Artist Spotlight: Winnie Storey

Winnie Storey is an artist who recently came into SJMQT’s sphere by showing in two different exhibitions at SJMQT, Know Your Meme: Stitching Viral Phenomena and Form and Function: Fiber Arts for the 21st Century, our Second Members Biennial. You may also remember her from our Fall COmmunity day where she facilitated a pipe cleaner art activity! Winnie has been steadfastly creating fabric masks during Shelter in Place, a departure from her fine art practice. 

What are materials and processes utilized in your body of work?

I love being creative. Lately, I have been drawing on my iPad Pro and printing the digital drawings on fabric. Then I sew the fabric pieces together to make art. My process ranges from design thinking, conceptual visualization to final art products all done by myself. I enjoy that I have full control in the total art creation process. I am hoping to bring positive happiness and healing to the world. I don’t make sad depressing themed art, but rather silver lining storytelling art.

What has surprised you about your art practice since the Shelter in Place order? 

I changed my art practice to make PPE surgical mask to donate to a local hospital. I put my art practice aside so I can completely focus on helping others during this downtime of life.  

What are the largest obstacles you need to overcome (immediately, near future, distant future)?

I had a messed up childhood, and I’ve overcome it. It is an ongoing battle with clinical psychotic depression to turn myself into a highly functional adult. Diagnosed at 21 years old, I’ve battled depression for more than 18 years now. My goal is to help contribute effort to breaking the stigma around mental illness. I hope for the best one day we - the ones who suffer from mental illness on a daily basis no longer make others fear us and no longer need to hide who we really are,  mental illness battle survivors. It is very tough to battle with your own mind. Mental illness is NEVER romantic, calm and entertaining. I see my highly imaginative mind as the double-edged sword that if I use it unwisely it would lead to chaos to myself or harm others.

What do you do when you get "stuck" in your creative process? Where do you turn for inspiration?

When I get stuck with a creative block, I often go online to look for inspiration. I also read a lot. I usually go on Instagram for art inspirations and read magazines about arts and crafts.

When there is downtime, I go outside to enjoy the sun. As the light hits the surfaces of everything I study the lighting and colors it reflects. I also enjoy looking up at the sky and sometimes rainbows appear to set my happiness for that day.

What advice would you give to other creatives at this moment in time?

Hang in there, you are more creative than you think you are. Practice makes errors and errors turn into happy accidents for the creative. This quarantine time is the moment for us to reflect and search for the wonder within. 

What drew you to the fiber art medium over others? 

I remember my grandmother’s Singer Sewing machine, I also remember she hoarded all the fabrics until she could no longer sew due to her mental illness. Her attempts to teach me how to sew have become sweet memories. Also, the memory that makes me cry every time is when I remember a sad brownish teddy bear with a red ribbon that she made for me. Grandma hand-sewed it when she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. When that happened, I was eight. 

What are you looking forward to doing again once Shelter in Place is over? 

I can't wait to go out and eat in a Hot pot restaurant with others. Also, hug the ones I love and say ‘I love you’ face-to-face.

Anything else you would like to say or mention?

If you know how to sew, please consider donating your time to make masks for locals. please consider joining https://www.makemasks2020.org/ the making mask movement. 

Artist Spotlight: Stephanie Metz

So many visitors at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles ask if they can touch the artwork on display. San Jose-based artist, Stephanie Metz, defies this rule of most museums and gallery spaces, by inviting her artwork to be touched by the public in her recent solo exhibition entitled, In Touch.

Stephanie will be exhibiting work in the upcoming exhibition, Under The Covers: It’s Not What It Seams, a collaboration with Art and Art History Students from San Jose State University, scheduled October 11-November 15, 2020 at SJMQT.

What are materials and processes utilized in your body of work?

I primarily use wool in the form of batting or roving that I compress into three-dimensional felt sculpture using felting needles, or in the form of industrial felt that I stitch into three-dimensional forms.

