Anne Wilson (born 1949) is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art (techniques such as stitching, crocheting, and knitting) to other media.[1] Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.[2][3]
Anne Wilson, A Chronicle of Days, 1997-98. Collection 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
Anne Wilson was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1949. At 15, she attended George School, a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, where she received training in feminist theory and the philosophies of passive resistance through the study of Gandhi's teachings on non-violent politics. In her later research, Wilson remarked that her lessons at George School, especially Gandhi's exhortation to all Indians that they must practice spinning—for social, political, economic and spiritual reasons—profoundly influenced her life and artistic practice.[4]
Anne Wilson's artwork explores personal and public practices of ritual and social systems, ideas of de-construction and re-construction in both microcosmic and macrocosmic worlds of public and private architecture, as well as themes of time and loss.[5]
Wilson received a B.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts (CCA) where she pursued interdisciplinary studies in the visual arts. At CCA, Wilson developed an understanding of art within a cultural context, a way of thinking emphasized by CCA instructor, art historian and anthropologist Dr. Ruth Boyer. Subsequently, Wilson's graduate research focused on temporary textile architecture such as the Zulu indlu and the Sub-Saharan African black tent. For Wilson these interests intersected with the popular concerns of generative systems, such as the methods being pioneered by artist Buckminster Fuller.[6] During this time, Wilson was also influenced by the international art fabric movement, including artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Ritzi and Peter Jacobi, Olga de Amaral, and Ed Rossbach.
During the 1970s while living in Berkeley, California, Wilson argued for the contemporary relevance of fiber and textile processes alongside more conventional fine art materials and techniques. Wilson began using hair as a fiber material in place of thread in 1988. Her works such as Hair Work[7] and A Chronicle of Days[8] consist of daily stitching where the artist "stained" clean white scraps of cloth with small patches of hair-based needlework. Wilson began inviting audience participation with her project Hairinquiry (1996–1999). Hairinquiry collected responses to the questions: How does it feel to lose your hair? What does it mean to cut your hair? The project was later archived through an online website.[9][10][11]
In 2002, Wilson began the series Topologies (2002-ongoing) at the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial exhibition. In Topologies, expansive networks of found black lace are deconstructed to create large horizontal topographies. Some of the structures are formed by Wilson from computer-mediated scans of lace fragments that are manipulated and re-materialized by hand stitching. The form of Topologies is inspired by forms of physical and electronic networks, city structures, immateriality, biology and the urban sprawl.[9][12][13]
In 2010, Wilson produced one of her most ambitious installations at the Knoxville Museum of Art in East Tennessee. Local Industry, a central component of the exhibition Anne Wilson: Wind/Rewind/Weave, was a site-specific installation as a collaborative "textile factory".[14] From January 22 through April 25, 2010, visitors to the Knoxville Museum of Art worked together to produce a bolt of cloth. Wilson conceived of Wind/Rewind/Weave as a meditation on labor, acknowledging the specific geographic location of the Knoxville Museum of Art in the historical heartland of both hand weaving traditions and textile mill production in the United States. The Local Industry cloth, 75.9 feet (23.1m) long, was on display at the Knoxville Museum of Art in 2011.[15]
Also related to textile production in content, Wilson has choreographed 4 thread walking performances, conceptual movement works based upon weaving (Wind-Up: Walking the Warp Chicago, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, 2008; Wind-Up: Walking the Warp Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2010; Walking the Warp Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England, 2012; and To Cross (Walking New York), The Drawing Center, New York, 2014). In all her performances, Wilson is working through direct physical participation to think about time, labor, art, and cultural production.
Wilson continues her hair and cloth-works practice, alongside the creation of horizontal topographies, installations, and performances. New works were included in her solo exhibition, Dispersions, at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in 2013, and Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present originating at the ICA Boston in 2014. In 2015-16 her work was included in Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today originating at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, and Art_Textiles at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, England. In 2016 she opened a solo exhibition at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle.[16][17][18]
Exhibitions
Anne Wilson, Dispersions (installation), 2013, thread, hair, cloth, white frames. Rhona Hoffman Gallery, ChicagoAnne Wilson, Rewinds, 2010, glass. Rhona Hoffman Gallery, ChicagoAnne Wilson, Rewinds, 2010, glass.Anne Wilson, To Cross Walking New York, 2014, performance and sculpture. The Drawing Center (photo: Angeli Sion)Anne Wilson, Walking the Warp Houston, 2010, performance and sculpture. Contemporary Arts Museum HoustonAnne Wilson, Walking the Warp Manchester, 2012, performance. Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UKAnne Wilson, Local Industry, 2010, performance and production. Knoxville Museum of ArtAnne Wilson, Local Industry Cloth, 2010, performance and production.Anne Wilson: Wind/Rewind/Weave (exhibition catalog)
2016
Anne Wilson: Drawings and Objects, James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA (solo)
Adamson, Glenn and Bryan-Wilson, Julia. Art in the Making: Artists and their Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing. London: Thames & Hudson, 2016, back cover photo and pp.218–220.
Harris, Jennifer (editor/curator), Art_Textiles, (exhibit catalog, essay by Pennina Barnett, "Cloth, Memory and Loss"), The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, UK, 2015, pp.10, 24-31, 84-85
Ferris, Alison and Patterson, Karen. Toward Textiles. (exhibit catalog) Sheboygan, WI: John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2015, cover image and p.5.
