|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Museum on Main opens a new traveling exhibition next week — “Stitching California: Fiber Artists Interpret the State’s People, Life, and Land” — to run June 23 through Aug. 14.
The collection of art quilts from more than 40 artists interprets the complexities of the state through realistic and abstract imagery with quality workmanship in this show of beauty and originality.
“We’re really looking forward to this show,” curator Ken MacLennan said. “It’s a great opportunity to show contemporary takes on art forms that are usually seen as very traditional. In addition, the breadth of ideas and visions that the curators have assembled under the theme of ‘California’ — all of it relevant, all of it beautiful — is just astonishing.”
The quilts pay tribute to iconic California views as well as the beautiful native flora of the state. But distinct, darker themes also emerge: the impacts of climate change through drought, flood and fire; the lasting detrimental effects of the Gold Rush; and persecutions faced by California’s Indigenous peoples, Hispanic population, and Japanese Americans interned during World War II. The fiber works run the emotional gamut from hope to despair.
“Stitching California” originated at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, and is traveling through Exhibit Envoy in partnership with Studio Art Quilt Associates.
Supporting programs at Museum on Main will include appearances by some of the exhibit’s artists on select Saturdays, a one-day show and demonstration by local fiber artists, a fiber-art inspired crafts program for children and families, and a virtual installment of the museum’s “A Discussion With…” speaker series. For details, visit www.museumonmain.org.