Describe the main differences of your 'old' studio to your 'Shelter in Place' studio.

My ‘regular’ studio is a 735 sq-foot warehouse-like space at The Alameda Artworks complex in downtown San Jose near SAP Center. My ‘Shelter in Place’ studio is a back room in my home in the Berryessa neighborhood of Northeast San Jose. I began renting my downtown studio several years ago in anticipation of the larger work I was beginning-- ‘InTouch,’ a series of human-sized sculptures currently installed at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University. I need a large space not only to work on multiple large pieces but also to store supplies, materials, and finished works. When I learned about the Shelter In Place situation I went to the downtown studio to pick up some pieces I had been working on as well as some tools and supplies. Up until the Shelter In Place situation I had used my home studio only occasionally since I get most of my work done at the big studio and I have two kids at home so late afternoons and evenings don’t typically afford me much work time at home.

My home studio consists of a room divided into two parts- a desk and bookcase area and a work area with a table, several counters with storage underneath, and lots of natural light from some big windows and overhead track lighting. It’s a much more compact space but warm and lovely to work in. And the commute is excellent. With the whole family staying at home I can work on projects and be available to my kids for school-from-home help.

What are the largest obstacles you need to overcome (immediately, near future, distant future)?

My largest obstacles during this strange time are quite everyday and tangible (I need to continue to pay my studio rent, and for now that means selling artwork and looking into creating online workshops) and also abstract and impossible to resolve right now: over the past three years I’ve been focused on making huge sculpture that people can touch and interact with physically-- how will that kind of experience be received after all of this coronavirus shake-up? I’d like to think that we humans will always crave physical, personal encounters with each other and with objects that entice us-- but will fear get in the way? The response to my hands-on exhibition ‘InTouch’ at the de Saisset Museum at SCU had been incredibly positive before the whole campus and museum were shut down. Not only are wool and felt visibly soft and inviting, but they also have some amazing natural properties that make them ideal textiles for public spaces-- the lanolin covering each fiber resists adherence of bacteria and resists dirt and liquids well. I had included hand sanitizer stations by each gallery entrance even before coronavirus worries since touching is a focal point of the exhibition and everybody has their own sense of what they’re comfortable with. After this unprecedented effort to reduce sharing germs with others, what will the new normal be? The goal of my touchable sculpture experiment is to encourage connections between people through shared novel art experiences in public space, since that has long been the response when I allowed people to give in to their craving to touch my felt sculpture. I think over the long term we humans will generally go back to a lot of our previous behaviors and habits, but it makes me really sad to think about the growing sense of social danger and fear and its ensuing isolation and xenophobia among people. Maybe my art can help heal that when it’s time.

What do you do when you get "stuck" in your creative process? Where do you turn for inspiration?

I tend to have several projects going at once and, as a parent as well as an artist, I never have enough time. So when I do get stuck in a particular project I set it aside and focus on other projects until I can revisit it with fresh eyes. I don’t remember the last time I got stuck overall in my creative process. I have enough backlogged ideas that I keep myself engaged and entertained. I’m inspired by all sorts of sources: the natural world (the differential growth that leads to ‘frilly’ edges of plants and sea creatures), observation of everyday physical phenomena (the low angle of the sun creating a wavy shadow from what looks like a straight twig on the ground), and even my materials themselves (can I compress this felt enough that it can hold x amount of weight?). I think my mindset is one of curiosity and I can’t turn it off.

What are you currently reading/ listening to?

I often listen to audiobooks while I work, and I tend towards sci-fi, fantasy, and novels-- very escapist types of stories. Some of my favorite authors are Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb, Patricia Briggs, Sophie Kinsella, and Jim Butcher.

What advice would you give to other creatives at this moment in time?

Don’t feel guilty about making and selling your work-- what you do and make matters and brings connection, beauty, and comfort to people, especially in trying times. There are a lot of things we need to live rich and fulfilled lives, we can’t all be on the front lines of medically treating this pandemic, but we can each contribute that thing that makes us feel connected.

