Links to help during the current humanitarian crisis:

Ukrainian Institute of Amerca
https://ukrainianinstitute.org/home/standwithukraine-take-action/

Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, Inc
https://unwla.org/donate/

The Ukrainian Museum, NYC
http://www.ukrainianmuseum.org/220302_donate_StandWithUkraine.htm

THE FIBER EFFECT

Given the tremendous semiotic capacity of fiber around the world in everyday life — be it as currency, a sign of wealth, a transmitter of political authority, a creator of ties between people and kinship groups, marker of major life passages such as birth, marriage and death, or a constructor of identities and beliefs through dress, domestic adornment, and other types of embellishment — it is no surprise that fiber has become a major medium in contemporary art.

Fiber is material natural to humans, yarn is a use of fiber which mankind has invented, and fabric is something everyone uses.  It establishes an instant link with the natural world, of which we are an indissoluble part.  It is more immediate perhaps than pigment or stone and akin to the basic components of man.  Because of these characteristics, abstract ideas can commit to finding a smooth channel of communication through this medium.

Drawn to fiber’s aesthetic possibilities, structural potential, and semiotic power, the four contemporary practitioners exhibition here experiment with and adopt some form of the material, utilizing it in innovative ways, exploring its broader associations, from the purely aesthetic to the contextual and conceptual.  Their select and collective work demonstrates far-reaching shifts in artists’ interest in and approach to fiber, which in the not too distant past had been dismissed for its historical associations to the “decorative,” “craft,” or “women’s work.”

Few aesthetic problems are as perplexing as those involved in defining just what makes up the “minor” arts, or what really differentiates the “high” arts from crafts.  Can we discriminate between medieval tapestries and good contemporary weaving, and consider one group as “high” art but the other as craft?  Surely, we can agree to make comparisons of equals in quality.  Must we not, then either accept a Cellini saltcellar and the Bayeux (France) tapestries as crafts, or good contemporary weaving and mixed-media fiber creations as “serious” art?

I use the word “serious” because the term cuts to the quick of the semantic issue.  Like “minor,” it is dissonant to me because of the implicit overtones of quality and importance. the work by Stanley Bulbach, Volodymyra Hankevych, Jaroslava Kuchma, and Yaroslava Tkachuk at first glance seem much like craft. that they and their work are “serious,” however, to me is indisputable.  The mastery of their methods and their purist attitude toward raw material could not be more in tune with our notion of craft.  Yet, there is nothing the least bit functional about half the works displayed in these opulent rooms.  Must we conclude, therefore, that only the materials and methods matter?  Witness, then, cultural context and personal narrative.

To some this exhibition’s title, “The Fiber Effect,” may appear narrow, suggesting a single approach to the making of art, yet, this group show embraces pluralism.  It incorporates craft techniques into the story of contemporary art rather than suggesting further segregated categories.  It aims to unravel those categories of the “high” and “minor” and to weave together new patterns of thinking about art.

These questions and others come to mind as we mount this unique exhibition.  I admit that there is not easy solution to defining craft.  We will find satisfaction, however, if others are prompted to question the facile labels we often attach to art, arbitrarily, and the assumption that painting is inherently better than weaving, and sculpture than pottery.  Categories get in the way of seeing straight or, as I prefer . . . “seeing slowly.”  Asking how something is expressed is a deeper question.

Andrew Horodysky
February 2022

The Fiber Effect at the Ukrainian Institute of America

Yaroslava Tkachuk— Lviv, Ukraine,"Horizon," 2017

The realization and cross-pollination of traditional fiber practice and new technologies finds relevancy in my works and approach to working with these materials.  I maintain a partial footing within the realm of early wool processing by natural dye techniques and carept making in the Yavoriv region in Western Ukraine.  Using that as a starting point, I find I can experiment with and visualize new coded language and narrative through the nettng of flax, wool and wire — producing conscious associations with the interwoven referents to coaxial and fiber-optic cables occupying the sphere of entangled information channels.

Color is a secondary component to form-making and structural and figurative appearances dictate my compositions.  My reaction to and commentary on the evolution of a technology-based society is demonstrated with interweaving and inter-lacing as concrete mechanical action:  physical motion and dexterity and spiritual meditation.  The resulting works are soaked with the affection of human touch — pulsating, living, reflecting, transmitting light and compelling us to heightened experiences in a pure non-binary aesthetic.

Volodymyra Hankevych — Lviv, Ukraine
Left:  Untitled, 2010, wool, cotton and linen
65 x 39.5 in. (165 x 100 cm.)
Right:  Untitled, 2009, Wool, cotton and linen
63 x 41.5 in. (160 x 105 cm.)

JAROSLAVA LIALIA KUCHMA
Lives and works in Chicago, IL

“Tapestry is my way of transforming an awareness, an experience, or a commonplace observation.  The sources are personal and universal histories.  Although the individual histories are nuanced within this framework, they are the foundations from color to line to action.”

"My artwork [embraces] memories, emotions, and histories, both distant and near.  It is not entirely sacred in a classical [sense], but, I believe that the divine could exist in many simple things around us.  I try to find exceptional materials, textures and undertones for my works.  Still, I always keep natural qualities of the materials in mind, such as those of brass and copper, which gives an incremental range of colours after oxidation, or satin-white melchior, which is especially good in combination with wood.  And, I would rather not speak about threads . . . .

“I like to experiment with tactile materials, and that is an essential feature of working with textile, overall, one of its main [exceptions to] painting,  I believe that this material tactility enables an artwork to convey kindness and love better, guiding observers’ attention into a positive direction.”

STANLEY BULBACH
Lives and works in New York, NY

"Working on my doctorate in ancient Mesopotamian studies at New York University I learned about the important role of kilims.  The weaving arts have been a most important technology driving development in economics, trade, and agriculture as civilizations spread north and west.  Kilims were beds upon which life’s passages occurred: conception, birth, dreaming, death, even being buried in them.  They transformed the ground for prayer.  Traditional literature even has legendary carpets capable of flight.

"I find the original uses of this art form to add powerful expressive force to the designs woven within them.  The woven structure of kilim art abstracts design element s in ways especially engaging to modern Western eyes.  The mathematical structure is musical in favoring pattern, repetition and variation.  All this work and more I have shared widely over the past half century in exhibitions and professional publications.

"Historically prized throughout the Middle East and North Africa, kilim arts are now unfamiliar in most of contemporary Europe.  But the kilim arts are still honored in Ukraine as an important traditional cultural art.  Enjoyed as expressive contemporary art for the wall, kilim art continues to entice us with its ancient stories of our origins still crucially important today.”

Stanley Bulbach — New York, NY
Left:  "Third Sephardic Cemetery" (carpet bed), 1997, handspun lustrous Lincoln longwools and traditional vegetal dyes
79 x 38 in. (200.7 x 96.5 cm.)
Second from Left:  "Nieuw Amsterdam" (prayer carpet), 2014, handspun lustrous Lincoln longwools and traditional vegetal dyes
78 x 35 in. (198 x 89 cm.)
Middle:  "The Hudson" (prayer carpet), 2016, handspun lustrous Lincoln longwools and traditional vegetal dyes
75 x 36 in. (190.5 x 91.5 cm.)
Upper Right:  "September Passages" a flying carpet, 2001, handspun lustrous Lincoln longwools and traditional vegetal dyes
78 x 36 in. (198 x 91.5 cm)
Lower Right:  "Quercus" (carpet bed), 2011, handspun lustrous Lincoln longwools and traditional vegetal dyes
79 x 35 in. (201 x 89 cm.)