Description
Features four artists who each engage with the natural world through unconventional and highly personal perspectives
Emily Zilber
Contributions by Nora Atkinson and Stefano Catalani
The four artists featured in Forces of Nature work in a wide variety of media including fibre, mosaic, glass and metals, with nature as their inspiration. Lauren Fensterstock creates detailed, large-scale installations using processes drawn from the decorative arts, including paper quilling and mosaic. Timothy Horn creates exaggerated adornments that combine natural and constructed worlds, taking inspiration from objects as varied as baroque jewellery patterns and Victorian-era detailed studies of lichen, coral and seaweed. Debora Moore, known for her exquisitely detailed glass renderings of orchids, is represented in this volume by her new series Arboria (2018), which focuses less on realism and more on capturing an intensely personal experience of beauty and wonder. Rowland Ricketts creates immersive installations using handwoven and hand-dyed cloth, starting on his farm, where he cultivates the indigo plants he uses to colour his artwork, fully linking his material and process with the finished product.
Launched in 2000, The Renwick Invitational series showcases contemporary American craft practitioners and artists. Other titles in the series include Visions and Revisions (2016) and Disrupting Craft (2018).
The accompanying exhibition will on view at the Renwick Gallery, Washington DC, Fall 2020.
Author biographies
Nora Atkinson is the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Stefano Catalani is executive director of Gage Academy of Art, Seattle, WA and the former director of Art, Craft and Design at Bellevue Arts Museum, WA.
Emily Zilber is an independent curator and educator, and the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at the Wharton Esherick Museum, PA. She is the former Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.
Table of contents
- Director’s Foreword by Stephanie Stebich
- Acknowledgments
- Introduciotn by Emily Zilber
- Rowland Ricketts: A Crack in Everything by Emily Zilber
- Lauren Fensterstock: Out of Time by Emily Zilber
- Debora Moore: Resilient Beauty by Nora Atkinson
- Timothy Horn: Larger than Life by Stefano Catalani
- Notes
- Artists’ Biographies
- Exhibition Checklist
- Selected Bibliography
- Image Credits