Anything else you would like to say or mention?

I’m working on editing a video version of the cancelled Artist Talk I was scheduled to present at the de Saisset on April 30th. I was looking forward to talking about the journey of planning, creating, and managing this huge project in large part to highlight all the help I received from my community in the form of volunteers, studio assistants, and supporters. I’m pleased to have found an alternate solution that will allow me to share the images and narrative to viewers at home. I’ll be announcing its completion via my mailing list and social media, so if anyone wants to get updates on that as well as a virtual museum walk-through video they can sign up through my website, www.stephaniemetz.com, or through Instagram or Facebook: @stephanie_metz_sculpture.

Artist Spotlight: Mark Shoffner and Rebecca Herman

As Museum Week’s theme this year is togetherness, we thought it would be fitting to highlight Mark Shoffner and Rebecca Herman this week. They are a husband and wife artist partnership and together they will be the Artist in Residence at SJMQT this Fall. Their work explores ideas that many of us are confronted with during quarantine, such as inside vs. outside space, our relationships to one another, and new opportunities for interaction.

What materials and processes are utilized in your body of work?

Over the last few years, we have been hand-dyeing fabric for installation pieces. Most of our work incorporates geometric designs from Islamic art, based on sites that have been damaged or destroyed during armed conflict. Our process involves research, drawing, creating a design on fabric, mixing and thickening Procion dyes, hand-painting, washing and finishing the fabric. In some cases, the dyed pieces become part of a larger installation, such as Personal Shrine (exhibited at a nature preserve in PA).

Describe the main differences of your 'old' studio to your 'Shelter in Place' studio.

We often work at our home in San Francisco, using our dining area, garage, or outdoors—any space we can commandeer. (We are collaborators and a married couple.) So, that aspect of the work has not changed too much. We now have our daughter here with us, and there’s some competition for time and space, along with other work. (Mark is also a textbook writer, Rebecca teaches art.) So, there is a bit of a juggling act as we prepare a large fabric installation piece for the San Francisco Public Library.

What are the largest obstacles you need to overcome (immediately, near future, distant future)?

Some of our paid work such as art teaching is “on hold” during the crisis, so that has freed up some time for art-making; however, we need to find ways to replace lost income. We are also running our own home-school for our daughter, like most parents, and that is a challenge no matter your occupation. So shifting our work schedules around, juggling many projects/concerns, and finding enough space while we are all at home, possibly for months is a big challenge. Getting enough fabric to create a large installation may be both a challenge and an opportunity... it might lead to some creative problem-solving. Let’s see how it goes! We are also trying to produce some cloth masks that can be used by workers who need to be in public, using fabric from previous pieces; our daughter has been helping out. 

What are you currently reading/ listening to?

We are listening to upbeat music to keep our spirits up and the work flowing. UB40, the Labour of Love album, has been a particular favorite. We’ve got a nice, old fashioned record player in our workspace... and it’s a nice break from digital music, Zoom calls for work and school (also important.) 

What advice would you give to other creatives at this moment in time?

Maybe our training as artists has prepared us to deal with a certain amount of... uncertainty. Let's all try to tap into that well of resilience we've developed, or have admired in other people/times/places, to help us get through this crisis and help those on the front lines, as much as we can. 

What drew you to the fiber art medium over others?

We were drawn to this field because of its flexibility. To give a quick example, last year we hand-dyed five large fabric panels, packed them in our suitcases, and flew across the country. When we arrived on site, we built a wooden frame in a beautiful meadow in the Poconos Mountains region of PA. We attached the fabric panels, creating a contemplative space for visitors. The qualities of the fabric-lightweight, breathing in the wind, and the vivid colors we were able to get with the hand-dyeing process were essential to the piece. Rebecca studied sculpture during her MFA (Parsons), and Mark did painting (CUNY), so we come from a somewhat different background that has converged in fiber art over the last five years. We plan to continue. So much to learn and explore.

