The Umbrella Art Center of Concord, Mass. hosts a stunning fiber exhibit until February 28th. The newly-renovated gallery is a showcase for the work of 17 artists, including Merrill Comeau (“Red, White, Blue,” above). Merill composts, tears, and otherwise alters used fabric, treating it sometimes like paper, sometimes like clay, sometimes like a finely-tailored garment, until she achieves the degree of layering that best expresses her concept. Says Merill, “My performative tasks of seam ripping, laundering, ironing and stitching afford me opportunities for processing individual and collective trauma.” Red, White, and Blue represents a country badly in need of repair.
Janet Kawada‘s humorous miniature houses, yurt-shaped felt constructions with embedded gems, symbols, and stories, form a small village in “Piecing It Together.” Family, identity, and home appear as acts of creation that are never entirely finished.
Sheila Pepe‘s installation of fiber structures, prints and sculpture at the deCordova is an engaging, mid-career retrospective of a groundbreaking artist. Pepe’s spare and often hilarious work sports titles like “Gray Thing with Dangly Bit on Chain” (front left, above) and roams into realms of ancient history with a 2-room installation concerning the demise of Emperors in Rome and China.
A working sculptor 