Over Under Over: Work from California Fibers

Citrus College Art Gallery in Glendora, CA, presents Over Under Over: Work from California Fibers from November 5, 2024 – March 5, 2025. The opening reception will be Wednesday, November 20, from 11 AM-1 PM.

Brecia Kralovic-Logan, Lunar Lullaby

Lunar Lullaby is a collage of hand dyed silk fabric pieces that evoke the play of sunlight on water. While manipulating the fabrics in the dyeing process, I am creating areas of graduated depth of color to layer onto the canvas in undulating waves. The fabric creates texture on the canvas and a sense of movement that draws the viewer into a memory of moonlit nights at the shore.

Over Under Over features the work of twenty-two members of California Fibers, including Sandy Abrams, Charlotte Bird, Ashley V. Blalock, Carrie Burckle, Marilyn McKenzie Chaffee, Doshi, Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Susan Henry, Lydia Tjioe Hall, Annette Heully, Brittany Kiertzner, Brecia Kralovic-Logan, Kathy Nida, Carol Nilsen, Liz Oliver, Marty Ornish, Michael F. Rohde, Rebecca Smith, Cameron Taylor-Brown, Elise Vazelakis, Debby Weiss and Peggy Wiedemann.

Peggy Wiedemann, Exploring Too

As a contemporary fiber artist, I have a strong preference for natural fibers and materials. Their shapes, designs and colors inspire the artwork. The wonderful thing about using organic materials, such as pine needles, Irish waxed linen thread and cordage is that they have a life and character of their own. I sometimes like to combine these naturally-derived elements with found objects.

I start with pine needles using the basketry technique of coiling. The stitching over and under the pine needles forms the shape of the pieces. The play among mind and materials continually stimulates the creative process and leads my work in new directions. Using traditional materials in sometimes unorthodox ways, I want to create designs, shapes and styles that stretch the imagination and react with the senses.

Over Under Over explores the wide variety of materials that California Fibers’ members use, especially regarding their expert manipulation of mixed media. Juried by the Citrus College Visual Arts faculty and curated by Dyane Duffy, the works on view were selected in relation to their current visual arts curriculum, aiming to inspire students and present diverse methods of creation.

Lydia Tjioe Hall, House With Window

I create meaning and narrative through form using wire. By exploring resonances between a single line and densely packed wire, my pieces become metaphors evoking themes of time, change, balance, tension, and fragility. These sculptural objects are created through repetitive and time intensive processes such as weaving, netting, and looping. In my house series I am currently exploring the theme of ‘liminal space’. I am interested in the ‘space between’- how stacked layers of woven wire are denser, therefore allow less light to passthrough versus a single woven layer. Juxtaposing layers of different densities gives the houses an unexpected ethereal lightness.

“We chose work that we think can connect with some concepts or use of materials in our classes – for example, the use of photography, the use of wire that students manipulate in 3D design, and the use of thread as a line drawn on fabric. By making these connections to some aspect of the students’ current work, we hope this exhibit will take them to a new place, where they can consider pushing their use of media somewhere new!”

Brittany Kiertzner, Eniohrhen:ne/ Tomorrow.

I am a mixed media and textile fine artist from Southern California and a member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe. With a fine art background from California State University Fullerton, I incorporate traditional Mohawk Iroquois techniques and works with repurposed materials, wire, textiles, and paint. My intricate stitching forms tangent lines and wampum circles, exploring themes of regeneration, authenticity, and subversion while reframing my personal history. This exhibition showcases my innovative work alongside other California Fibers members, highlighting diverse approaches to mixed media artistry.

The Citrus College Art Gallery is located in VA120 in the Visual Arts Building at 1000 W Foothill Blvd, Glendora, CA. Gallery hours are usually M-F 9 AM-2 PM, but are subject to change, so please email artgallery@citruscollege.edu to confirm prior to visiting. Admission is free. A paid parking pass is required to park in student lots. Events are being planned that could include an artists’ panel and a mending workshop. Check their website and subscribe to their newsletter for details.

Liz Oliver, Secret Garden

When you break it down, the very act of doing shibori is Over and Under. Wrapping string around a pipe, going over and under, creates these undulations that mimic universal patterns in nature.

Everything I do is based on intuition. There are innumerable opportunities for experimentation, as the results within this medium are quite often unpredictable, or fluid. Much of my sculptural work utilizes the Arashi Shibori technique, otherwise know as “pole wrapping”. Because these pieces are bound on the bias, I am able to create sculpture that is inherently twisting. There is an organic fluidity that is also inherent within me. The resolution of a piece typically requires multiple attempts until the form visually sings. I aim to focus less on creating a recognizable shibori pattern, but to have more intention and abstraction. I do not strive for perfection, I prefer what is authentic.