What artist, who works in a different medium, informs your practice?

So many artists... from Andy Goldsworthy, Ruth Asawa, and Isamu Noguchi to Barnett Newman. We’re also very interested in geometric design and architecture found in the Islamic world, as well as other cultures not specifically “our own.”

What are you looking forward to doing again once Shelter in Place is over?

We look forward to installing work we’ve been planning and making in isolation. Our work is not complete until people see it, and interact with it. Oh, and a big gathering with loved ones and everyone... far away from our home (which we are so fortunate to have).

Artist Spotlight: Michelle Wilson

Next up on our Artist Spotlight Interviews is Michelle Wilson. You may remember meeting her and collaborator Anne Beck at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles in early 2018. Together they work as the Rhinoceros Project.

What are materials and processes utilized in your body of work? 

I like to call myself an interdisciplinary thinker. My work involves papermaking, printmaking, artist books, embroidery, sculpture, installation, and social practice. However, papermaking is at the root of everything I do. Most people consider paper a substrate – a surface that holds information. For me, and for many papermakers, paper is a substance; its very fibers have meaning, history, story, significance. 

Another significant part of my practice has been collaborations. I’m part of two ongoing artist collectives, Book Bombs (with Mary Tasillo) and the Rhinoceros Project (with Anne Beck).  

Describe the main differences of your 'old' studio to your 'Shelter in Place' studio. 

At this point in time, I’m fortunate to live in my studio. What’s shifted for me is that I have so much more time to work. I am sorry that this has come at the cost of many people struggling with illness and a threat to many more, but I am embracing the time I have been given to work now.  

With this time, I’ve been working on a sculptural practice that I set aside a few years ago due to time constraints. It’s a series of sculptures made of various types of bast fiber – so far, I’ve experimented with flax and cannabis (hemp). The fibers are processed in a machine called a Hollander beater for a long time – up to eight hours of beating. This causes the fibers to absorb a great deal of water. I form sheets, and while they are still wet, they are wrapped around an armature. The armatures I build begin as flat forms, and as the paper dries it warps and cockles the form into a twisted, three dimensional shape. The results are unpredictable, and that’s something I enjoy. I find myself thinking of these pieces as collaborations with fiber, water, gravity, the weather, and time. 

What do you do when you get "stuck" in your creative process? Where do you turn for inspiration?

So much of my creative process is tied to my connection with my body. Making paper, carving blocks, embroidery, all involve movement and engage my physical body. When I’m stuck, I’m still. I have to move my body in order to move through the feeling of being blocked.  Usually this involves walking, getting my blood pumping to energize my studio practice. 

In addition, I’m fortunate to have a community of artist friends who I can turn to for advice when something’s not working. Artist friends such as Anne Beck (my frequent collaborator), Patricia Wakida, Marie Elcin, Teddy Midler, Nicholas Yeager and Ever Rodriguez are some of the people who understand where I’m trying to take something, and talking with them can usually help me figure out what’s holding me back. 

 What are you currently reading/ listening to?

I’m currently reading Glenn Adamson’s Fewer, Better Things, which sounds like it should be some sort of Marie Kondo book, but instead it’s a history of craft and craft principles. The weaver Christy Matson recommended it to me last summer when I was teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME. It’s sort of a next-generation response to David Pye’s Nature and the Art of Workmanship, based in the idea that we as humans need a connection to the objects we use. Adamson feels that this material connection nurtures us, connects us and deepens our understanding of community and environment.  

What advice would you give to other creatives at this moment in time?

My experience of sheltering-in-place has actually had a surfeit of joy in connecting with others. My community has enriched and sustained me. I frequently find that the truest things are often contradictions – that through isolation many are learning how connected we truly are, and how much we need one another. I’m not sure if this is advice, per se, but I hope we can continue and built upon our bonds together after the order is lifted. 

What drew you to the fiber art medium over others? 

