible, thread, wax
7″ x 7″ x 4″
In my work, word is central, as related to the body, and to space and memory. While my art is a direct extension and materialization of my religious practice and interest in Jewish and Christian traditions, I continue to explore beneath the communal social structures to render those larger religious mysteries within the sacred realm that go beyond the boundaries of tradition. It is my ever present desire to construct meaning out of the common and domestic forms that abound in my world, and to insert my practice into larger currents of religious thought, history and ritual expressions which define life, lived-out within the cosmos.
Remains. Tectonic forces. Vanished seas.
Vinyl, recycled screen printing ink on masking tape, latex balloons, gel medium, pine wood, sycamore seed, resin, laser prints (Button bush plant, Mississippian fossils from Missouri, & sycamore seeds), crystal.
67″H X 94″W X 5″D
Alicia Piller is a Los Angeles–based sculptor whose mixed-media installations explore material memory, ecological systems, and cultural erasure through biomorphic and architectural form. Raised in Chicago, she earned a BFA in Painting and Anthropology from Rutgers University in 2004, grounding her work in both visual language and the study of human systems.
Piller spent a decade in New York City working in the fashion industry, followed by three and a half years in Santa Fe, New Mexico—experiences that shaped her distinct sculptural voice and deep engagement with material transformation. She received her MFA in Sculpture and Installation from CalArts in 2019.
Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum and the California African American Museum, among others, and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times. She is represented by Track 16 in Los Angeles.
Dream
Handwoven tapestry: un-dyed alpaca
43.5″ x 31.5″
Michael F. Rohde has been weaving since 1973. His formal training in drawing, color and design was at the Alfred Glassel School of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. His activities include lectures, workshop teaching, juror, exhibition organizer and exhibitor in many local, national and international juried and invited shows.
Recently his work has been included in the United States Department of State Art in Embassies Program, exhibits at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, the American Craft Museum in New York, the invitational Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland, from Lausanne to Beijing (twice), Houses for Nomads (a solo exhibit at the Janina Monkute-Marks Museum in Lithuania), an exhibition at the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park in San Diego. His work is in the permanent collections of the Textile Museum (Washington, DC), the Mingei, the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, the Ventura County Museum of Art, the Racine Art Museum and The Art Institute of Chicago.