Pleats can be seen as a visual representation of fluidity: a ripple, a wave, a fingerprint, woodgrain, windblown sand. Life is fluid, and we all have our ups and downs. A woven beauty of hopes, loves, losses, dreams, realities, visions, past, present and future.

The Citrus College Art Gallery is part of the Visual and Performing Arts program at Citrus College. The gallery’s mission is to engage students and community through diverse exhibitions featuring student, faculty, and visiting art exhibitions.

Michael F. Rohde, re:Lament

Recent works have taken photographs as the primary image sources. The photos are reduced to a set of large pixels that are then woven by hand. This produces an image that can hardly be considered a realistic portrayal of the original, but that hints at shapes and reflects colors of the original image. The piece in this exhibition, “re: Lament”, came out of a collaborative exhibition at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA, with ceramic sculptor Cheryl Ann Thomas. This tapestry is a response to her porcelain sculpture “Lament.”

Watch this space for announcements of workshops and/or artist panels coming up in the next few months.

Charlotte Bird, Gyre

The Great Pacific Gyre garbage patch is estimated to cover 620,000 square miles. It consists primarily of thousands of tons of mixed plastic debris ranging from plastic bags and water bottles to fragments of micro plastics.

I constructed this artist book from a quilt about the Pacific gyre. The quilt never resolved and rested in a drawer until this solution emerged. The materials used are melted plastic bags, recycled plastic and fabric bits, fly fishing leader, and commercial cotton.

Repair, reuse, recycle

Influences/Influencers: California Fibers at Craft in America

The Craft in America Center in Los Angeles, CA, presents Influences/Influencers: California Fibers from September 9 - December 2, 2023. Influences/Influencers features the work of twenty-three members of California Fibers: Sandy Abrams, Olivia Batchelder, Charlotte Bird, Ashley V. Blalock, Carrie Burckle, Marilyn McKenzie Chaffee, Ben Cuevas, Doshi, Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Lydia Tjioe Hall, Susan Henry, Annette Heully, Anifaye Korngute, Kathy Nida, Liz Oliver, Marty Ornish, Michael F. Rohde, Rebecca Smith, Cameron Taylor-Brown, Elise Vazelakis, Debra Weiss, Peggy Wiedemann, and Aneesa Shami Zizzo.

This exhibit showcases the breadth of the influential and innovative work created by members of California Fibers.  Emily Zaiden, Director and Curator of the Craft in America Center, states, “The artists in this exhibition are part of an historic organization that has been at the forefront of contemporary fiber art in Southern California, across the state, and far beyond.”  Influences/Influencers represents some of the vast influences that are shaping fiber today,and simultaneously is a celebration of how fiber has become a beam of influence on the broader contemporary art world in recent years. 

Works in the exhibition are accompanied by artist statements expressing the myriad influences on their individual artistic practices and are a window into the many threads that continue to shape the field of contemporary textile art and artists.  Some examples follow.

Susan Henry says of her work Vortex II, “I find great inspiration through art history and most notably the artist Joseph Mallord William Turner… Turner's influence in my work is reflective of a combination of perspective, movement and chaos as I aspire, like Turner, to convey mood rather than information.”

Susan Henry, Vortex II: deconstructed wool trousers, cotton canvas Arashi wrapped and discharged resist, machine stitched.

Annette Heully states that her piece Weight of Change – Red is made with yarns that were gifts from her mentor Frances Bulwa. “By using this material it was my way of honoring her memory. The pieces all have unwoven sections exposing the warp threads expressing the feelings of loss. Over time the weft threads slowly settle, starting to close these gaps referencing grief and the element of time in healing.”

Annette Heully, Weight of Change - Red: handwoven wool and cotton.

Ben Cuevas says that his more recent work is influenced by Agnes Martin. Her white paintings that explore the idea of the grid are referenced in his current series, Non-Binary Code, of which Reveal/Conceal Diptych is a part. “I knit with acrylic fiber on canvas in a stitch pattern derived from the word NON-BINARY, which I translated into binary code, with knits for 1’s and purls for 0’s. The finished work is an abstract minimalist white grid knit-painting, and a coded meditation on gender identity.”

Ben Cuevas, Reveal/Conceal Diptych: acrylic fiber on canvas.

Anifaye Korngute finds inspiration from her study of choreographic artmaking as an experimental and explorative form. “I learned about Black Mountain College from the perspective of Merce Cunningham and John Cage — Chance Dance, which continues to influence my artmaking today.” Her piece They Call Me Mellow Yellow is a current expression of this approach.

Anifaye Korngute, They Call Me Mellow Yellow: silk noil (raw silk), washi paper, fabric dye, sumie ink, gouache, acrylic, cotton, stitch, charcoal.

