fiber art

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

Introducing Brittany Kiertzner, New Member

California Fibers would like to introduce our new member, Brittany Kiertzner, a mixed media and textile fine artist from Southern California. Kiertzner is an enrolled member of the St Regis Mohawk Tribe and studied fine art at California State University Fullerton. Kiertzner explores critical materials that reframe her personal history into a contemporary context. Through a dynamic interplay of woven and stitched threads, her work is influenced by traditional Mohawk Iroquois splint basket making, embroidery, and raised beadwork.

She investigates themes of regeneration, authenticity, and subversion of materials through synthesizing the past. Kiertzner has shown her mixed media and textile-based work extensively in solo and juried exhibitions in California since 2007. Her work is in the permanent collection at Sasse Museum of Art. She manages her studio in Claremont, California.

I Am Alive Konhnhe

Brittany Kiertzner’s work makes connections within loss and insecurity. It unravels the intrinsic vulnerability encapsulated within the dichotomy of life and death, particularly focusing on the subsequent generations of Indigenous women. The narrative navigates through the artist's endeavor to embody the inevitable social pressures that catalyze disintegration and impermanence.

They Give Us Life Kiohehkwen

In her body of work, the color red emerges as a potent symbol, signifying the prevailing silence and indifference that shrouds Indigenous women. A significant number of these women find themselves either missing or succumbing to violence. Kiertzner manifests abstract figurative depictions within her sculptural works. These bodies serve as both a commemoration of those who have been lost, capturing the essence of their absence, while also portraying the resilience of those who persist, navigating dysphoric conditions.

Hide Yourself Satahseht

Panels on display at Sasse Museum of Art

You can see her work at her website or on Instagram. Keep an eye out for Kiertzner’s work in future California Fibers’ shows.

Influences/Influencers: Workshops at Craft in America

As part of the Influences/Influencers exhibit, California Fibers’ members have been preparing workshops to go along with their art.

Aneesa Shami Zizzo recently gave her Fabric Collage Workshop, using reclaimed fabric, collage methods, and applique techniques.

Annette Heully will be teaching knotless netting on Saturday, October 14, from 12:30 AM-3:30 PM. Use simple knots, loops, and a needle to learn to shape a flexible netted structure around almost any form.

On Saturday, October 28, from 11 AM-4 PM, Debra Weiss will be teaching Layers of Life: Collage and Stitch. You will learn to layer and stitch opaque and sheer fabrics to make a small autobiographical artwork that can also become a needle case.

Lastly, Ashley V. Blalock will be teaching beginning crochet on Saturday, November 18, from 11 AM-5 PM. Learn all the basic stitches while crocheting a small, three-dimensional item.

All class information is available on the Craft in America website.

Masked Response

California Fibers last met in person in January, like many art groups, constrained by shelter-in-place and quarantine requirements. We met online in April, our normal meeting day and time, but in little boxes on the screen, some muted, some distracted, some challenged by technology, all glad to see and hear our group. We talked about art and our upcoming exhibits and whether they might even happen, until one member, Lydia Tjioe Hall, suggested we create an online exhibit in our isolation, a response to having to wear a mask, especially as fiber artists. So many other people were unearthing ancient sewing machines and using up all the elastic, or searching through their stash for appropriate materials. It seemed appropriate for each of us to reach deeply into our chosen medium and fashion a response to being masked and in quarantine.

And here they are…

Charlotte Bird, I’d Rather Be Somewhere Calm

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Doshi, Ebb and Flow; Silk Organza, Arashi Shibori, Acid Dye

Timeless ebb and flow,

Endless waves of change,

Eternal depth of the sea.

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Susan Henry

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Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Wire, salvaged metal, and felt

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Chari Myers, Covid-19 UV Blaster Periwinkle; wet felted, merino wool, viscose, silk gauze, lights

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and Covid-19 UV Blaster Red; wet felted, merino wool, viscose, silk gauze, lights

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Kathy Nida, COVID Mask; window screen, wool and cotton embroidery thread

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Aneesa Shami, Credit: El Naddaha (deconstructed knit mask) by Aneesa Shami, for Planet City, Director Liam Young, Costume Design Ane Crabtree.

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Cameron Taylor-Brown, Unraveled, an antisocial fabric mask; woven, layered and stitched, linen and rayon, 6” h x 7” w

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This mask is inspired by a commentator who said that our chaotic national response to Covid is “unraveling our social fabric. “ One could also say that the fault lines of our culture are now unmasked for all to see – even as our citizenry is directed to “mask up.” Unraveled is cobbled together from pieces of handwoven textile, folded and stitched haphazardly, with threads in disarray. And it doesn’t fit well - not much protection would be gained from this mask.

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Lydia Tjioe Hall, Face Mask No. 1

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and Sneeze

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Peggy Wiedemann

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