In Print: Gyöngy Laky in Hamu és Gyémánt (Ash & Diamond) Magazine

Gyöngy Laky’s work is featured in the Fall 2009 issue of the Hungarian magazine Hamu és Gyémánt (Ash & Diamond) in a seven-page article, Gyöngy Laky, Exclusive Report with the Renowned Artist by Andrea Keleti. The article describes Laky’s career in art and academia and discusses the artist’s childhood and career as an artist and educator in the U.S after she fled Hungary with her parents and two brothers in 1948 at 4 years old. Laky did not return to Hungary until more than 30 years later, in 1982, after she had been teaching at the University of California for five years. Renowned Hungarian art critic András Bán organized an exhibition in Sárospatak where Gyöngy’s work was showcased. The article notes, “She was so young when her family fled the country she didn’t remember anything, but, slowly, she recognized familiar words, smells and sights. Although she didn’t feel like she came ‘home,’ she loved being here.” In Laky’s view, “It was such a wonderful feeling to be in Hungary, to experience my cultural heritage.”

The article goes on to describe Laky’s thought process as she creates her work: “She can only hope that the message will relate to the one she had in mind when she started with harvesting tree branche,” the author writtes. ” Each type of nail has a precise role and meaning. Even selecting a color, becomes part of the process. Will the work be a statement about superficiality? waste? or well-being…?” In Laky’s view, “Art is cultural communication….Somehow we all relate to art. We wouldn’t and couldn’t survive without it. The artist’s role has always been to take the impossible road. To explore the unknown and test the outside limits.”

10th Wave III: Online– The next best thing to being there

Our first online exhibit, the10th Wave III: Online, opens today. The exhibit is a carefully curated selection of works presented in installation shots, images of individual works and detail photos. Approximating the in-person experience, viewers can “walk” through 26 images of the exhibit installed; click to view each of the 125 works in the show more closely, focus in on images of dozen of details and click to read more about each of the artists in the exhibition. “Images of individual works of art online are commonplace,” says Tom Grotta, president of browngrotta arts. “We have tried, instead, to give viewers a sense of the work in space, combined with the option of looking more closely at the pieces that interest them, just as they would have if they were visiting the exhibit in person.”

The artists in the 10th Wave III are experimenting with forms and techniques in novel and surprising ways, exploring new relationships among structure, design, color, and pattern.” They work in a wide range of materials from silk, stainless steel and rubber to recycled raincoats and linen to tree bark, safety pins and telephone books. Among the artists in the online exhibition are Lewis Knauss, Lia Cook, Gyöngy Laky from the US, Sue Lawty from the UK, Ritzi Jacobi from Germany, Jin-Sook So from Sweden, Carolina Yrarrázaval from Chile and Hisako Sekijima and Jiro Yonezawa from Japan.

The 10th Wave III: Online runs through December 20, 2009.

Willow Talk

photo by Shannon Tofts

We visited London in May for the Collect show at the Saatchi Gallery. While there, we had a chance to speak with journalist Emma Crichton-Miller about the fiber art field for an article on the state of contemporary basket weaving – not just in the U.K., but also in Europe, the US and elsewhere. The article, Willow Talk, appeared in the July-August 2009 issue of Crafts magazine. and in it, Crichton-Miller offers a positive prognosis for the art of basketry in the U.K. In the article, Crichton-Miller tracks the growing appreciation in the U.K. for basketry as an art form, comparing artists like Ed Rossbach and John McQueen in the U.S., Markku Kosonen in Finland and Shouchiko Tanabe of Japan, with artists like Lizzie Farey of the U.K., Joe Hogan of Ireland and Dail Behennah, Lois Walpole, Shuna Rendel and Mary Butcher of the U.K., for whom recognition has been more recently won. “Basketry, in an artist’s hands, becomes as richly metaphorical as any craft,” Crichton-Miller observes. Listing a series of solo and group exhibits, including East Meets West: Basketry from Japan & Britain and European Baskets, Crichton-Miller predicts that basket-weaving in the U.K., as in America, Europe and Japan, seems ready to leave behind “its hobby status, its nostalgia for the past, to join the contemporary conversation.”