Carrie Burckle states that her influence for (en)gendered vessel “comes from my teacher Carol Shaw-Sutton. Carol Shaw-Sutton was my professor at CSULB where I earned my MFA. She was head of the fiber program for 35 years…Carol emphasized deep knowledge of materials and skill building as a foundation for idea-based work that pushed the boundaries of fiber art.”

Carrie Burckle, (en)gendered vessel: kraft paper twine, house paint, twining.

Elise Vazelakis says, “As a weaver, I have long been inspired by the weavings of Deidrick Brackens and his unique process of combining the tactile nature of yarn with the rich tradition of storytelling. His work has influenced my own artwork in countless ways, but perhaps most significantly in my series Exposed. This series is deeply personal to me as it incorporates construction materials salvaged from the rebuilding of my home that perished in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. I have been able to imbue these materials with new meanings and bring my own story to life in a tangible way.”  A piece from this series, Exposed VIII, is included in this exhibition. 

Elise Vazelakis, Exposed VIII; loom-woven cotton, concrete anchors, wood-panel-mounted.

Kathy Nida’s piece, And Then There Was One, exemplifies the ongoing influence of  “…women artists or artists creating about being female; this piece is about being a feminist, which means raising both my kids, one male and one female, to accept a woman’s equity and strength in today’s world, to make no assumptions of what is right for this or that gender, or to even let biological gender limit us.”

Kathy Nida, And Then There Was One: fused applique, machine stitched, machine quilted.

Lydia Tjioe Hall states that her piece Nesting Houses is influenced by Ruth Asawa’s “sculptures within sculptures.”

Lydia Tjioe Hall, Nesting Houses, Steel wire looping technique.

Michael Rohde explains that his work Birnalese Sonnet is one of a series “examining languages, how they are expressed and used. This subset of that effort comes due to influences by Jim Bassler’s own work based on examination of Peruvian textiles. My connection to language and Peruvian textiles comes from speculations by scholars such as Mary Frame. She has explored the idea that repeated patterns in textiles might encode undeciphered verbal ideas…”

Michael F. Rohde, Birnalese Sonnet: handwoven tapestry: silk, natural dyes.

The Craft in America Center is located at 8415 West Third Street in Los Angeles, CA. Hours are Tuesday – Saturday from noon – 6 PM.  Admission is free. The opening reception with participating artists is September 9 from 3-5 PM. Workshops and talks TBA.  Check the Craft in America website for more information about upcoming events.

About Craft in America and the Craft in America Center: Craft in America is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit arts organization founded in 2004 with the mission to promote and advance original handcrafted work through programs in all media. In addition to the acclaimed PBS documentary series, Craft in America promotes and advances original handcrafted work through the Craft in America Center—a small museum, library, and programmatic space where visitors engage directly with art, artists, and ideas. They give voice to traditional and contemporary craft, ranging from functional to purely conceptual, through personal engagement. They organize exhibitions, artist talks, scholarly lectures, a reading group, book signings, hands-on workshops, demonstrations, student field trips, concerts, and publications. The Craft in America Center produces 6-8 exhibitions per year featuring work by local and nationally acclaimed artists. They highlight the work of numerous local craft-based artists while providing a platform in Los Angeles for the nation’s finest artists. For those who are not able to visit in-person, exhibitions are digitized and shared on their website and artist talks are filmed and archived online as resources for all to access. The Center also operates an education outreach program, Craft in Schools, which offers standards-based art education for underrepresented LAUSD and public K-12 schools and local colleges. 

A Closer Look at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai, CA

California Fibers has a new show opening this weekend at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai, California. The opening reception is Saturday, January 18, from 2-4 PM.

This exhibition coincides with and celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of California Fibers, a group that supports artistic growth and professional advancement for contemporary Southern California artists working in fiber media. All works in the exhibition address the theme “a closer look”, as interpreted by each artist, from imagery and inspiration to materials and processes.

“The work in this exhibition features contemporary art utilizing media and processes rooted in the earliest forms of human endeavor,” says Kevin Wallace, Director of the Center. “There are cutting-edge works in weaving, basketry, sculpture, quilting, embroidery, felting, surface design, knitting, crochet, wearables, and mixed media.” California Fibers: A Closer Look features diverse works created by eighteen members of California Fibers: Linda Anderson, Olivia Batchelder, Charlotte Bird, Marilyn Chaffee, Doshi, Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Lydia Tjioe Hall, Susan Henry, Chari Myers, Serge Nepomnin, Kathy Nida, Carol Nilsen, Liz Oliver, Michael Rohde, Rebecca Smith, Cameron Taylor-Brown, Debby Weiss and Peggy Wiedemann. California Fibers: A Closer Look continues through February 29, 2020. Many of the artists will be present at the opening reception on January 18 from 2-4 PM. Other events include a workshop by Polly Jacobs Giacchina on February 8. Details and registration are available at www.beatricewood.com.

Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts is open to the public Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11 AM – 5 PM, and is located at 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Road in Ojai, CA.

Although the show is documented below, as those of us in the fiber arts can tell you, the work is always much more amazing in person, so stop on by to see the exhibit.

Chari Myers, The Last Season, handmade, vacuumed abaca paper, Procion MX dyes, foliage, wax

Michael F. Rohde, Gonwerlish Sonnet, handwoven tapestry: silk and natural dyes

“My piece in the exhibit is a smaller version from a series of imagined language tapestries. The larger ones are nearly seven feet tall, and address very large themes.  Gonwerlish Sonnet is a mere 17” on the side, and considers a more intimate use of language - smaller and more carefully considered use of words. Not only is the language imagined, but so is the name of the language.”

Charlotte Bird, Microbes 5, hand-dyed and commercial cotton, polyester thread, hand-dyed perle cotton thread

“I have always been fascinated by the microscope, as much for the shapes and forms of the creatures and plants visible, as for the science. Big and small microbes form the foundations of ecosystems and therefore life on earth.”

Kathy Nida, Climate Goddess, commercial and hand-dyed cottons

“Decoding the details of our current climate crisis, wishing there were someone in charge who cared enough to fix it.”

Kathy Nida, Sweet Delicious, commercial and hand-dyed cottons

“A closer look at love and its components.”

Peggy Wiedemann, Totem, pine needles, Irish waxed linen, old wooden toy parts

“The outside and the inside of the piece are not alike. You need to step up and take a closer look to see the difference.”

Peggy Wiedemann, The Tribe, cloth, Pakistani grass, India rag cordage, Irish waxed linen, old metal and wood objects

Linda Anderson, In the Old Way, cotton fabrics, Jacquard textile paints, bamboo batting, polyester thread

Cameron Taylor-Brown, Reflections/Giverny #2, linen yarns, silk and cotton fabric, wood, and paint; weaving, photographic transfer, embroidery

“Reflections/Giverny #2 takes a close look at the interplay between an image of one particular tree and its watery reflection, from a photograph taken in early spring at Monet’s garden. The original image has been abstracted and placed in repeat, inviting the viewer to explore the delicate patterning this creates. “

Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Grown Wild, date palm, steel cable, wire, and jute

“My work Grown Wild allows for a more intimate, up close look into my fiber art wall sculpture. The viewer is allowed to see inside the sculpture. Just a little surprise.”

Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Land There, wool, linen, burlap, wire, and salvaged metal

"Land There is an overview, map-like, fiber wall hanging. The viewer can decipher terrain and topography.”

Doshi, The Old Pond a Frog Leaps In, silk organza, acid dye, discharge, bomaki shibori

“The old pond
A frog leaps in.
Sound of the water
Look again.”

Liz Oliver, Wing, shibori-dyed silk habotai, acid dye and discharge

Debby Weiss, 657 Main St., fabric, yarn, thread, and steel

“A glimpse from above and through the fence, wondering just where it all begins and ends.”

Debby Weiss, Blush, fabric and thread

Rebecca Smith, Contexture, mixed fibers, seed beads, wire

Lydia Tjioe Hall, Spaghettification, cloth-covered wire

Lydia Tjioe Hall, Listening, copper, enamel, cloth-covered wire

Marilyn McKenzie Chaffee, Firefall II, cottons, pieced, appliqued, painted, stippled, machine- and hand-quilted, French knots

Olivia Batchelder, Vanishing Landscapes: Desert, wood box, agave husk, colored pencil

“It is at the edges where one first notices a particular form as being different from another form. Continuing the glance, likenesses merge in wondrous similarity and differences are celebrated.”

Serge Nepomnin, Laughing Sisters (three orange-red poppies), 100% silk charmeuse (painting stretched over a canvas), Jacquard Red-Label dyes, Jacquard gutta, Jacquard Resistad

Look closer! 

“There are three

Happy little sisters,

Bowing their heads laughing,

Tickled by the sun.

Carol Nilsen, Centrifuge, silks, linens, metallics

Susan Henry, Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, alpaca, angora, linen, mohair, qiviut, hand-dyed, knit

"Last summer I saw an unusual jellyfish, one I've never seen before, with a deep red bell transitioning to violet ruffles and a creamy white bloom of trailing tentacles.  It was a beautiful, dangerous creature and I couldn't forget it.  This unexpected inspiration from nature certainly deserved a closer look..."