Vinebaum, Lisa. "Performing Globalization in the Textile Industry: Anne Wilson and Mandy Cano Villalobos," The Handbook of Textile Culture (anthology). Janis Jefferies, Diana Wood Conroy, and Hazel Clark, eds., London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015, Chapter 11, pp, 169-185.
Taft, Maggie. ARTFORUM, January 2014, Vol. 52, No. 5., "Anne Wilson" at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, (review), p.217
Ollman, Leah. Art in America, December 2014,"Thread Lines" Drawing Center, (review), p.149.
Fiber art refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as part of the works' significance, and prioritizes aesthetic value over utility.
Anni Albers was a German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art.
Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.
Lenore Tawney was an American artist working in fiber art, collage, assemblage, and drawing. She is considered to be a groundbreaking artist for the elevation of craft processes to fine art status, two communities which were previously mutually exclusive. Tawney was born and raised in an Irish-American family in Ohio and moved to Chicago to start her career. In the 1940's and 50's, she studied art at several different institutions and perfected her craft as a weaver. In 1957, she moved to New York where she maintained a highly successful career into the 1960's. In the 1970's Tawney focused increasingly on her spirituality, but continued to make work until her death.
Claire Zeisler was an American fiber artist who expanded the expressive qualities of knotted and braided threads, pioneering large-scale freestanding sculptures in this medium. Throughout her career Zeisler sought to create "large, strong, single images" with fiber. Zeisler's non-functional structures were constructed using traditional weaving and avant-garde off the loom techniques such as square knotting, wrapping, and stitching. Zeisler preferred to work with natural materials such as jute, sisal, raffia, hemp, wool, and leather. The textiles were often left un-dyed, evidence of Zeisler's preference for natural coloration that emphasized the fiber itself. When she used color, however, Zeisler gravitated towards red.
Sheila Hicks is an American artist. She is known for her innovative and experimental weavings and sculptural textile art that incorporate distinctive colors, natural materials, and personal narratives.
Olga de Amaral is a Colombian textile and visual artist known for her large-scale abstract works made with fibers and covered in gold and/or silver leaf. Because of her ability to reconcile local concerns with international developments, de Amaral became one of the few artists from South America to become internationally known for her work in fiber during the 1960s and ‘70s. She is also considered an important practitioner in the development of postwar Latin American Abstraction. She currently lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.
The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles is an art museum in Downtown San Jose, California, USA. Founded in 1977, the museum is the first in the United States devoted solely to quilts and textiles as an art form. Holdings include a permanent collection of over 1,000 quilts, garments and ethnic textiles, emphasizing artists of the 20th- and 21st-century, and a research library with over 500 books concerning the history and techniques of the craft.
Mary Lee Hu is an American artist, goldsmith, and college level educator known for using textile techniques to create intricate woven wire jewelry.
Polly Barton is an American textile artist.
Bhakti Ziek is an American artist known for narrative weavings incorporating contemporary jacquard technology. She has been active in the contemporary fiber field for over four decades as an artist, author, teacher and lecturer. Ziek currently resides in Santa Fe, NM.
Oceanside Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located at 704 Pier View Way, Oceanside, California in northern San Diego County, California. The museum began holding exhibits in 1995, with a dedicated facility opening on October 6, 1997. It is housed in two buildings designed by Irving Gill and Frederick Fisher, modernist architects from southern California.
Lisa Oppenheim is an American multimedia artist.
Kay Sekimachi is an American fiber artist and weaver, best known for her three-dimensional woven monofilament hangings as well as her intricate baskets and bowls.
Helena Hernmarck is a Swedish tapestry artist who lives and works in the United States. She is best known for her monumental tapestries designed for architectural settings.
Deana Lawson (1979) is an American artist, educator, and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is primarily concerned with intimacy, family, spirituality, sexuality, and Black aesthetics.
Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.
Françoise Grossen is a textile artist known for her braided and knotted rope sculptures. She lives and works in New York City. Grossen’s work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Joan Livingstone is an American contemporary artist, educator, curator, and author based in Chicago. She creates sculptural objects, installations, prints, and collages that reference the human body and bodily experience.
Lucy Malirrimurruwuy Armstrong Wanapuyngu is an Aboriginal Australian master fibre artist. She is an elder of the Gapuwiyak community, and is heavily involved in the transmission of knowledge dealing with fibre works. She has worked with anthropologist Louise Hamby, since 1995, and many of her works have been spotlighted at different art festivals, collections, galleries, and museums.
Mary Zicafoose is an American textile artist, weaver, and teacher who specializes in ikat, an ancient technique in which threads are wrapped, tied and resist-dyed before weaving. Zicafoose is the author of Ikat: The Essential Handbook to Weaving Resist-Dyed Cloth (2020). Her works are part of private and public collections, including at least 16 embassies around the world as part of the U.S. Art in Embassies Program.
References
↑ In the October 2008 issue of Art in America corresponding editor Susan Snodgrass wrote: "Anne Wilson's evocative, highly individual practice applies traditional textile processes to other mediums, creating hybrid works that combine elements of sculpture, installation, and drawing."
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