Fiber art was never an art form I studied in undergraduate art school. The beginnings of what I know today as a fiber artist was knowledge I learned from my mother; and like many art students, we’re convinced that that the teachings of our mothers are not “real” or “serious” art. I trained as a painter and a printmaker, and while I still make prints, I’ve abandoned painting as a practice entirely. I had to unlearn that my mother’s knowledge wasn’t real. 

What finally convinced me that I not a painter was how still I had to be to paint. I’m a person who’s almost always in motion as my natural state; I talk with my hands (even on the phone); I pace when I have to wait somewhere for something; I’m a master fidgeter. Sitting or standing still to paint left my mind wandering, I wasn’t able to focus on the work. When my hands and body are engaged, I’m present, I’m calmer, I feel more like myself. I know there are painters who are very physical, but that wasn’t something I could tap into.  

But making paper is very physical. So much of what I do is rooted in body knowledge and memory. It’s said a person must pull 1000 sheets of handmade paper before they can make consistent ones. I’ve been making paper in some form since 2005, I’ve probably passed my first 1000 sheets a few years ago. So my body remembers the movement, it’s almost like a dance I’ve practiced over and over again and now I don’t think about the motions consciously. 

What artist, who works in a different medium, informs your practice?

As someone who works across mediums, I find it difficult to find someone who works in a medium that is entirely different that mine. That said, although we both technically work in sculpture and printmaking, I’m enraptured with the work of Marisol Escobar, who is usually just known as Marisol. In her work, she moves between a sensitivity to material and narrative.  The first time I saw her work in person was a few years ago at the Palmer Museum of Art in State College, PA. The work on view there, Blackfoot Delegation to Washington, DC, 1916, was made in response to a group of Native Americans who invited artists to contribute artwork to their pavilion at the Universal Exposition of Seville, Spain, in 1992. Marisol was the only artist who accepted their invitation. Her work was based on a photograph of the 1916 event. Her work is not a rendition, it is an essence, and the anger of the figures still resonates. I was also drawn to how she could transform material; one of the figures in the sculpture is “wearing” a necklace with a medallion that is made from the top of an aluminum can. It is only an echo of the original item in the photograph, but it is imbued with significance. 

A social practice artist I’ve been recently drawn to is Canupa Hanska Luger. Originally, I was drawn to his projects such as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Queer and Trans People (MMIWGQT) – Every One. He worked with numerous communities to create over 4000 beads to create a work that recognizes the sheer number of missing indigenous people in the USA and Canada. What impressed me most about the project was that he initiated something that was accessible to everyone, regardless of age, or ability. The project invited participation from everyone; almost anyone can form a sphere out of clay. 

However, as I continue to shelter in place, I find myself thinking about his Future Ancestral Technologies series, particularly the video We Live. These works are a re-envisioning of ritual and apology as technology through the lens of indigenous futurism. Right now, the idea of living with accountability to the land and to each other seems powerful indeed. 

Finally, several writers and poets have been my guides at various times: Rebecca Solnit, Peter S. Beagle, Mary Oliver, Sarah Vowell, Barbara Kingsolver, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Aldo Leopold have all had an influence on my practice.  

What are you looking forward to doing again once Shelter in Place is over?

I don’t know if this will be safe at the end of this time of Sheltering in Place, but I’m really looking forward to when there’s no risk in hugging people again. 

Artist Spotlight: Kira Dominguez Hultgren

Kira Dominguez Hultgren is a Bay Area-based textile Artist who currently has a solo exhibition at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, entitled I was India: Embroidering Exoticism. Kira is a recent graduate of California College of the Arts, earning a dual degree MFA/MA in Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies. Dominguez Hultgren is represented by Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco, and she is a Graduate Fellow at The Headlands Center for the Arts where she is preparing for upcoming shows at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek and the de Young Fine Art Museum of San Francisco. 

What are materials and processes utilized in your body of work?

