Kathy Zimmerer: Weaving A Vision

Kathy Zimmerer, director, University Art Gallery, wrote a review of the exhibit, "Contemporary American Tapestries" at the Sullivan Goss-An American Gallery in Santa Barbara, which appeared in the July/August issue of ArtScene.

The show of 32 tapestries features contemporary artists such as Squeak Carnwath, Chuck Close, Bruce Conner, Rupert Garcia, Leon Golub, and John Nava, and is part of the Magnolia Editions Tapestry project run by Nava, who designed the tapestries for the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in 1997, and printmaker Don Farnsworth.

“The contemporary artists’ use of tapestry gives them another way to translate their images,” she says. “with scale, color, and surface changes providing the image with another dimension. Portraits become large icons, patterns become richer with more depth, and even everyday images take on certain monumentality in large scale."

Zimmerer points out that the translation of paintings to fiber art is not entirely new.

“Historically, artists are always willing to try a new medium to enhance and enlarge their vision,” she notes. “For example, Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish Baroque painter and Francois Boucher, the French Rococo artist, had their fantastic designs woven into wool in a beautiful series of tapestries that have preserved and magnified the spirit of their original images.”

Also published was Zimmerer’s brief review of the exhibit “Winds of Change: Progressive Artists 1915-1935” at the Irvine Museum in the Continuing and Recommended Exhibitions section of the September issue of ArtScene. She describes the exhibit of California Impressionists as capturing “the essence of the American style in their fresh, straightforward approach to subject matter, even as they incorporate sophisticated European and Eastern styles.”

Zimmerer describes the West Coast adaptation of abstraction, cubism and surrealism as slightly behind the wave of these movements in the European and New York art scene. She notes, however, that “Winds of Change” reveals the unique take of the Western American region with “a reflection of an increasingly fast paced lifestyle, as in Frank Meyers’ jazzy painting, “The Charleston.” Or, while Phil Paradise incorporates symbolism and adeptly stylizes the horses in his painting “The Corral,” it is still a quintessential American scene in which he beautifully encapsulates the remnants of the untamed West.”

Zimmerer first started writing for ArtScene in 1984. She also wrote for Artweek, which covers Southern and Northern California, from 1976-1996. While director of the University Art Gallery at the State University of New York at New Paltz, she wrote for the Woodstock Times from 1980 to 1982. In addition, she has written numerous introductory essays for various exhibition catalogues.

Zimmerer’s review of "Contemporary American Tapestries" is available at http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2006/Articles0706/
AmericanTapestriesA.html

Her review of “Winds of Change” can be viewed at:
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2006/Articles0906/CR0906.html.

- Joanie Harmon