I primarily work on floor looms, backstrap looms, Mapuche looms, and looms created from tensioning yarn between any two or more fixed points (chairs, bedframes, flag poles, walls, etc.). I use my studio practice to materialize my research, whether that be photographic documentation of textile archives or my own family textile archives and history. I weave in response to weavings. Weaving tells, speaks, and awaits a response. I consider weaving as manifesting and responding to material culture.Silk from India and wool from North and South America are my primary materials with which I weave; and found wood, PVC pipes, metal anchors, and zip ties are my primary materials that I use to construct the loom in the gallery. Silk and wool allow me to confuse a metonym (symbol) for North American Indigenous identity (geometric woven patterning in wool) with a material like silk, which is often read as synonymous with Asia.  The found materials I use to construct the loom question the physical and cultural architecture with which we encounter these woven fabrics. How are these textiles bound in words, spaces, places, and global infrastructures from which they cannot break free? 

 Describe the main differences of your 'old' studio to your 'Shelter in Place' studio.

The biggest difference between my studio at the Headlands Center for the Arts and my shelter-in-place studio is my children! Rather than living the Woolfian ideal of "a room of one's own," i.e. my studio at the Headlands, I have now been plunged headlong into an ever-changing circus theater where living room becomes studio space becomes middle-school classroom. Bedrooms become practice spaces become never-ending Zoom meetings. Even if my looms are still blissfully my own, to step into them requires an active turning-away from the dishes piling up in the sink, an active stepping over the piles of books and papers strewn over the couch. But then I stand at my loom and breathe, my kids rushing by with laptops and headphones in hand to their next in-place activity, and my fingers remember other rhythms. The rhythms of weavers who stood at their looms, pressing on warp strands, picking up patterns, and I'll trust those ancient rhythms to carry me through this season: to create even while I'm standing in-place.

What drew you to the fiber art medium over others?

Weaving is about storytelling through material and structure. Rather than creating a linear narrative, the act of weaving leaves in its wake a web of creative deconstruction that is never a finished statement.  Just think of Penelope waiting for Odysseus, unweaving by night what she wove in the day. Even without the weaver’s hand, my materials – wool, zip ties, tubing, coaxial cables – are working against one another, actively deconstructing what appears as narrative continuity when a fabric is pulled from the loom. Weaving, as it tells, compels some material to sink to the bottom, while other material rises to the surface. Some strands act only as a support, while other strands steals the spotlight. To weave with competing unequal materials is to reflect a lived experience of ongoing U.S. colonialism supported by unequal histories.  Some histories go unheard, unseen, while other histories seemingly become the whole story. I want to tell those histories which need to be heard, but have yet to be said: stories from weavers such as Juanita (Asdzáá Tl'ógí, Navajo, 1845-1910); or stories of living between races when miscegenation was a crime such as my grandmother’s story of growing up Hawaiian, Black, Indian, and White.

What artist, who works in a different medium, informs your practice?

Faith Ringgold (b. 1930) is an African-American painter and sculptor who often uses quilting as a framing device for her work. I am drawn to her practice for many reasons, one of which is her fluidity between mediums, often using textiles as the last step in her process. Through quilting her painted canvases, she turns visualized narratives of the Black experience in Harlem for instance, into materialized evidence that can be handed-down to the next generation. Her American People Series has been a huge influence on my work, where she shows how the symbol of the U.S. Flag is not neutral. In Ringgold's paintings, the flag racializes bodies, buries those bodies, and yet is only made visible through the blood of those bodies.

What are you looking forward to doing again once Shelter in Place is over?

I'm looking forward to running into people again, literally! I never appreciated how much I like to bump shoulders in doorways, brush hands when picking over produce at the grocery store, or grab onto arms to steady myself, when I crash headlong into a fellow artist, both of us absentmindedly turning a corner in the Headlands studios. Although I'm not particularly extroverted, I am very tactile, and I miss connecting with people through casual, spontaneous touch!